# Easy To Learn, Hard To Master

"Easy to learn, hard to master" (ETLHTM) is a type of design of a [game](game.md) (and by extension a potential property of any [art](art.md) or [skill](skill.md)) which makes it relatively easy to learn to play while mastering the play (playing in near optimal way) remains very difficult.

Examples of this are games such as [tetris](tetris.md), [minesweeper](minesweeper.md) or [Trackmania](trackmania.md).

[LRS](lrs.md) sees the ETLHTM design as extremely useful and desirable as it allows for creation of [suckless](suckless.md), simple games that offer many hours of [fun](fun.md). With this philosophy we get a great amount of value for relatively little effort.

The simplicity of learning a game comes from simple rules while the difficulty of its mastering arises from the complex emergent behavior these simple rules create. Mastering of the game is many times encouraged by [competition](competition.md) among different people but also competition against oneself (trying to beat own score). In many simple games such as [minesweeper](minesweeper.md) there exists a competitive scene (based either on direct matches or some measurement of skill such as [speedrunning](speedrun.md) or achieving high score) that drives people to search for strategies and techniques that optimize the play, and to training skillful execution of such play.

The opposite is [hard to learn, easy to master](hard_to_learn_easy_to_master.md).

## See Also

- [easier done than said](easier_done_than_said.md)
- [speedrun](speedrun.md)