The chasm between hobby gamers and non-gamers is most evident, when it comes to evaluating a game’s complexity. Opinions vary, how complex a game has to be for it to be enjoyable. But also how complex it may be, without feeling like work.

Even if this threshold is often difficult to put into words, everyone seems to *feel* when a game is right under or right over that limit. If a game’s complexity could be measured by this metric alone, this article would be over now. A game has to be complex enough to entertain, without being so elaborate, that playing it feels exhausting.

Unfortunately, players have concocted another metric to determine which target demographic a game is actually for: depth.

At least it is often claimed, that depth is another qualitative metric to judge board games on. Making it all the more surprising, how often complexity and depth seem to follow each other. Even if the two ideas aren’t congruent, they seem to often relate to each other. Of course, there are games like Go, in which the distance between complexity and depth could hardly be wider. But then, there are also games like Civolution, in which complexity and depth can not be meaningfully separated from each other. The two concepts seem to have a flexible, yet hard to define relation to each other.

So far I’ve only looked at these things as positives. Both complexity and depth are often talked about as strengths of a design. Something that attracts players to it. But the opposite happens as well. Games in which complexity is the reason people stay away from it. Mage Knight and Twilight Imperium may serve as an example for that kind of game. The volume of rules and the effort necessary to play the game, is seen as so high, that it makes people back away from them.

Less obvious, on the other hand, are games in which depth is the reason players don’t want to play a game. A game that has “so much left to explore” is considered the high water mark of modern game design. No other sentence is more devastating coming from a critic than pointing out, that after a few games you’ve seen “everything it has to offer”. A good game *must* have a lot to offer, otherwise why play it at all?

At first glance, a group’s rate of play may offer an explanation for this. Hobby gamers are quicker to “play out” a game than non-gamers are. But this already assumes, that both groups play games for the same reason: to discover the game, to be surprised by new tactics and strategies and to explore the game’s decision space.

I’d argue that among non-gamers this motivation is rare, if it is present at all. To non-gamers simply getting together to play a board game is a noteworthy event in itself. At the very least, it doesn’t regularly enough or with the same game, to make a sense of familiarity and routine feel like a negative. Quite the opposite, in fact. This familiarity leads to a sense of safety, which play can build on.

As hobby gamers we are too quick to forget, that playing a board game isn’t a commonplace form of social activity. Following explicit rules (from the rulebook) while also keeping an eye on implicit rules (i.e. how our interactions change when we play a game) is neither obvious nor self-explanatory to non-gamers. Every group needs to develop its own customs and habits over time.

The prospect of working your way through this step, only to follow it up with a layered, continually challenging game asking to be “explored”, is less enticing as it is intimidating. Not least of all, because there is the unspoken worry, that a wrong decision might impact everyone’s enjoyment. It’s the fear that a “dumb” move, could spoil a pleasant sense of play. Why games are always played with an unspoken pressure to perform, to prove oneself, is a hobby gamer quirk, that’s probably worth an article of its own.

Complexity always has a threshold, where the easygoing (or engrossing) act of play transforms into elaborate admin machinations. The same holds true for depth. The game’s tantalising enigma might turn into a cumbersome task of numerous risk assessment evaluations and decisions based on imperfect information. The different ideas where the line between the two is, doesn’t just separate the hobbyist from the non-gamer. It often brings ups the questions why we play games at all.