even simple systems can be made extremely hard to master, not because of the complexity but because they require extreme precision. There’s value there too. Guitar Hero for instance, isn’t built on complex systems, but how many people can perfect Through the Fire and Flames? And how many people keep playing a song just one more time to get a little bit of a higher score?

I actually lump that under complexity… it’s still systemic mastery, just that you are mastering the system of your body, as opposed to the mental model.

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” — Aristotle

is something like Spider Solitarie or the Mahjong tile matching game that ships with Vista complex?

More complex than an MMO combat system, in many cases.

But your point is well-taken. A lot of people do enjoy simple systems that they can “use like whittling” as I call it — just something to keep the brain busy while you coast.

But the underlying stuff has to be solid. And what’s more, it does have to be complex, because a simplistic product, in entertainment, is a short-term product. Say rather that it has to be deceptively simple — complex beneath the surface when you dig deeper.

I dunno Raph… is something like Spider Solitarie or the Mahjong tile matching game that ships with Vista complex? Because I can tell you that they’ve certainly had a much longer “shelf life” than just about any other games for my Mom. I know, for myself, some of the things that I’ve sunk the most hours into have been painfuly simple and didn’t actually have any hidden complexity; there was no extra layer to worry about.

I think I’ve put more hours into Ouendan (a silly japanese music game import for the DS) and probably 2 to 3 times as much time if I factor in the sequel, as I have any other singleplayer game, and I’ve beaten Xenogears, so that sets the bar at 80 hours right there. There’s absolutely no complexity at all in terms of gameplay; you need to know how to tap buttons on the screen, run the stylus along a line, and spin it in a circle really fast, and that’s it. But it’s still brutally difficult on the harder difficulty settings because there’s little in the way of give in the timing, and it’s hopelessly addicitve for me despite, or perhaps because of, that. Similarly I’ve spent countless hours repeating the same actions in the two DS Castlevania games, where the surface complexity in what I’m doing is all I’m getting, just to complete the soul collection and weapon leveling “mini-games”. There’s no complexity to them, not even hidden, you just kill the same stuff over and over again (the act of which does have some complexity to it, but when you’re doing this you’ve already mastered those skills, the games require you killing sometimes hundreds of the same enemies), but it’s still vastly more entertaining and I’ve spent more time with it than most of the other, more complex, games that I’ve played.

Sure, once I beat those games I didn’t really tend to go “back to the well” so to speak, and having hidden complexity would’ve extended the replayability perhaps, but without a multiplayer component you eventually end up in the same place long run anyway. It’s too easy to get to the level of mastery that you want in a singleplayer game and then be done with it. For multiplayer, you definitely do need the hidden complexity though, because otherwise you end up with a tic-tac-toe scenario where the winner is determined almost before the game begins. But, for singleplayer, complexity isn’t even remotely necessary; simple but addicitve, whether that addictiveness comes from a reward structure or from difficulty that challenges my physical limitations to react or from some other source it doesn’t really matter, seems to last longer, at least for me.

Then there’s also games as relaxation in which case hidden complexity doesn’t do anything worthwhile either, since you’re just using the game to zone out. We come back to relaxation tools time and time again as well.