When designing a video game, there's much more than meets the eye. Not only must the game designer know how to use the software but he must also work to keep the game balanced so that game play runs smoothly. Many components must come into play for a game to be balanced, twelve of these components are the most common and can be found universally in any game.
Game Fairness is the first type of game balance that must be looked at and concerns both symmetric and asymmetric games. In order for a game to be symmetric, all players must be given equal resource and powers. Where as an asymmetric game will simulate real life situations, give the player more chances to personalize,and level the playing level between the player and the opponent. This balance of fairness in the game can only be achieved once the game is playable and will take a process of trial and error to achieve the right level.
As game fairness is concerned in our team's game, I believe that our game will have a more asymmetrical style than a symmetric one. This is due to the more realistic take we took on the environment and the world of our game. Our game is set on future earth in the midst of a apocalyptic disaster. This asymmetric balance will let the player explore our vast world and make different decisions each time that will have a profound effect on the ending. Lastly our game will not have planes in which character attributives can be choose and swapped, reliance on our main characters start off strength and strength he gains throughout the game.
The second type of balance is: Challenge vs. Success, meaning the game designer must find the perfect balance that the game isn't too difficult so that it becomes frustrating nor too easy so that it becomes boring. In order to help prevent these problems, we can increase the difficulty gradually with the characters increased success ass well as making it possible for players to zip through the easy parts of the game relatively fast. Always an option is letting the player choose their difficulty which is what most games nowadays are doing. However, even with these strategies, we are still faced with what to do about the difficulty of the game over time. This is a matter of preference for each designer as to how many people they want to be able to complete their game. One again its all about balancing. For our game, I feel that, due to time constraints, we can't make this game as difficult as I feel it should be. This game has the potential to be very much like some of the big name games we know today but must be made easier and shorter than it really deserves to be. I think if we were to take this game further then we would most certainly include a difficulty choice as to appeal to everyone and not a set group.
The third balance type is: Meaningful Choices, also known as making the player make choices that will then affect the outcome of the game in its entirety. As with most people, I feel that a game should make you question your decisions and make hard choices. A game is all about transporting you to a new place therefore you should have to make decisions you wouldn't normally have to make, it's all about the package of the game. The use of a dominant strategy could easily kill the game play experience for the player since with this choice that is clearly better than all that is given, theres no real decision to be made. As the book states "the game has been solved" even if its early in the game. Now this is not to forget the triangular choice between high/low risk and high/low reward. I believe these are more along the superficial side since they have no question of character but they are important for the game play. However, its not to say that these cant be made meaningful by adding the reward being someones life saved, as with any choice it can be made much more dire. Our team game centers solely around this idea of choices. Choices are what fuels our games storyline, if you make a choice in the first level, you may very well end up killing tons of people in the last level due to that choice alone. Our game really makes the player question themselves and their morals. By using all these choices it makes for a much more connected game play as well as a thrilling experience.
The fourth type is: Skill versus Chance, meaning how much actual gaming prowess does the player need to finish something versus are they just getting lucky like playing poker? By adding this 50/50 shot it adds excitement to the game as well as a dash of frustration when things don't go your way. Overall its a significant part of keeping the balance of it all. For the team game, it will require skill to pass through objects and puzzles as well as fight off the AI creatures, however, the player will have no means of knowing or controlling when an AI will pop up and try to reboot them. By doing this we have both the skill and the chance we need to successfully keep a steady balance of our game.
Fifth on the list is: Head versus Hands, or how much of the game play is mashing buttons or fancy finger work and how much of it is stratagizing and deep thinking. Although there needs to be a balance, it is understandable if the physical side takes over some on certain games however, it is up to the designer to match that physicality with mental problem. These mental puzzles give the player a nice break from the constant use of the controller and fighting things to actually sit down and try and work out a problem. Now these puzzles don't necessarily need to be like Sudoku or an actual puzzle, they could easily be how you would reach a platform or whether you can time your shot to hit the target. With this knowledge its not too difficult to keep these opposites in balance. Our game will require fighting the AIs, however, since our game has strong roots in psychology we have put more puzzle / mental features rather then the physical. Now this could mean figuring out how to open a door through hacking or navigating your way through the Paris like quartiles of the bombed city.
Type six is: Competition versus Cooperation which is exactly how it sounds in the fact that its the human drive of competition and its opposite instinct of cooperation. These two instincts are seen very often in gaming whether it be the fierce competition of Mario Kart or the tag teaming cooperation of League of Legends, both play a key role even though they are so different. By having this quality of utilizing both parts then it provides a teaching opportunity for the player that competitions fun but in some cases cooperation is your best bet. By having competition in the game, you can not only appeal to people who play games professionally but also to the newbies who just happened to pass by the game in the store. For our game we have a sidekick sort of being who will help the main character move along throughout the story and we can instill instances where they must work together to pass an obstacle as well as having the normal competition that's present in every game.
The seventh balance type is: Long versus Short meaning whether the game takes days to beat or a mere couple of hours. I personally believe this balance is extremely important when it comes to designing a game since I personally and many people I know hate the two extremes of this. A game that is too long can become boring and monotonous such as the Lego games where you may have beat the storyline however you have thousands of achievements to complete before the game is fully beat. Where as the opposite is a short game which leaves the player disappointed and craving more, as well ass often times these games have under developed stories that leave the player with more questions than answers. Unfortunately the main factors that decide how long a game will be is the conditions it takes for the player to win versus the conditions needed to lose. Perhaps this one is the most important balance type because this can make or break a game and can alter the perception the player has for not only he game but also the designer. Unfortunately as discussed earlier, the game our team is creating is going to be woefully short compared to its potential. The game we are making should have enough levels and game play to last roughly 10 minutes yet this game has the story and the potential to be a game that with enough time put into it, could easily take days to fully beat on its own.
