Perfection In Simplicity - My Revised Motto (and How To Apply It)! - Gamified UK

I’ve had a motto for many years, dating back to my clan-running gaming days:

‘Simplicity is Perfection.’

It was intended as a philosophy for my gaming clan and also for my martial arts. The full quote was ‘Simplicity is Perfection, but perfection is never simple.’

It meant that we needed to strip back all the rubbish and keep it simple, be it tactics in Call of Duty, martial arts techniques, or even my day-to-day work as a web designer.

A Change Cometh

Now, many years later, I realize this wasn’t really the right way to phrase the motto. It implies that there can be no perfection in complexity, which is, of course, not true.

I had been searching for a better way to phrase it, and ironically, simplicity won!

‘Perfection in Simplicity.’

This simple change alters the meaning in just the right way. This form implies that rather than simplicity being the perfect state, you should seek perfection through a lens of simplicity.

Start by stripping back the unnecessary and focus on the core of what is important and essential.

After that, consider what you can add to enhance this core, only including that which makes it better—questing for perfection without over engineering.

So What?

In gamification, in fact, in anything, it is easy to get tricked into thinking you need all the bells and whistles to make something interesting. We keep hearing “The youth of today have limited attention spans, we need to do more to keep their attention!!”

However, I challenge that. Everyone is distracted these days, but when you look at what keeps the attention of these young people, what do we see? Roblox, Minecraft, Lego, Drawing, Comics, sports, music, funny videos and so on. None of these are complex – yet when they are focused on them, they are totally engaged. Sure, they have other stuff going on in the background, but the core of the attention is being grabbed by simple things.

We see all the lights and flashes and noises and assume these are the things keeping them engaged, which is of course nonsense. It may be part of what attracted them, just like the old attraction mode in arcade games, but it is the simplicity of the core mechanics that keeps them engaged.

This is a list of the top 4 games on mobile in 2023. Candy Crush came out in 2012 and is still in the top 4 games. Why? It is simple and fun!