Do games get rules bloat on puropse?

I’ve been thinking about this recently with the new and updated version of Kill Team. This post isn’t to pick on Games Workshop, they just seem to do it more than anyone else. I recently played a game of Kill Team and the space for the board is 30x22”. We took up the rest of a 6x4’ table, however, with data cards, papers, tokens and other things necessary to play the game.

I felt extremely overwhelmed. In fact, there’s a list of about 20 items just to set up the game and get ready to play. During the game, my mind was running rampant. I’m trying to manage command points, did I play this ploy, did I remember I played this ploy, and other special happenings that are happening on the table. It was a mess!

To be fair, I had fun because my opponent was great. He had nicely painted models and was just an overall good guy. Afterwards, I did have a conversation with him about how the game just feels on a different level and much of that comes from rules bloat. From what I can tell, it’s only getting worse.

So I started thinking again, is this done on purpose? We’ve seen it time and time again where a new edition drops, gamers get excited and buy in, but over time the game changes to something that’s just a bloated mess. Coincidentally, a new edition drops to fix all those problems and the cycle repeats. Everything that was is now irrelevant and the bar is reset.

In thinking about this, I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe I’m just not cut out for games that are constantly evolving and require this much thought. With a sales and marketing background, however, I’m pretty sure there’s a calendar somewhere that has years of product strategy on it. In that calendar will be new releases and changes that ultimately lead up to a new edition and the cycle will repeat.

We’re all different so enjoy gaming how you want to. I think I may be done with trying to keep up with the leaders, however.