Platypotamus

Another great article posted up on Gamasutra.  This one is written by Mike Stout, formerly of Insomniac.  It's really good look at how to fix mechanics in your game that seem to get old quickly, due to lacking depth.

Gamasutra - Features - Evaluating Game Mechanics For Depth.

At this time in my career, I didn't yet understand the important distinction between meaningful skills and too-basic skills. I didn't know how important clearly identifiable objectives were. And so, lacking experience, I decided to just start adding features until the mechanic was deep enough. If you're groaning at this, then I congratulate you. I'm groaning, myself, as I write this.

Besides moving blocks around, I decided it would be great if the player could grab and drag around a wacky robot (if you're reading this and thinking "oh, you improved the theatrics," you get a cookie). The player could then drop the robot on buttons to open doors. This didn't help as much as I wanted it to -- it just still seemed way to shallow.

So I forged ahead and kept adding features (groan).