Gaming is a hard job, but someone has to do it!

Abstract. We establish some general schemes relating the computa-tional complexity of a video game to the presence of certain common ele-ments or mechanics, such as destroyable paths, collecting items, doors ac-tivated by switches or pressure plates, etc.. Then we apply such “metathe-orems” to several video games published between 1980 and 1998, includ-in..