This document discusses the concept of balancing uncertainty in video games, stating that balance is achieved by maintaining player uncertainty until the game reaches a 'final state.' It elaborates on the types of challenges and randomness that contribute to uncertainty and emphasizes the importance of player skill and challenge levels in sustaining engagement. It also outlines strategies for adjusting the initial challenge, increasing challenge levels, and addressing player stagnation to ensure a more dynamic gaming experience.

1. Lesson 2: Sustained Uncertainty (i)
Third year course in Quality Assurance and Game Balance
Bachelor Degree in Video Game Design and Production
Third term, April 2019 Dr. Marc Miquel Ribé

2. BALANCE TYPE 1:
“BALANCE IS TO SUSTAIN UNCERTAINTY”
player-game

3. • Uncertainty: Information Not Available
Balance is to maintain uncertainty until the end of the game.
In a game we go from uncertainty to more certainty. What is uncertainty?
Uncertainty is a situation which involves imperfect and/or unknown information.
When the game reaches a ‘final state’, in that situation, there is certainty about some
information, and the player feels there is something ‘complete’.
Situations often arise wherein a decision must be made
when the results of each possible choice are uncertain.
Challenges and randomness introduce uncertainty to the system

4. How can we put the system into the ‘final state’?
By using skills: mental skills to foresee what we have to do, and physical skills to do it.
Once we have the personal certainty that we can do it, we do it and the game is
complete, the uncertainty is gone.
• What is the challenge?
The elements of the system introducing uncertainty but which are “solvable”.
Challenges are possible to pick and solve with skill. Solving the challenge is giving the
system the right information, and the game is done.
• What is randomness?
The elements of the system that we do not know how they work but which also give
uncertainty. There is not a visible order in the same way we can detect in challenge.
Science (as a game) has the only mechanic of taking reality’s apparent randomness
and create models to explain it. They separate challenge from randomness.
• Uncertainty in the game is composed by challenge (the part we can solve by
using skills) and randomness (the part we do not know how it works).

5. a) Challenge (and Skill)
You tackle challenge by skill. You try to make order out the system and reach the final
state. Challenge can look in very different ways.
a. Some games like this equation are easily solvable (perfect information),
others like chess are solvable but difficult to compute by mental skills.
b. Blackjack (like all card games) has hidden information.
Some people calculate better than others.
c. Even seducing a girl is seen as a ‘challenge’.
d. Riddles are also solvable challenges: “It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s
no more than a month old. What is it?” The moon
A game is uncertainty, because when we solve it we say “I know this one”.
Uncertainty keeps us playing.
* In this lesson, I use difficulty and challenge interchangeably

6. The big question is: What is the challenge in this game that needs X skills?
There are many types of skills.
Actually, Howard Gardner called
them intelligences to sound
“more cool”. His theory has not
been proved yet, but we are
certain there are different skills.
Think of games that require
their skills.
• Spatial (Strategy games)
• Intrapersonal (Social Networks)
• Linguistic (Scrabble)
• Logical-mathematical (Big Brain
Academy)
• Bodily-kinesthetic (Shooters,
Platformers, etc.)
• …
There are very different sort of challenges that require ‘info inputs’ generated by very
different skills. Do you want to innovate? Create games that require different skills.

7. Physical coordination challenges: speed and reaction time, accuracy and precision,
intuitive understanding of physics, timing and rhythm, combination moves…
Cognitive challenges: formal logic puzzles, mathematical challenges, factual
Knowledge Challenges, Memory challenges, Pattern recognition challenges,…
Exploration challenges: spatial awareness challenges, locked doors, traps, mazes and
illogical spaces, teleporters, hidden objects,..
Conflict challenges: strategy, tactics, logistics, survival, stealth…
Economic challenges: accumulating resources, achieving balance, caring for living
things,…
Conceptual reasoning and lateral thinking challenges: conceptual reasoning, lateral
thinking, etc.
There is a fascinating anatomy of challenges in games in Chapter 9 from “Fundamentals of
Game Design” (Ernest Adams, 2012)

8. The challenge is connected to
the core mechanic of the
game, which also defines
what a genre is.
Fig. Dormans (2012; p.12)
Please, someone tell me the
main core and the type of
difficulty of the game they
are building right now.

