Simplicity

Keep the rules of the game simple. Ideally, first-time players should understand and enjoy the game without instructions.

Mark Cerney

Next Generation Magazine, January 1997

People want to go back to a simpler time where you walked up, read two lines of instructions, and knew the game. People want clean, simple challenges, and are tired of the 45-move joystick/button combinations it takes to do a roundhouse kick.

Curt Vendel from Weekly Wire

I would say simplicity is a key factor in any good game design. Simplicity in interface, game systems, etc. Simplicity does not have to mean few possibilities (just look at chess), but creating a real good, well balanced, simple game system is a much harder task than creating a very complex one.

Thorolfur Beck from RPG Vault

2D graphics were getting better and clearer in the 1980s and then 3D games came along and took us back into the dark ages. Everything was blocky-looking again.

Now that 3D games are getting better looking, I wonder what new thing will knock the graphics back into the 1970s?

Duane Alan Hahn

The really blisteringly original games are incredibly simple.

Paul Reiche III

Compute Magazine, January 1992

I like games that are simple. Not games that are trivial, but also not games that require you to invest a week or to relearn something. I like games that you can just pick up, sit down in front of, and get going.

Sid Meier

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Charles Mingus

Everything in the process of creation proceeds from the simple to the more complex. Every mechanical or electronic device, regardless of its complexity, operates according to a very few simple and easily understood principles. It follows that the universe should also comply with the same pattern, regardless of its near infinite complexity.

Joseph H. Cater