You raise a good point, but I don't think it's the whole story.

On the one hand, you have games that become deep through the sophisticated application/interaction of simple mechanics. "Go" is apparently one of these, and in the video game world there's... well, I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure they exist.

But on the other hand, there are games whose depth can't be separated from the complexity of their inputs. Fighting games, for instance. You couldn't make Street Fighter with one button and a waggle stick. Strategy/sim games, too, can rarely eliminate their complex interfaces successfully. These games need a lot of options to maintain their long replayability, and deep and complicated menu systems are a necessity. Even Starcraft wouldn't get by with a Wii Sports control scheme (shake once to build units. Shake twice to deploy units. Shake three times to attack...).

Borkachev said: Let me emphasize this: the people who think "games with more buttons and stuff to do" are smarter while "games with less stuff to do and less buttons" are dumber are obtuse. It's incorrect. Go, one of my favorite games, has precisely one mechanic, and it's more complicated than pretty much any other game I've ever played. This is something that many of even the video game designers are just now waking up to, so it's nothing to be ashamed of that many of us didn't realize it before. Still, it's important to emphasize: more buttons does not equal more intelligent. In fact, I'd argue that for most designers, it's a crutch, in precisely the way Molyneux describes -- it's extremely challenging to make a game as deep and rich as Go, so rather than try to create a robust, focused experience, they just keep adding crap on and hope the game is "deep" simply because of how many actions there are in the game. If you give a character 40 guns to work with, it's automatically deep! There's a reason Starcraft is still on the top of the competitive gaming scene, even though it's long been passed in the sheer number of units and tech trees involved. You raise a good point, but I don't think it's the whole story. On the one hand, you have games that become deep through the sophisticated application/interaction of simple mechanics. "Go" is apparently one of these, and in the video game world there's... well, I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure they exist. But on the other hand, there are games whose depth can't be separated from the complexity of their inputs. Fighting games, for instance. You couldn't make Street Fighter with one button and a waggle stick. Strategy/sim games, too, can rarely eliminate their complex interfaces successfully. These games need a lot of options to maintain their long replayability, and deep and complicated menu systems are a necessity. Even Starcraft wouldn't get by with a Wii Sports control scheme (shake once to build units. Shake twice to deploy units. Shake three times to attack...).

 Absolutely, I think it's important we state this too. I agree with it. 

My point wasn't to suggest that every game in the world should have precisely one input for control, as Go does. Instead, it was to say (again) that more inputs does not equate to greater depth or intellectual value.

I think for this purpose, Starcraft is the best example. It isn't incredibly simple, as you pointed out. It's just not as complex as many modern RTS (Starcraft is over a decade old), but it's still deeper than almost any of them.

Put simply, this suggests that the number of inputs isn't inversely preportional to the game's depth (that is, games don't actually get simpler and/or "dumber" the more inputs it requires) but rather, that the number of inputs is almost entirely irrelevant to a game's depth. You can make a profoundly deep game with 1 button, with 2, with 3, with 100. 

I love starcraft....that's my contribution....sorry....I'm in the process of getting wasted

Alright, I think we can agree then.

Where I have a problem is with the extension of Harrison/Molyneux's argument that says game consoles in the future need to go the Wii route and appeal to casual gamers with simplified control schemes. There are benefits there for some types of games, but it would cost us functionality in others.

If you are beyond a certain age or certain experience, the current state of controllers can be very challenging.

I have been playing games longer than some of the posters on this thread have been alive. So I remember when overly-complex controllers were not seen as good things (look at my avitar and my nick -- the Intellivision controller had 15 button input and 16 directions in a system that came out circa 1980).

But what is much more important is how they the controllers are used and how they feel. Some controllers feel good in the hand and the button layout makes sense. Others feel clunky and seem like they have a couple of extra buttons (Did PS2 really need L3/R3? Did Xbox really need Black and White? Remember how bad (cheap) the B button felt on the early Gamecube controllers? Did the C Directional buttons on the N64 confuse people?).

And as for hardcore vs. casuals -- casuals tend to like more obvious controllers. That's why Singstar and Buzz and DDR exist and will continue to exist.

Mike from Morgantown

Borkachev said: Absolutely, I think it's important we state this too. I agree with it. My point wasn't to suggest that every game in the world should have precisely one input for control, as Go does. Instead, it was to say (again) that more inputs does not equate to greater depth or intellectual value. I think for this purpose, Starcraft is the best example. It isn't incredibly simple, as you pointed out. It's just not as complex as many modern RTS (Starcraft is over a decade old), but it's still deeper than almost any of them. Put simply, this suggests that the number of inputs isn't inversely preportional to the game's depth (that is, games don't actually get simpler and/or "dumber" the more inputs it requires) but rather, that the number of inputs is almost entirely irrelevant to a game's depth. You can make a profoundly deep game with 1 button, with 2, with 3, with 100. Alright, I think we can agree then. Where I have a problem is with the extension of Harrison/Molyneux's argument that says game consoles in the future need to go the Wii route and appeal to casual gamers with simplified control schemes. There are benefits there for some types of games, but it would cost us functionality in others.

It just depends on what you mean by "need," because I agree it's not necessary.

I do, however, think it's necessary to capture the lion's share of the audience. And again, that doesn't mean "stupid" or "dumb," as some earlier poster put it, it just means a simpler interface.

I can play Chess with millions of other people, or I can play Supreme Commander with a surviving playerbase a few tens of thousands. If you absolutely do not care about including anyone else in your gameplay, then I agree, it's not "necessary." If you inherently believe that including others is a good thing, which I do, then I absolutely believe that a simpler interface is necessary, yes.

That isn't intended to be a threatening or pejorative statement, by the way. If you don't mind being more niche, then you're golden. For example, I don't mind playing Adventure games, even though they've become niche, as an example.  You can choose for yourself, and either choice is not only fine, but is likely to be catered to in the future. 

 

"Including others" is an awfully rose-scented way of putting it. What you're doing is including some at the expense of excluding others. By limiting your control options you limit the kinds of games playable on the system, and with them your audience -- I'll call them "traditional," or "experienced" gamers, since I don't like the term "hardcore" in this context.

Complex control schemes do the same thing with the audiences reversed, of course. Here it's the casuals who are excluded. But I'm not one arguing for a homogenization of the industry where every gaming system uses this type of controller. I think diversity is what we should be after, where at least one console manufacturer pursues each direction, or else they come up with interfaces that somehow appeal to both sides. (The detachable halves of the Wiimote/nunchuck could give an early idea of how this might work. Sony/MS could develop fully functional controllers that can have their more intimidating components removed for simpler games).

Casual gamers are certainly the largest audience, at least in terms of sheer numbers. But as you imply, there's still money to be made from the core of traditional gamers -- probably enough to turn a tidy profit for both MS and Sony, this generation -- and that probably isn't going to change anytime soon. Another thing to consider is that while there may be a lot of casual gamers out there, most of them aren't going to buy more than one or two games a year. Almost none of them will buy more than one console. The casual pot may not be as big as some of the more optimistic onlookers think it is.

I don't think it's in anybody's interests for Sony or Microsoft to barrel headfirst into the casual market while forgetting the consumers they built their brand on.