9. b) Randomness (and Chance)
You tackle randomness by “giving it a chance”. Chance is interacting with an element
we do not know its outcome. So we try.
• Randomness in the game: when you do not know how the system computes the
“changes”, you call it random.
Casual players enjoy randomness in the game because it adds uncertainty (they can
always win), but randomness also kills the need for skills. For this same reason,
competitive players do not like randomness. Think of games with high randomness.
Introducing randomness has positive and negative effects. I see it like using spices!
The base of the game is ‘challenge’, then you add up randomness so it keeps
uncertainty.
What happens with too much spice in food? No food taste.
What happens with too much randomness in a game?
No possible challenge and skills use.

10. Dealing with randomness
• Estimating chance is a skill. In many games, what separates the skilled players
from the unskilled is their ability to predict what is going to happen next, often
through calculating probabilities.
• Estimating an opponent’s skill is a skill. A big part of a player’s ability to
determine the chances of success for a particular action rests on their ability to
estimate their opponent’s skill.
• Predicting pure chance is an imagined skill. Humans look for patterns, consciously
and subconsciously, to help predict what is going to happen next. Our mania for
patterns often leads us to look for and find patterns where none exist.
• Skills have a probability of success. Naively, one might think that completely skill
based games, such as chess or baseball, have no aspects of randomness or risk in
them. E.g. in a shooter, we can do some headshots ‘by mistake’.
Based on Schell (2008; p. 197)

11. BALANCE TYPE 1:
“BALANCE IS TO SUSTAIN UNCERTAINTY”
player-game
Now we are ready!

12. Overview of the Lesson
In this lesson we will see the next topics:
1. Initial challenge level
2. Increasing challenge level
3. Dynamic challenge adjustment
4. Emergence and open worlds
5. Countering positive feedback loops
6. Non-skill based actions in multiplayer games
In games, it is necessary to sustain uncertainty, otherwise there is no game.
These are six usual ways to do it.

13. 1. Choosing the initial challenge level (PvE)
When somebody starts playing a game for the first time, he might say:
“This game is imbalanced, I cannot play it”; or sometimes he goes with “it’s too
difficult, it is not for me”.
PROBLEM:
If the game is too easy or too difficult, there is no way to sustain uncertainty.
The player will probably drop the game soon.
SOLUTION:
To chose the right amount of initial uncertainty (difficulty and randomness) for the
target player.
How? Well, the only way to adjust the initial challenge is to study the target player
level of skill, in other words, to do user research.

14. The perceived difficulty of a
challenge—the difficulty that the
player actually senses, and the
type we are most concerned
with—consists of the relative
difficulty minus the player’s
experience at meeting such
challenges Adams (2013; p. 343).
Remembering that relative
difficulty is absolute difficulty
minus power provided, we can
put all these factors together into
a single equation such that:
perceived difficulty = absolute difficulty - power provided - in-game experience/skills
How does this apply to the game you are building right now?

15. PROBLEM:
“It’s nearly impossible to make a skill-driven game that’s balanced for players of all
skill levels. A designer must target which skill level he wishes to balance for.” Sylvester
(2012; p. 164)
A game that is balanced for players at one skill level may be imbalanced for players at
another because there players at different skill levels with experience in previous
games. This is how it works and we cannot change it. What can we do?
SOLUTIONS:
There are three possible solutions in order to adjust initial challenge:
a) Decrease general challenge (provide different modes: easy, normal, hard).
Offering difficulty modes (Adams, 2013; p. 340). Do the user research (playtesting)
and be sure that ‘easy mode’ means easy!

16. b) Decrease localized challenge (automatic pilots, auto-aim, automatic gear change,
etc.). So the player does not need the skills at specific moments.
c) Allow introducing cheats codes (so players can keep the normal mode, and its
their decision to switch).

17. 2. Increasing the challenge level (PvE, PvP)
PROBLEM: People get tired of repeating the same challenges as their skills get better.
SOLUTION: Increasing the challenge level will sustain the uncertainty.
The challenge level can be designed in PvE (by a game designer). The challenge level
can also consist in assigning players with similar skill levels in a PvP.
Again, let’s examine the relationship between Challenge and Skill. This time
according to Psychology.
With higher levels of challenge players will not solve the game straight-ahead and will
require to develop their skills.
QUESTION: What sort of cognitive resources are required in order to achieve higher
level challenges?

