Yaarel
🇮🇱He-Mage
Heh, simplicity is an inherent self-evident "good".Trouble with that reading is that the simple=good posters place simple on a pedestal of self evident inerrancy rather than wasting any keystrokes describing where the line belongs & why. Lacking any specificity that would mark the boundaries of a position the reader is left to interpret what very much seems to be "at any cost". I made a post about that earlier here but if anythingthe specificity has been reduced since then
Useless, redundant, and unnecessary complexity is "ugly".
"As simple as possible, but not simpler."
Think of how evolution works. Useless traits atrophy. Useful and versatile traits get reinforced.
Think of how science works. The simplest, most elegant, paradigm that can account for all known data, is the one that excels, and via Occams Razor, the one most likely to be true.
In game design, the most "elegant" design is the one that can detail the most amount of genre concepts with versatile and fewest versatile mechanics.
Every game would be super simple, except. There needs to be details. If one can fly, how does one fly? Wings? Telekinesis? If one can fly, what is the speed? Can one creature fly faster than an other creature? And so on. These details invoke the second half of the Razor, "but not simpler".
The conflict between "lumping" into a single mechanic and "splitting" into several mechanics, can be a matter of taste. But there is powerful need for simplicity, especially if a game is complex.
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