A Word for Complexity

Usually we all come to a point where we stand and say, "It's all been done before." Of course it has. Mark Twain knew this, the Japanese Artists of old knew this and now you do too. So what do you do now? Treat you gaming creations like Haiku. Since nothing new is coming to mind, take the form and structure of existing games and begin to embellish. Adding a small bit of complexity onto a simple idea may make the difference.

Simple games have dominated our culture for a long time. Unfortunately in that simplicity we have a lot of freedom. Styles of play, strategies, and pondering the ways of winning are all easy things to develop or think about. Dominoes, Checkers, Tic Tac Toe, and Mandala are all such games. We have strategies and ways of thinking about these games and they are easy to think about. Games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Chess become a little harder to ponder upon in our spare time but with these more complex games many of us do spend time thinking about strategy. So when should we persue?

I say persue the more complex games when you are thinking about creation because in the end they give us a greater amount of enjoyment. There is a lot more too these games than a few minutes of fun and it's over. For example, Magic the gathering is a complex game. There are a myriad of rules and thousands of cards. It continues to become more and more complex as the game grows. People are still playing the game and it's variants because you don't lose interest. The nature of the game changes and develops.

The same is almost true of games that already exist and are given a new twist. Let's take Sorry! For example. If a variant of Sorry! were to appear on the market then a group of people would immediately start playing the new game. Interest would appear in the old game and discussion on the merits of both of them would begin to emerge. I can't say that it would generate millions in revenue for the interest it would develop but Something is better than nothing.

Even a complex game such as Chess has been made into a more complex variant, 3D Chess. I must confess I've never played this game but someday I think I will. Checkers has also had a 3D variant, and Tic Tac Toe is almost unrecognizable as Connect 4. So perhaps adding complexity is an answer to, "What do I make if everything is already thought of?" There are plenty of ways to make things complex. One of my favorite articles was given to me from my college professor about Graphic Design. It is 200 Ways to new designs. It is all about changing the nature of the design and the way of thinking about it to create something better, something new, something that makes people stand back and say, "Wow, Why didn't I think of that?"

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