18. Attention.
This is the main idea of Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, who studied what he called
the mental state of “flow” (we sometimes call it being “in the flow” or “in the zone”).
This is a state of extreme focus of attention, where you tune out everything except
the task you’re concentrating on, you become highly productive, and your brain gives
you a shot of neurochemicals that is pleasurable – being in a flow state is literally a
natural high.
Csikszentmihalyi identified three requirements for a flow state to exist:
• You must be performing a challenging activity that requires skill.
• The activity must provide clear goals and feedback.
• The outcome is uncertain but can be influenced by your actions.
Csikszentmihalyi calls this the “paradox of control”: you are in control of your actions
which gives you indirect control over the outcome, but you do not have direct control
over the outcome.

19. Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi) explains the relationship between challenge and
skill, attention, motivation and positive emotions.

20. Csikszentmihalyi also gave five effects of being in a flow state:
• A merging of action and awareness: spontaneous, automatic action/reaction. In
other words, you go on autopilot, doing things without thinking about them. (In
fact, your brain is moving faster than the speed of thought)
• Concentration on immediate tasks: complete focus, without any mind-wandering.
You are not thinking about long-term trade-offs or other tasks; your mind is in the
here-and-now, because it has to be.
• Loss of awareness of self, loss of ego. When you are in a flow state, you become
one with your surroundings (in a Zen way, I suppose).
• There is a distorted sense of time. Strangely, this can go both ways. In some cases,
such as Tetris example, time can seem to slow down and things seem to happen in
slow motion. (Actually, what is happening is that your brain is acting so efficiently
that it is working faster; everything else is still going at the same speed, but you
are seeing things from your own point of reference.) Other times, time can seem
to speed up; a common example is sitting down to play a game for “just five
minutes”... and then six hours later, suddenly becoming aware that you burned
away your whole evening.
• The experience of the activity is an end in itself; it is done for its own sake and
not for an external reward. Again, this feeds into the whole “here-and-now” thing,
as you are not in a mental state where you can think that far ahead.

21. Well, now we know that there are deep reasons rooted on psychology in order to
sustain uncertainty by increasing challenge.
At the same time, not only we need to increase challenge level, but we need to
make it clear that the player understands it.
We need to avoid “stagnation”. Stagnation occurs in a PvE game when the game
leaves the player in a position in which he simply does not know what to do next; he
believes that he is stuck. This breaks the flow.
However, you can still give the players information as they progress:
• Tackle stagnation passively by giving plain sight clues about how to proceed.
• Tackle stagnation actively by having the game detect when the player wanders
around aimlessly; make the game provide a few gentle nudges to guide her in the
right direction.
More on stagnation (Adams, 2013; p. 353).

22. How to increase the challenge level
Do you remember the perceived challenge depended on power and in-game skills?
Then:
• We can increase it by calculating the challenge as a relationship of power.
• We can increase it by calculating the challenge as a relationship with in-game skills.
This is based on the idea of “positive linear relationship” between challenges and
power or skills achieved.
y = mx + b
Where: “m” is the slope of the line,
“x” is any point (an input or x-value) on the line,
and “b” is where the line crosses the y-axis.
In games with internal economies it is very clear (e.g. RPG or even the first Super
Marios). These game revolve around the central relationship with the elements which
grantees power and allows to keep playing.

23. Schreiber (gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com)
EXAMPLE: Dragon Warrior from NES (1986).
In the game’s combat system, you have four main stats:
Hit Points (HP), Magic Points (MP), Attack and Defense.
This is a game of attrition; you are exploring game areas,
and every few steps you get attacked by an enemy. You
lose if your HP is ever reduced to zero.
How are all of these numbers related? Random
encounters are related to HP: each encounter reduces
HP (you can also say it the other way: by walking around
getting into fights, you can essentially convert HP into
encounters). This is an inverse relationship, as more
encounters means less HP.
There’s a direct relationship between HP and Defense:
the more defense you have, the less damage you take,
which means your HP lasts longer. Effectively, increasing
your Defense is equivalent to giving yourself a pile of
extra HP.

24. Ironically, we see the same linear relationship between HP and Attack. The higher
your attack stat, the faster you can defeat an enemy. If you defeat an enemy faster,
that means it has less opportunity to damage you, so you take less damage. Thus, you
can survive more fights with higher Attack.
MP (mana points) is an interesting case, because you can use it for a lot of things.
Even though MP is versatile, virtually all of the uses for it involve converting it (directly
or indirectly) into HP.
If you draw this all out on paper, you’ll see that everything — Attack, Defense, MP,
Monster Encounters — is linked directly to HP.
Let’s examine the leveling system first. Collect enough XP and you’ll level up, which
increases all of your stats (HP, MP, Attack and Defense). As you can see, this creates a
feedback loop: defeating enemies causes you to gain a level, which increases your
stats, which lets you defeat more enemies
Examining the economic system, Gold is used for a few things. Its primary use is to
buy equipment which permanently increases the player’s Attack or Defense, thus
effectively converting Gold into extra permanent HP.

