Complexity and Developmental Decision-making

We've been talking a lot about the societal and ideological implications of games. One point which I feel perhaps needs to be taken more strongly into consideration is the technological framework within which game developers must work.

Consider the Mass Effect / Dragon Age example from Wednesday’s lecture. (Note I’m not familiar with these games in any depth, I’m just going off of what Kevin described). The point was raised about Mass Effect only allowing romances with specific NPCs, and not others. Every NPC adds complexity. If there is to be any branching or variable possibilities in their conversational options whatsoever, this complexity begins increasing. It is simply infeasible to write and program in every possible level of interaction the player may want into every NPC. Thus a game designer may very well break characters down by function: side quest, main plotline, enemy, ally, romance option, etc. To me, it’s important to remember the distinction between what things would, and would not, be of equal difficulty to implement. Thus the relevant element of that example is where one game makes sex the important part of a romantic relationship, and the other intimacy and emotional connection. These, I would say, are roughly the same level of complexity, but show a difference in ideology and perceptions of their target market. Similarly, Sim City, as a simulation, was never going to be able to perfectly model the nuances of a real city (and arguably, nor should it aim to); what’s interesting is how they solved the simplification problem.

On the other hand, the fact that games are increasing in complexity makes me wonder about structural incoherence and the future of games. Level of world detail is becoming a selling point (e.g. Skyrim…). The amount of effort going towards stuff which is merely meant to be incidental is staggering. And yet, it’s kind of bizarre, that this is the books in Oblivion, and yet all the guards in Skyrim apparently took an arrow to the knee, or so I hear. But in games which aren’t making this kind of detail a main feature, the developer is always going to have to prioritise, weighing up time and effort vs. how much of a difference this will make to the final product, and/or, the final profit.