BALANCE
What is game balance?
 Getting the numbers right
 Some explicit, some implicit
 All about relations between numbers
 Nuance of relationships
 Game and metagame
 Metagame examples
 Poker tells
 Sports leagues rules
Aspects of Game Balance
 Single-player
 Multi-player
 Within game
 Objects
Types of Balance
 Challenge/Success
 Short/Long
 Fairness
 Rewards
 Meaningful choices
 Punishment
 Skill /Chance
 Freedom/Control
 Head/Hands
 Simple/Complex
 Competition vs.
Cooperation
 Derail?imagination
Determinism
 Determinism: given a move in a particular
context, will always have the same result
 Chess, go deterministic, but very large state space
 Original Pac-man AI too deterministic – became a
game of memorization (added ransdomness isn
Ms Pac-man)
Solvability
 Trivial
 Tic-Tac-Toe
 Theoretical complete
 Chess, go
 Checkers?
 Non-deterministic: maximize probability
 Perfect vs. privileged information
In the Flow
 Individual differences
 Choosing difficulty level
 Pacing
 Levels: increase difficulty with success
 Go through easy parts quickly
Why Asymmetry
 Real world
 Exploration
 Personalization
 Level playing field
 Interest
Dealing with Asymmetry
 Asymmetry of starting position
 Turn-based: who goes first
 Balancing asymmetry
 Class equivalence
 Different objectives
Balancing Strategies
 Dominant strategy
 Eliminates all other decisions
 Multiple winning strategies
Game Objects
 Cost/benefit ratios
 Purchases of spells, units, …
 Each object
 Too weak: useless
 Too powerful: makes other object useless
 Techniques
 Cost curve (transitive)
 Rock-paper-scissors (intransitive)
 Incomparable
Object Relationships
 How significant
 Linear
 … (Pascal’s Triangle)
 Exponential
 One-way or two
 Gold may buy food but has other purposes as well
 Do you have a central measure?
Helpful Hints
 One change at a time
 Rule of 2
 Balancing first-turn advantage
 Resource: Ian Schreiber on-line course (blog)