25. • Another loop that is linked to the economic system, is that of progression itself.
Many areas in the game are behind locked doors, and in order to open them you
need to use your Gold to purchase magic keys. You defeat monsters, get Gold, use
it to purchase Keys, and use those keys to open new areas which have stronger
monsters (which then let you get even more Gold/XP). Of course, this loop is itself
limited by the player’s stats; unlocking a new area with monsters that are too
strong to handle does not help the player much.
How would a designer balance things within all these systems?
By relating everything back to the central value of HP, and then comparing the
current sum of power and the current sum of challenge.
We need to be sure there is an increase of challenge higher than the current power.

26. • Coins: there is a 100-to-1 relationship between Coins and Lives, since collecting 100
coins awards an extra life. There is a 1-to-200 relationship between Coins and Score,
since collecting a coin gives 200 points. There is a relationship between Coin Blocks
and Coins, in that each block gives you some number of coins.
• Time: there is a 100-to-1 relationship between Time and Score, since you get a time
bonus at the end of each level. There is also an inverse relationship between Time
and Lives, since running out of time costs you a life.
• Enemies: there is a relationship between Enemies and Score, since killing enemies
gives you from 100 to 1000 points (depending on the enemy). There is an inverse
relationship between Enemies and Lives, since sometimes an enemy will cost you a
life (in a few select levels there is potentially a positive relationship between
Enemies and Lives, as stomping enough enemies in a combo will give extra lives, but
that is a special case.)
EXAMPLE: Even manual skills-based games
such as Super Mario Bros contained an
economy which should be balanced to
guarantee a positive linear relationship.
What is the central element of the Super
Mario Bros. game economy?

27. Lives: there is this strange relationship between Lives and everything else, because
losing a life resets the Coins, Time and Enemies on a level. Note that since Coins give
you extra Lives, and losing a Life resets Coins, any level with more than 100 Coins
would provide a positive feedback loop where you could die intentionally, get more
than 100 Coins, and repeat to gain infinite lives. The original Super Mario Bros. did not
have any levels like this, but Super Mario 3 did.
If you have no lives, you cannot continue the game, therefore, it’s the end of the game.
Relationship between Lives and Score: There is no direct link between Lives and Score.
However, losing a Life resets a bunch of things that give scoring opportunities, so
indirectly you can convert a Life to Score. Interestingly, this does not happen the other
way around; unlike other arcade games of the time, you cannot earn extra Lives by
getting a sufficiently high Score.
Looking at these relationships, we see that Score is actually the central resource in
Super Mario Bros. since everything is tied to Score. This makes sense in the context of
early arcade games, since the win condition is not “beat the game,” but rather, “get the
highest score.”

28. How can we balance Super Mario Bros. in order to make a difficulty increase with a
positive relationship to score?
Ideally, we need higher challenge for when the player has higher power/skills. At the
same time, we need to give a higher score when there is a higher challenge.
From the power/skills perspective:
• You can check the number of coins that you get in initial levels and further levels, to
see the number of lives they give.
• You can check the number of power-ups that you get in levels.
• …
From the difficulty perspective:
• You can check how difficult enemies are (how hard to kill and how easy is they get
you) and assign a proper score.
• You can make the level longer or provide less time.
• …

29. Where is challenge?
Where is ‘higher’ challenge?
What is a different sort of challenge?
How are challenges tied together?
A partial skill tree for Super Mario Bros.
(Dormans and Adams, 2012; p. 240)

30. One way to be sure that the game increases challenge is to detect which are the most
difficult actions and purposely design each level to include them more often. Even
you can use Excel to have a clear map of the challenge.
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Action required: Ch. 1 20 15 10
Action required: Ch. 2 15 13 10
Action required: Ch. 3 13 20 12
Action required: Ch. 4 1 5 10
Action required: Ch. 5 0 1 10
Remember increasing challenge
in relation to previous levels and
to the same level.
Remember starting lower than
the last part of the previous level,
so it allows the player to gain lost
skills again (in case of not having
played for a while).

