I'm new to the forums (hello) and was reading through some of the topics dealing with MMO's, RPG's, and other such games where there seems to be a lot of items that the player needs in order to play the game adaquatly. This got me thinking: How many different abilities, attacks, and other fancy things do we need to give players for them to play the game? In particular, computer games are notorious for using just about every key on the board, while console games are having to add more buttons to their controllers in order to play Halo. How much does a player really need? On a related topic, because of the option overload that seems to be flooding the market, does there seem to be a need for more simplistic gameplay? Are people just craving more run and jump/shoot/interact options with their games?

I like simple games, but I also quite enjoy a lot of the more complex games out there. I think this one might be one of those things that sort of depends on the player you ask.

I think there is a bit of a trend for mistaking breadth with depth.

Deep games can be very simple in principle, but are very involving, with all manner of nuances and subtleties to consider, which make the gameplay very interesting.

Broad games tend to be more complex, with lots of different things to think about, but unless those things are interesting in themselves, they don't really add to gameplay, they just add create work for the player.

Breadth is good - but it's no replacement for depth. I'd rather play a simple game that has deep gameplay than a complex game with shallow gameplay.

Quote:Original post by Sandman
Deep games can be very simple in principle, but are very involving, with all manner of nuances and subtleties to consider, which make the gameplay very interesting.

Sounds like the old notion of simple to play, hard to master, which does tend to make for some pretty great gameplay; almost anyone can play Mario Brothers, but to be really good at it is something that takes a lot of practice and knowledge of the game.

Thought of in those terms I certainly prefer a deep game to a broad one, but again broad can be good as well.

I used to like broad, option-rich games, but now as I'm having less and less free time (beeing busy with my programming job :) ), I prefer less time-consuming games.

I hope I can play through X3 this year....