Type eight is the Balance of Rewards meaning how does the designer intend on rewarding the player for completing the objectives. As stated in the book, games are a way of judgement and people want to be judged. As so, people wan to be rewarded for successfully playing the game and this could range from many different things such as praise, the always used points, extra play in the game, and much much more. Now on the question of how to balance these rewards, its simple and the same approach that is taken with children; Give them a reward for doing something good but be sparing with them since if you give too many they'll lose their effect. If a player keeps seeing a special cut scene for completing a task, hes going to eventually get bored with it and not want to play the game. For our game we decided to go a different route for rewards. Our reward aspect of the game is a sense of safety, a sense that you can take a breath and collect your bearings before being thrown back into the distopian world. Since our game is a survival/stealth/ psychological game, this minor break the player gets will play into all those factors; They can stay safe during the small check in so they don't have to worry about the chasing AIs, they no longer have to worry about staying hidden, and they are given a reward that makes them want to keep playing and lures them into a false sense of security almost for waiting by the safe point will most likely be a large horde of AIs ready to steal away that safe feeling.
Balance type nine: Punishment goes hand and hand with type eight rewards. With getting a reward, you can also get punished for not doing something right. This balance type is only natural and actually will make the player enjoy the game more if they can get in trouble just as easily as they can get praised. Using punishment can make getting items in the worth even more if the player has the chance of getting them taken away from them. Punishment can also create a thrill of doing something bad for the player and taking a risk as well as adding an extra bit of challenge to the game that are not naturally in the storyline such as getting sent back to a certain check point. There are many types of punishment that designers can put in a game to balance out the rewards factor, some of them are: Shaming (telling them "Bad Job" or "Missed Shot"), Losing the rewards (having points lost, getting resources taken away), Shortened game play, End of game play (game over), losing an advantage, and getting setback. If these punishments are used lightly concurrently with the rewards, the game can actually condition the player into doing a certain action needed for the game. In the teams game, we have yet to settle on a definitive punishment but we have talked of using setbacks, lose of valuable resources, and added difficulty when going back to play such as a horde of AI's close by.
The tenth type of balance is: Freedom versus Controlled experience meaning does the player have full reign over exploring the world and can do levels at his choosing versus having a set path that they must stay on and can only go from one objective to the next, essentially no freedom. This is a very important feature to balance being that too much freedom allows the player to get easily side tracked from the story line and the objective needed to be completed like in Skyrim and Oblivion. Adversely if the game is too controlled then the player will feel locked down and merely going through the motions rather than experiencing the game. Games are meant to be interactive meaning the player should be in control not the game. By not having a proper balance the game can be too hectic or too bossy, which will severely affect the players opinion of the game. The book decides that more controlled is better than more freedom however, I agree with this to some extent because playing a huge game with no set path is frustrating but the freedom is nice to have once in awhile and can be refreshing to people that have played many of the highly controlled games out there. Our game leans more on the controlled side, however we unintentionally set it that way due to the time constraints. I personally like freedom but I know some of my team members like the controlled atmosphere and so I think our game has a slight aspect of freedom but not nearly to the extent as games like Skyrim.
The eleventh type is: Simple versus Complex which is a very thin balance to have. To have a game be simple can be both an insult and a compliment whereas complexity can be intriguing or just confusing. That is why it is key to have a nice mix of these two although much of this type is gamer preference. Some people like long complicated games where as others enjoy the simpler things that have one job and that's to make you have a good experience. Duely under the title of complexity are the different types of complexity; First is the innate complexity which means that the very components and rules of the game are complex in themselves, this type of complexity is not really a good thing. This is because it is usually the fault of the designer being to in depth at one thing liek the bases behind the game. Because of theese complex rules, more rules would need to be added to balance the problem. Th esecond type is emergent complexity which is the good kind. This is the type of complexity that is seen as "intriguing" or "rich". They usually rely on a simple, understandable rule set that opens up into a very complex and deep situation that the player must deal with. This type of complexity is the type that results in the title of being simple yet complex and thus creating the paradox that is the title of this balance type. Along with the two types of complexity, designers must watch out for becooming too artificial in theirr game and making the experience very fake and vice versa with the natural side. The way this can be balanced is to start the game slow and speed up as the story progresses and increasing difficulty as the game moves on. With these complexities the game should hold a certain elegance that tells the player if the designer succeeded in creating the balance betweeen the two opposites. In our game,we lean more to the complex side, however, we are finding that simple is the way to go given the constraints of the class. Hopefully we will cut some more later on since he components still seem too deep for a game of this small scale and the time we have to do it.
Finally the last type of balance is: Detail versus Imagination meaning figuring out which details should be given and what should be left to the players imagination. If this is not balanced then the game risks becoming boring and too layed out ass well as robbing the player of the experience they should have imagining the parts of the game. Some ways to keep this balance is to only put details of what the designer can do well, in other words if the designer can make a character very intricate then it should be in there however if the area of the antagonist is too detailed the player has nothing to imagine and therefore is not truely experiencing the game as they should. Th enext way is to give enough details that allow the players imagination to creat ethe rest, meaning the player can then decide for himself those leftover details and can enjoy the game in their own way with their own imagination not the thoughts of the designer. Also if its something that most everyone knows what it looks like then there is no need togo into mega detail in the game such as a car or a city street. This task of creating this balance can be hard for designers since they want to put their vision out there and bring the game to its fullest potential yet they havetoleave the game some what incomplete so that the player can then finish it for themselves. For our team game we, at the moment, have a very intricate story that has the possiblity of being able to let the players imagination run wild but since wee have thought up this idea and are creating it, I have the feeling that we are going to face trouble later on with keeping this balance since we are so connected to the game.