31. How does challenge evolves in games? Let’s put three more examples.
1. Space Invaders (PvE)
This game presents the same skill-based challenge to you, wave after wave, and
increasing the skill by making the aliens move and shoot faster and start lower. The
player has absolutely no way to gain power in the game; you start with three lives
and that’s all you get, and there are no power-ups. On the other hand, you also don’t
really lose power in the game, in a sense: whether you have one life remaining or all
three, your offensive and defensive capabilities are the same. The player’s goal is not
to win, but to survive as long as possible before the increasing challenge curve
overwhelms them.
Schreiber (gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com)

32. 2. Settlers of Catan (PvP)
Here is a game where progression is gaining power, so it is positive-sum. There are
only very limited cases where players can actually lose their progress; mostly, when
you build something, that gain is permanent. Catan contains a pretty powerful
positive feedback loop, in that building more settlements and cities gives you more
resources which lets you build even more, and building is the primary victory
condition.
Where is the challenge? Other players get ahead and have more power than you, so
they are closer to the victory condition. What counterbalances this? Players can
trade freely with other player, so they can refuse to help ’the leader’.
In a PvP challenge depends on how difficult is to obtain power,
according to how power other players have and what they
do to block you from doing it.

33. 4. The Sims (PvE)
The Sims is a time-management game in which the player must use the limited time
available to perform all the activities necessary to keep them happy and healthy. By
taking good care of his sims, they will find jobs. If they make it to work on time and in
good health and good spirits, they will advance their careers. Better jobs means they
will bring home more money that the player can spend on items to entertain the sims
and to make their daily routine run more efficiently. Although the game does not
state that the goal is to guide the sims toward material and professional success, it is
implicit in the mechanics, and many players play it that way.
In such PvE, the challenge is not
directed towards the player as a
requirement; instead, they are
presented as voluntary goals, but
also need to be balanced in order
to create a linear relationship.

34. Increasing challenge until the end? Finding the Elder Game
In most cases, the end of the game happens after the progression is over. Why would
you continue playing if there is no challenge, right? No challenge, no attention (Flow).
In a few specialized cases, the game has no end (MMOs, Sims, tabletop RPGs, or
progression-based Facebook games), so progression is used as a reward structure and
a training simulator in the early game rather than a way to move towards the end the
game. This has an obvious problem which can be seen with just about all of these
games: at some point, more progression just isn’t meaningful.
The player has seen all the content in the game that they need to, they’ve reached
the level cap, they’ve unlocked all of their special abilities in their skill tree, they’ve
maxed their stats, or whatever.
In just about all cases, when the player reaches this point, they have to find
something else to do, and there is a sharp transition into what’s sometimes called the
“elder game” where the objective changes from progression to something else.
Perhaps ‘mentoring’ newbes?

35. FarmVille
These are positive-sum games where you basically click to progress, it’s nearly
impossible to lose any progress at all, and you’re always gaining something. More
player skill simply means you progress at a faster rate. After a certain point you don’t
really get any interesting rewards for doing so. But after awhile, the reward loop
starts rewarding you less and less frequently, you finish earning all the ribbons or
trophies or achievements or whatever, so it’s not that you can’t progress any further,
but that the game doesn’t really reward you for progression as much (you are in the
Elder Game), so at some point the player decides that further progression just isn’t
worth it to them, and they either stop playing or they start playing in a different way.

36. 3. Using dynamic challenge adjustment (PvE)
PROBLEMS:
- We do not know when people are going to improve their skills... Players are not
equal. What if the challenge curve is too slope or just the opposite?
- We do not want to redesign the game for difficulty modes, as people may not like
them, as this implies deleting things, adjusting the parameters, etcetera.
SOLUTION:
Create a new game mode which solves this: dynamic game difficulty balancing (or
dynamic challenge adjustment, or dynamic difficulty adjustment DDA).
With Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment, the game makes itself easier or harder based on
how the player is doing in order to preserve a proper level of challenge
The challenge level becomes more difficult to understand, but its changes are
effective in order to sustain “perceived difficulty”.

