November 6, 2025
Simple? Steam says lol
Game Design Is Simple
Koster says “simple”; commenters split: genius guide or clickbait
TLDR: Raph Koster argues games are “simple” at their core—fun comes from solving problems—offering a 12-step guide. Comments split between praising a clear map of design basics and blasting the title as clickbait, with many stressing that making a hit (especially on Steam) is anything but easy.
Legendary designer Raph Koster (of Ultima Online fame) dropped “Game design is simple, actually,” and the internet immediately started speed-running the comments. His pitch: fun is making progress on prediction—basically solving problems—so games are rules posing challenges, while toys are just play without goals. He nods to his book Theory of Fun, argues confetti alone isn’t fun, and says interactive stuff doesn’t even have to be about fun. It’s a neat, 12-step “map of the terrain,” say fans, and it reads like a designer’s cheat sheet.
Cue the brawl. The loudest chorus? “Simple ≠ easy.” One skeptic snapped, “Nothing asserted here is simple,” pointing to the real boss fight: surviving the avalanche of new games on Steam. Supporters fired back that the title’s obviously ironic and the ideas are simple, just hard to execute. A credential check popped up linking Koster’s résumé, while another commenter winked that it’s a “spicy title for the clicks.” Jokes flew about turning “simple ≠ easy” into today’s chalkboard meme, and someone riffed on the “12-step program” like game design rehab. In short: theory stans vs. shipping skeptics, with clickbait accusations as the final boss and Koster’s rep as the plot armor.
Key Points
- •Koster defines fun as making progress on prediction and mastering problems.
- •Only problem-solving elements are core to game systems design; other elements enhance experience but are not core systems.
- •Games pose many types of problems; typologies of fun map to problem types useful for designing mechanics.
- •Problems are built from constraints (rules) and a goal.
- •Toys are rule sets without defined problems/goals; adding a goal can turn a toy into a game.