This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Editor’s note: Part of my love for video games is dissecting their inner parts, which means breaking down the systems that govern play. Suriel makes a strong case that players will be more satisfied with their victories when they understand exactly how a game's design works. -Rob
In December of 2009, Steve Horvath, vice president of marketing and communications for board- and card-game publisher Fantasy Flight Games, announced that the company would no longer continue to support the Universal Fighting System (UFS), a card game based on fighting franchises such as Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, and Tekken.
As huge fan of UFS (though, I had stopped playing in May of last year), I decided to revisit what cards I had left and mess around with some new decks. I quit because of the money-sink that any collectible-card game eventually becomes, not because I had fallen out of love with it.
UFS was complex even by its peers’ standards. The game was governed by a set of rules that define how play unfolds, but its design was based directly on fighting games. Players controlled one character and performed and blocked attacks through control checks. Rules consisted of symbols, card difficulties, effects, and phases that took place in set orders1 — all things that intimidated casual players.
A recent mantra of many developers and publishers today is that simpler is better — that complexity is off-putting to key demographics who just want to enjoy a game. It's certainly easy to connect complexity with difficulty because an increased number of limits can seem restrictive, and therefore, more burdensome to manage.
But like harder video games, the sense of accomplishment that comes from achieving victory under such restrictions and obstacles can be far more satisfying than a system without any sort of limits or rules.
These sorts of intricacies made UFS fun for players who understood the game's design. Along with building a deck to counter your opponent's moves, using the correct cards in a given situation makes you feel accomplished in any match.
Although this level of complexity is usually the realm of tabletop wargames like Warhammer, the same can be said for almost any video game. You are immediately constricted by a certain rules, even when they're not overt; in a first-person shooter, for example, you understand that if you're shot enough that your character will die.
The rules become more important the more numerous they are. To me, Advance Wars isn't fun because of the way it's like real warfare. The strategy game is fun because of the ways that it's not; warring sides don't take turns attacking each other on a gird, but moving units one at a time is more strategic. Valkyria Chronicles is great because of the way it works direct control of a character into the Byzantine design of turn-based strategy, not because it just lets you move an avatar around the battlefield.
It isn't just about games where many small idiosyncrasies are to be learned, either. Starcraft and Street Fighter are easy to pick up and play, because the principles of hitting an opponent or guiding a unit are inherently simple. Once you learn the fundamentals, though, the meta-game of reading your opponent and toying with him can be just as difficult to learn.
After you’ve discovered a title’s hidden depth, the game is that much more fun to play because it often feels like a completely new experience. Victory comes with a unique sense of accomplishment — not only from defeating your opponent but from understanding the systems under which you did so.
Simplistic games have their place, and fun without adulteration and forced restrictions is rewarding in its own right. But something like UFS shouldn't be left to the wayside,2 because games that force you to learn systems within systems can be exhilarating, too — perhaps this why my government class excites me so much.
What can I say, checks and balances are enticing.
1 A PDF of the official tournament rules for UFS as of April 21, 2009 can be found here.
2 Maybe we'll see the game on XBLA or PSN one day — I hope.