37. • Crash Bandicoot, an action game, offers the player extra shields against attack if he
fails to get through a certain section too many times in a row. Players find this
mechanism rather obvious. Furthermore, rather than being a global system in the
entire game, it had to be implemented separately for each region of the game where
it offered extra shields.
• The first-person shooter game Max Payne automatically adjusts the strength of
enemies and the amount of aiming assistance provided to the player based on his
performance. These changes work to keep the player’s experience at an appropriate
level of difficulty, but they are invisible to the user.
• Half-Life 2 checks the state of the avatar’s health and ammunition when he breaks
open a crate in the game world, and adjusts the contents of the crate accordingly. If
he is healthy and well supplied, he might find little or nothing, but if he is short of
one of these resources, he might find medical kits or spare ammunition.
• Madden NFL 09 gives the player a series of explicit tests in its “Virtual Training
Center”, then adjusts the difficulty of the gameplay in the real game based on his
performance in the tests.
Examples from Adams (2013; p. 347)

38. Some of the problems with DDA:
• Some players hate it. This is the number one reason to think twice about
implementing DDA, especially if it can't be switched off. Many players feel
patronized when they discover that a game is going easy on them when get into
trouble, and they don't want the difficulty level to change at all.
• Players can learn to exploit DDA by pretending to be worse than they are. It's a bit
like hustling pool; you sucker your opponent into thinking you're a novice, then wipe
the floor with him when his money's on the table.
• DDA doesn't work for all kinds of challenges. If the challenges in a game are based
on numeric entities -- health points, money, speed and so on -- then it's fairly easy to
dynamically adjust these values to change the difficulty of a challenge. What about
symbolic entities? Words, puzzles, etc.?
• DDA can create absurdities. In some car racing games, if you crash your car, the
game slows down the other drivers so as to give you a chance to catch up. Then
there's the notorious rubber-band effect: if you get too far ahead your opponents
always catch up, and if you get too far behind, they always slow down. It feels as if
your car and theirs are connected by rubber bands.
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132061/the_designers_notebook_.php?print=1]

39. If you're definitely going to use DDA, consider the following suggestions:
• Make the game harder by beefing up the opposition, not by weakening the
player. Players rightly feel that any power they have, they earned. Never arbitrarily
take something away from a player; if they lose something they've gained, there has
to be a reason for it. It's OK to make the AI more lucky, but not OK to make the
player less lucky. If he's doing well and then suddenly finds that his sniper rifle no
longer shoots straight, he's going to hate you.
• Make it optional, as in Lego Star Wars II. That way the players who don't like it can
turn it off. Lego Star Wars II actually offered both DDA and settable difficulty levels,
but not everyone can afford to put in that much development work.
• Make it subtle. I can't emphasize this enough. The same monsters that were easy to
beat in level one should not suddenly be tough as nails in level two -- or vice versa.
Big changes spoil the player's immersion and create inappropriate spikes or troughs
in the perceived-difficulty curve. If at all possible, adjust the difficulty of the game
through frequent small changes rather than one large one, so the player doesn't
notice it happening.
• Keep the details secret. Don't let your players find out exactly what performance-
evaluation mechanism you're using, nor what the game will do to become easier.

40. 4. Emergence and open worlds (PvE)
You can increase uncertainty by providing non-linearity.
There is a game distinction based on mechanics: Emergence and Progression
Dormans (2012; p. 38).
• Emergence describes a game with simple mechanics but complex dynamics.
“Emergent complexity” can be used to describe any system of this nature, even
things that are not games. Let’s take Chess. The rules of this game are pretty
simple, with only six different piece types and a handful of special-case moves, but
a set of common opening moves has emerged from repeated play.
• Progression describes a game that requires a particular path. It implies a linearity
and specific rules for each specific moment.
For our purpose, emergence
and progression can both
sustain uncertainty.
There may be challenge in
each game structure.

41. Back in 2002, from the perspective of Jesper Juul, emergence is more interesting than
progression, since it takes the game from simplicity into complexity.
• Starcraft is an excellent example of a game of emergence, while Starcraft 2
introduced more progression elements.
The emergent part of the games have evolved and many things have been invented,
but progression has been more difficult to evolve, they are very similar to twenty
years ago (probably because of the difficulty in designing multilinear progression).
PROBLEM:
Progression is not much interesting, since society (and life) are bigger than that. In
other words, I know that “after this, comes that”. Multilinear progression is difficult.
SOLUTION:
Open worlds and a better integration of emergence and progression (a more dynamic
progression): this is the solution to multilinear progression. Another way of
sustaining uncertainty is giving more paths i.e. more open worlds.
[https://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PdtGDGhac The Illusion of Choice - How Games Balance Freedom and Scope

42. The evolution of progression into open worlds has been gradual. Crash Bandicoot
creators thought “people will not know what to do” when they played Mario 64 for
the first time.
Grand Theft Auto games provide good example in integration of both emergence and
progression. In those games, players may achieve victory in a mission by a wide
variety of means, but their gameplay choices don’t really affect the story
PROBLEM:
In open worlds we do sustain uncertainty by letting explore, but we do not know
how to manage difficulty increase. What can we do?

