Week 11 - Yoochube Let's Play

As we finish up our second to last project, I think I will reflect on what I’ve learned about balancing games and how to practically apply these strategies for the final board game. There are plenty of examples where balance is key to making a successful game. Deck building games, gacha games, fighting games, and even shooter games require a lot of playtesting and readjusting to make every card, character, or weapon work together. One being too strong or too weak is a detriment to the play experience, hindering the fun everyone can have. “Challenge is a core element of gameplay and can be so difficult to balance that it merits its own lens” (Schell, Ch. 13), and that is something true for both players and designers.

After playing everyone’s games and testing our own, it became very obvious that we can’t just play our draft over and over the same way expecting the right results. Sometimes it requires only playing the final boss or starting from a certain play state. It might require playing variables against each other or doing totally strange strategies to account for all the possibilities. It might even mean trying the game without certain character abilities while boosting others. Maybe it means scrapping the first idea to make something brand new.

There was also the issue of possibly balancing too much. By that I mean removing all the fun elements and unpredictability in order to make a game that puts balance first. At that point, us as game developers need to make the executive decision to decide what enriches the experience. In our tests, we almost changed the gimmick of one of the bosses but decided that the challenge he imposed gave the plays more chances to make decisions and collaborate. There were other elements we could work on without losing that sense of agency. Instead, we buffed and altered the character abilities to change the tone of the game, to make it more clear what ways the players can use their skills to win and sabotage one another. It is much like this quote in chapter thirteen of The Art of Game Design, “as you change the model, you learn more about the right way to balance your game” (Schell, Ch. 13) and this one in chapter ten of Players Making Decisions, “give players agency in areas where they require it and to remove it in areas where they do not need it” (Hiwiller, Ch. 10). There is no one way, but you must try many avenues to get it right.

This unit utilized asymmetric play, but the concepts we’ve learned have been carried through all of our games. There has always been a need to make sure all the participants get an equal chance or that the mechanics aren’t too hard to grasp or that the objectives are too hard to complete. It’s integral to the system. This question comes to mind when I think about how to apply these new skills, “What does the player do when playing?” (Macklin & Sharp, Ch. 6). The player does what the developer gives them, and what the developer has to give them is a game that employs fun and balance and theme and chance and strategy and chaos. All of these go together, some more than others, to make an engaging experience, and it is not easy to balance all of it.