Unfortunately, if you’re like me, you might have lived by that catchphrase a little too much, especially when making games. Maybe you make your maps too big, add too many items to your shop, or just have a colossal scope for your project. Whatever it is, it’s really more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll elaborate.
It turns out, players don’t need more stuff to enjoy a game. In fact, they don’t even like it! Be honest, are you going to want to play a game that is somehow reminiscent of this?:
Unless you’re a particle physicist, work for NASA, or are an iTunes developer, probably not. There’s just way too much going on.
This is the paradox of choice. Give someone too many options to choose from, and you’ll overwhelm them. The paradox of choice is commonly used to describe shopping, but the concept applies to everything in your project. Don’t make your shop have too many items, or your map so large it’s not fun anymore; don’t even add 1.8 zillion features to your upcoming Pong spinoff!
Less is more. I’ve found this to be true when it comes to everything in life, and game developing is no exception. Think like a minimalist. Do players really want what you’re adding? Probably not. Focus on one, core feature and hit it hard.
All of this is coming from a guy who learned his lesson the hard way. Don’t be like me.
This is an interesting tutorial, and if you’ve been a player of games that haven’t stuck to this rule then you’ll know that it’s an issue when it comes to enjoyment.
In terms of development, how can I know how much is too much and how much is too less? Sometimes as a player, I don’t even notice the issue yet I know there’s an issue. This would be problematic when it comes to updates, as players may not be able to give a straightforward response in regards to what they want added.
Is less always more? If I had a game that had very minimal mechanics (and I mean pretty standard), would it even be considered good?
I wouldn’t really agree on less being more, but I agree that putting a lot of content in a game makes it harder for new players to understand game concepts and get engaged.
Somewhere in the middle is probably the golden ground, and that’s what you should strive to achieve.
Also worth noting that giving many options is actually really good in some situations.
Stuff such as affixes which I learned recently are a good way to add a lot of options without making the game feel too complicated.
Example of affix is in RPGs where weapons have prefixes which determine some of their stats, e.g. “Strong Sword” having better Damage stat then regular “Sword”, therefore being worth more etc.
how to make a good game
1: be a minimalist
2: be bald
but seriously, not only will you overwhelm your players like the OP said, but you will probably overwhelm yourself if you try to think big, I’m still guilty of this
Are you spending too much time on this aspect of your game? Are players not really interested in this thing? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you’ve probably gone too far.
For less to truly be better, the core concept must be near-perfect. It’s all about layers.
Think of Chess. It’s pretty simple. You can move pawns here, knights there, queens… everywhere. The board’s just a giant grid. On the surface, there’s nothing fancy going on, yet people still spend hours playing this game. Heck, some people dedicate their whole lives to playing Chess! Why? Because its core mechanics are simple enough to understand, but very hard to master. Anyone can play chess without much help. As they learn more, they’ll find the game is continuously unpredictable and challenging. They’ll keep playing it because it’s always fun. This is what you want to replicate when you make video games.
Customization is not necessarily a “less is more” area for sure, but you can still present way too many options to a player at once. I try to display a modest amount of items at one time. You don’t want your interface looking like that cockpit!
Edit: I also want to add polish is not necessarily affected by “less is more” either. You can still polish a project to make it look good, and that often means… more!
Hmmm the paradox of choice is definitely a paradox, but I see a lot of highly profitable games use simple feature mechanics and spam content as an “update”. Look at Ninja Legends and Mining Simulator for example (FYI I’m not hating on them, I quite like them actually). I think the multiplicity of choice can in fact be a strong component of a user experience if implemented correctly and organically. See Adopt Me—they have a TON of things to do and all of them are seamlessly integrated into an E to interact (or other platform equivalents). It’s definitely hard deciding when to add a new feature or add content, but to me the best way to avoid the paradox of choice problem is to emulate, and to emulate better than other successful game models. I think this is an important topic to bring up! Ty @Intended_Pun
Thought I’d add my two cents to this as I found a lot of things wrong with this post I haven’t seen many people comment on. Let me start this by saying that yes, overwhelming players with a ton of things at once is counter-intuitive and overloading yourself with more work then you can handle is inefficient.
The problem I find with this post is it uses the “The Paradox of Choice” to justify reducing the scope of your game, which is a very large misconception of the point the article makes. The articles purpose is to explain the problems with overloading a user with to many options at once.
The solution? Hint: It’s not reducing the scale of your game, It’s to reduce the amount of systems you introduce to the player at once.
Here’s the problem with this post, OP assumes that giving the player more things to do and more options is the same as overloading the player. This is simply not correct.
This image is an example of overloading someone all at once with to much.
That’s because they were trained step by step and not tossed into the pilot seat on the first day.
Not sure what this has to do with OP’s point about choice, but you can make your maps as big as you like, so long as you fill them up with things to do, places to explore, and something unique to see at every part of the map they stand in. Same for shops, they can be limitless so long as they are filled with unique items that server a purpose in your game.
That’s all I had to say. OP I understand where you are coming from and I’m sorry you had a bad experience with this, but don’t let that be the reason you don’t dream big.
Hey man, that was a thoughtful reply and I think you’re dead-on. Having more systems does not necessarily equate to being “bad.” I do think balance becomes harder the more systems you have, but that does not mean you shouldn’t have as many systems as you want.
Just remember, focus on making the core of the game good!