43. SOLUTION:
Huge possibilities + Dynamic difficulty adjustment
This is what Zelda: Breath of the Wild is doing: a bigger map, more things, less
explanation, less linearity and… DDA (the more enemies you kill they stronger they get).
Twilight Princess linearity.

44. 5. Dealing with positive feedback loops (PvP, PvE)
Understanding positive feedback loops
A positive feedback loop can be thought of as a reinforcing relationship. Something
happens that causes the same thing to happen again, which causes it to happen yet
again, getting stronger in each iteration – like a snowball that starts out small at the
top of the hill and gets larger and faster as it rolls and collects more snow.
Air Conditioning:
Closed Loop Control System with a controller.
“Is there an ideal number of feedback loops in a game? We have found that
somewhere between two and four major feedback loops seems to be sufficient for
most types of games.” (Dormans and Adams, 2012; p. 118)

45. Positive feedback loops are everywhere (for better or worse)
They can be even ‘outside’ the rules, in the meta-game.
• Show biz. Win competitions > Earn money > Get better players > Win
competitions > Advertising > Earn money > Get better players,…
Games are played at very different levels of society, then, it is difficult to ’cut’ loops…
In football, you may remember that many years ago only five foreigners could play for
a team. This prevented teams from buying good brazilians and not making any effort,
at the same time it made it possible for poorer teams to compete.
• Psychology. Playing better than the competitor > Self-rewards and growing
confidence > Paying more attention > Playing better,…

46. Two benefits of Positive Feedback (Adams, 2013; p. 349; p. 352)
• Positive feedback discourages stalemate. A well-balanced PvP game should only
rarely result in a stalemate, and PvE games should never end in stalemate.
• Positive feedback rewards success and provides that reward in a useful form rather
than a purely cosmetic form, such as a higher score. Even though the perceived
difficulty of challenges may increase, thus requiring the player to work harder
nearer the end of the game, she still feels rewarded by a sense of power and
growth at being able to do things she could not do at the beginning of the game.
PROBLEM: One player gets ahead and it becomes obvious so soon that the others will
have no chance to catch up. It becomes boring,… in othe words, it does not sustain
the uncertainty for other players. We might want to ‘cut’ the loops in a game in order
to balance it and sustain uncertainty.
EXERCISE:
“Monopoly contains one game-balance weakness: The point at which one player
becomes invincible due to the action of positive feedback is typically about an hour
before the last player goes bankrupt and the game actually ends.
Proposing changes to the rules that would speed up the action of positive feedback in
the later stages of the game without giving the first player who gets into the lead too
much of an advantage in the early stages.” Adams (2013; p.356)

47. Some possibilities I came up with:
1. To get more money when you pass the ‘Go’ when you already have houses on
your streets. This will allow you to build more houses,…
2. To get more money when you pass the ‘Go’ when you have streets from different
colors. This will allow you to buy more streets,…
3. To be able to modify the number of a dice roll by buying extra values to add or
subtract. Then, the richer could avoid or consolidate certain options.

48. SOLUTIONS:
1. To increase the positive feedback loop, so the game finishes faster.
2. To introduce a negative feedback loop. Negative feedback stabilizes the game by
disadvantaging the winners and providing extra help to the losers e.g. in some
sports, the team being scored can start from the middle controlling the ball (this
is a small negative feedback loop).
What is Mario Kart solution to sustain uncertainty?

49. “Games like Mario Kart take this a step further, offering pickups that are weighted so
that if you’re behind, you’re likely to get something that lets you catch up, while if
you’re ahead you’ll get something less valuable, making it harder for you to fight for
first. On the one hand, this provides an interesting tension: players in the lead know
that they just have to keep the lead for a little bit longer.” Schreiber
(gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.org)
Picture from Mario Kart Double Dash

