Complexity

The other day I saw an interesting description of games like chess, in terms of complexity levels. (Apologies as I do not have the link to hand). The author said one of the appealing aspects of chess is that the game starts off at a low complexity level, becomes quite complicated in the middle, but most importantly, returns to low complexity levels by the end.
By this he means that the starting position is well known, as what needs to be done is basically understood by serious players, but the middle game leads to a myriad of differing positions, most of which are unique. By the end though, the goal is to reduce the complexity back to known winning (or drawing positions).
This is a new concept for me, but the author sees this a good thing, not just for chess, but for other board games. Without having vast experience with other board games, I'd guess this may be a goal in designing other games. "Analysis Paralysis" is certainly an issue in some games I have played, which does make them less attractive to me. On the other hand, the attraction of multi-player games is that everyone has a chance of winning (or influencing the result) for far longer than chess (drop a queen and its over!).