>From a great article on metagaming at sleepoversf.com:
The more features an application has, the more uneasy a user can feel. This principal is one reason why Apple’s products tend to be so satisfying to use. The more limited a product’s functionality, the easier one can master it. And feeling like a master of your tools is a wonderful thing.
I would even say it’s simpler than that: more simplicity = less stress. It’s not so much the feeling that I’ve accomplished everything I can with my iPhone and its apps, it’s that it’s so easy for me to figure out how to do things I’ve never even tried before.
The rest of the article is about creating challenges outside of games to accomplish in-game. It’s form also follows the topic of metagaming, allowing you to hide areas you’ve already read.
Another nugget:
And like perfectly fit clothes, that feeling is
empowering. A paradox, then: the less you enable people to
do, the more they will do.