50. “Notice that Mario Kart has actually the same progression pattern as Catan: both
games have negative feedback to stop the positive feedback loop. And yet, it feels
very different as a player. I think this is mostly because in Catan, the negative
feedback is under player control, while in Mario Kart a lot of it is under computer
control.
In autoracing, there’s also a natural negative feedback loop, but it feels a lot more
fair: the person in the lead is running into a bunch of air resistance so they’re burning
extra fuel to maintain their high speed, which means they need more pit stops;
meanwhile, the people drafting behind them are much more fuel-efficient and can
take over the lead later.”
Instead in a sailing regatta, the wind creates a positive feedback loop. The sailing
boat in second position does not get as much wind as the one in the first…

51. Three more solutions in order to mitigate the effects of a positive feedback loop:
• Allow collusion against the leader. In games with three or more players, you can
write the rules in such a way that the other players can collaborate against the
player in the lead.
• Define victory in terms unrelated to the feedback cycle. If you define the victory
condition of your game explicitly in terms of player rewards, power, or success at
achievements that make up parts of the positive feedback cycle, then positive
feedback will hasten victory. But you can also define victory in other terms.
• Use the effects of chance to reduce the size of the player’s rewards. Role-playing
games do this to some degree by randomly varying the amount of loot that
enemies yield to the player when they are defeated. By occasionally giving players
a lower reward for their achievements, you slow down positive feedback.
There are several ways to counterbalance positive feedback loops so we can sustain
uncertainty for all players.

52. 6. Introducing non-skill actions in multiplayer games (PvP)
In a multiplayer, we have a core with high skills and we have a periphery with low skills.
PROBLEM: Core deserves to win, as they have higher skills, but noobs have no chance at
all, so they leave (no uncertainty).

53. SOLUTION: Decrease the required skills for a certain situation, in other words, create
some situations in which everybody can win.
• Example 1: Call of Duty 4 “noobtube”. Experienced players maybe put together
with inexperienced players. The only way to make the game both engaging for
both kind of players is to grant players with a lot of power for the low skill
required. This is the grenade launcher employed by n00bs of the highest calibre.
Veterans don’t use it as there are more powerful tactics available, but some new
players may take veterans out with this launcher. Even though people complain, it
plays an important rule in sustaining uncertainty.
• Example 2: headshots in many FPS. The idea here is that if you shoot someone in
the head rather than the rest of the body, it’s an instant kill, or something like
that. Now, you might be thinking... wait, isn’t that a skill thing? Yes, in some cases
that is true, depending on the game, but in a lot of games (especially older ones)
that kind of accuracy just really isn’t possible in most situations; you’re moving,
they’re moving,… but it may also happen “by accident”. Therefore, with
headshots, the weaker player will occasionally just get an automatic kill, so it
makes it more likely that the weaker player see some more success with general
lower skills.

54. Concluding remarks
1. Uncertainty is what attracts players into a game. Challenge
provides uncertainty, and randomness can also increase it.
2. Challenge and skill are two sides of the same coin. Its
relationship is even backed by psychology theory of Flow. We
need to increase the challenge to maintain attention.
3. There exist several ways to ‘sustain uncertainty’. As designers,
we first need to guarantee the right amount of initial challenge
for the target player; then we either increase this challenge level
manually or use dynamic challenge adjustment;
complementarily, we can design open worlds. In PvP, to sustain
uncertainty, we need to deal with positive feedback loops and
introduce non-skill based actions.
The next lesson will be dedicated to Player Equality.

55. The golden rule of player/gameplay balance
“The game should be fun to learn as well as to play, and it
should be more fun the more you master it."
Rollings and Morris (2003, p. 139)

56. Game Balance Course Selected References
• Adams, E. (2014). Fundamentals of game design. Pearson Education. Chapter 11.
• Adams, E., & Dormans, J. (2012). Game mechanics: advanced game design. Chapter 8.
• Costikyan, G. (2013). Uncertainty in games. Mit Press.
• Fields, T. (2014). Mobile & social game design: Monetization methods and mechanics. CRC
Press. Chapter 9.
• Fullerton, T. (2014). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative
games. CRC press. Chapter 10.
• Oxland, K. (2004). Gameplay and design. Pearson Education. Chapter 16.
• Schell, J. (2014). The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press. Chapters 10-11.
• Sylvester, T. (2013). Designing games: A guide to engineering experiences. " O'Reilly Media,
Inc.". Chapter 6.
• Rollings, A., & Morris, D. (2003). Game architecture and design: a new edition. Chapter 5.
• Selinker, M. (Ed.). (2011). The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design. Part 4.
• Schreiber, I. Game Design Concepts [https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com] (Level 16).
• Schreiber, I. Game Balance Concepts [https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com].