Big Huge Games - Scope and Ambition

IGN reports on a GDC presentation from Big Huge Games' Ken Rolston and Mark Nelson on the dangers of not controlling scope and ambition when designing games.  Their own Big Huge RPG is the focus of the conversation and, frankly, it sounds a mess.  Here's a snip on streamlining:

"The real reason we didn't put factions in," said Rolston, "is that we made the decision that we wanted to have a streamlined RPG because we were trying to find a blue ocean strategy. We didn't actually want to copy the work that we'd done before, so we were trying to organize an experience around a very linear main narrative. And deliberately, to avoid complicating things, we stripped out factions. It turns out we were good at factions, we were expected to have them, so it sucked if we didn't do it."

Nelson dug into the issue of the drawbacks of trying to make a streamlined RPG. "I think we made a mistake trying to make RPG 'lite.' We had this idea that we could strip out all this stuff that isn't necessary for the player to see. He doesn't need to see all those numbers on the screen, he doesn't need to see every stack on his piece of armor, every stack on his weapon. We failed to remember that RPG players like that stuff. That's the stuff that makes RPGs kind of rich, kind of fun. I want to look at those stupid numbers. Yes, they clutter up the screen, and I know it offends the artists and it offends the UI guys, they say 'do we have to put so much information on there?' Yeah, we do."