Complexity vs Depth

One of the biggest confusions in game design is the difference between complexity and depth. If a game has depth, it allows for many different playstyles, strategies, and possibilities. A game with depth will always have something else to discover. Complexity, on the other hand, merely throws extra layers between the player and progress, and it doesn’t add anything.

As an example, chess is not particularly complex, but it has incredible depth. Anyone can pick up the basics of chess in an hour, but experts can practice for lifetimes and still find new strategies and avenues to explore.

Strategy games thrive on a balance between complexity and depth. The interactions between various unit types lays out the general strategy the player will follow, but there are enough variables that no two games will go exactly the same way.

Kingdom Hearts makes a good example of both complexity and depth. The combat system has a considerable amount of depth. While it’s possible to simply button-mash your way through, you miss out on a great deal of the intricacies of the system. Some enemies are weak to certain types of spells. Enemies telegraph their attacks, allowing for effective use of the dodge and guard abilities to prevent taking damage. Combining abilities with your party members allows for team-up attacks. It’s possible to play through the entire game multiple times and learn something new.

The Gummi Ship is nothing but complexity. In order to obtain parts for the ship, you need to collect crafting components and convert them into ship pieces. These components do nothing otherwise and there’s no other cost to crafting them, so they could just as easily have been replaced with the final pieces. Once you have the pieces, you have to fight with a clunky interface to assemble the ship. And at the end, it doesn’t matter, because the base ship model is competent enough to clear all the Gummi Ship sections anyway. The entire system adds nothing of value to the game.

My favorite rant subject on this topic is Baten Kaitos, a neglected RPG for the Gamecube. Baten Kaitos used a card battle system (which already adds a considerable amount of complexity). Every card had an element, and opposing elements canceled each other out. This meant that playing a fire card and then a water card would completely nullify everything the fire card accomplished. Because the cards you drew were picked randomly, this meant that pure chance could destroy any attempt at strategy you made. All it added to the game was frustration.

Properly executed depth allows the player to experiment with the game’s systems and rewards the player for that experimentation. When done right, depth adds considerably to a game’s lifespan, turning a good game to be played once into a game that lasts for ages.