If you begin playing Go, you will find that strategic complexity go well beyond most people's ability to calculate so simple mostly applies only to the rules.
Anyway, I think games wind-up being hard to program when one is allowed many moves each turn. Go allows hundreds of potential moves and it is not easy to prune the tree or estimate the relative situations. I remember Shogi being described as similarly hard - I think the re-played captured pieces might be what makes the tree explode.
Oh, I absolutely know go is a complex game, I was talking about the "surface simplicity". It does appeal to me, but at the same time it strikes me as being too bare bones to really be enjoyable -- for me.
Maybe it's just that I think board games should be played on a proper board, with tactile feel of the pieces -- and I don't know anyone that play go (or shogi, for that matter) where I live. Also the main reason I don't play chess -- I can't really say I enjoy any of these games as computer games/internet games.
When a computer is involved, I fell I might as well play something with complex rules that leverages the computer, like Planetside ;-)
Anyway, I think games wind-up being hard to program when one is allowed many moves each turn. Go allows hundreds of potential moves and it is not easy to prune the tree or estimate the relative situations. I remember Shogi being described as similarly hard - I think the re-played captured pieces might be what makes the tree explode.