Game Balancing

Prof. Pier Luca Lanzi
Game Balancing
Videogame Design and Programming

Readings
•  Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design
(2nd Edition) Morgan Kaufmann 2015
2

Game Balancing
adjusting the elements of the game until
they deliver the experience you want

Balance Type #1
Fairness

Balance Type #1: Fairness
•  Fairness is the quality that players universally seek in games
•  Players want to feel that the forces working against them can be
defeated
•  Symmetrical games are the simplest way to ensure that your
game is fair, since all the players have all the same powers and
resources
•  All tabletop games and most sports are symmetrical
5

Asymmetrical Games
•  To simulate real-world situations
•  To give players another way to explore the game space
•  Personalization
•  To level the playing fields (noob vs expert)
•  To create interesting situations
§ Scotland Yard (players vs mr X)
§ Bhag-Chal (5 tigers vs 20 goats)
6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors

Balance Type #2
Challenge vs Success

Balancing Challenge Difficulty
•  Increase difficulty with each success
•  Let players get through easy parts fast
•  Create layers of challenge (with grades)
•  Let players choose the difficulty level
•  Playtest with a variety of players
•  Give the losers a break
12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

Balance Type #3
Meaningful Choices

Good games give players
meaningful choices

dominant
strategy

Once a dominant strategy is discovered,
the game is no longer fun
the puzzle of the game has been solved
because there are no more choices to make

triangularity

Triangularity in Mario Kart
manual vs automatic? kart vs bike?
grab power-ups? use power-ups?
use speed boost pads?
left or right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45PdtGDGhac

Balance Type #4
Skill vs Chance

dealing out cards = pure chance
choosing how to play them = skill

game design David Perry suggests
that at each moment players should
exercising a skill
taking risks
working a strategy

Balance Type #5
Head vs Hand

“baseball is 90% mental.
The other half is physical”
Yogi Berra

Balance Type #6
Competition vs Cooperation

Competition and cooperation
are human basic urges

Balance Type #7
Short vs Long

Length of the gameplay is one
important thing to balance
If the game is too short, players may not get
a chance to develop meaningful strategies
If the game goes on too long, players may
grow bored, or they may avoid the game

Balance Type #8
Reward

Common Types of Rewards
• Praise
• Points
• Prolonged play
• A gateway
• Resources
42
• Spectacle
• Expression
• Powers
• Status
• Completion

People tend to get acclimated to
rewards the more they receive them
Variable reward is more powerful
than fixed reward

Balance Type #9
Punishment

Why Should a Game Punish Players?
•  Punishment creates endogenous value
•  Taking risks is exciting
•  Possible punishment increases challenge
•  Shaming
•  Loss of potions
•  Shortened play
•  Terminated play
•  Setback
•  Removal of powers
•  Resource depletion
46

Gathering Food in Diablo
Version #1
collect food or suffer from
diminished powers due to hunger
Version #2
players are never hungry but get
a boost of ability if they eat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_III:_Exodus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs

Balance Type #10
Freedom vs Controlled Experience

Games are interactive, and the point of
interactivity is to give the player control,
or freedom, over the experience
How much control?
Giving the player control over everything
is more development and can also be
boring for the player

Balance Type #11
Simple vs Complex

innate complexity
(e.g., agricola)
emergent complexity
(othello, go, chess, etc.)

http://kotaku.com/every-wonderfully-complex-board-game-needs-a-tablet-ver-513844663

Natural vs Artificial Balancing
space invaders go faster, the fewer they are
Elegance
dots in Pac-Man serve multiple purposes
they provide a short term goal, a long term goal,
triangularity, points/success, extra life

“if a line in a script doesn’t serve at
least two purposes, it should be cut”
Old Hollywood saying

Rule of thumb: a game element
should have at least three purposes

Balance Type #12
Detail vs Imagination

Only detail what you can do well
Give details the imagination can use
Familiar worlds do not need much detail
Use the “binocular” effect
Give details that inspire imagination

Game Balancing Methodologies

Game Balancing Methodologies
•  Use the lens of the problem statement
•  Doubling and halving
•  Train your intuition by guessing exactly
•  Document your model
•  Tune your model as you tune your game
•  Plan to balance
•  Let the players do it
65

Dynamic Game Balancing

It spoils the reality of the world
It is exploitable
Players improve with practice

Design in Detail: Changing the Time between Shots for the Sniper
Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3 by Jaime Griesemer.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012649/Design-in-Detail-Changing-the

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

http://www.facebook.com/polimigamecollective
https://twitter.com/@POLIMIGC
http://www.youtube.com/PierLucaLanzi
http://www.polimigamecollective.org

Game Balancing

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