Game Balance

Within the field of game design, game balance can best be described as a black art. It is the process by which game designers make a game simultaneously fair for players while providing them just the right amount of difficulty to be both exciting and challenging without making the game entirely predictable. This involves a combination of mathematics, psychology, and occasionally other fields such as economics and game theory.

Game Balance offers readers a dynamic look into game design and player theory. Throughout the book, relevant topics on the use of spreadsheet programs will be included in each chapter. This book therefore doubles as a useful reference on Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet programs and their uses for game designers.

FEATURES

• The first and only book to explore game balance as a topic in depth
• Topics range from intermediate to advanced, while written in an accessible style that demystifies even the most challenging mathematical concepts to the point where a novice student of game design can understand and apply them
• Contains powerful spreadsheet techniques which have been tested with all major spreadsheet programs and battle-tested with real-world game design tasks
• Provides short-form exercises at the end of each chapter to allow for practice of the techniques discussed therein along with three long-term projects divided into parts throughout the book that involve their creation
• Written by award-winning designers with decades of experience in the field

Table of Contents

Part I: Game Balance

1 The Foundations of Game Balance

2 Critical Vocabulary

3 Where to Start- Systems

4 The Components of Progression- Curves

5 Finding an Anchor

6 Economic Systems

7 Trading Systems

8 Transitivity and Cost Curves

9 Characters and Character Builds

10 Combat

11 Progression in PvE Games

12 Progression in PvP Games

13 Analytics

14 Metagame Systems

15 Production and Playtesting

16 Beyond Balance

Part II: The Mathematics of Balance

17 Independent Randomness

18 Dependent Randomness

19 Managing Luck and Skill

20 Probability and Human Intuition

21 Pseudorandom Numbers

22 Infinite Probability

23 Situational Balance

24 Statistics

25 Intransitive Mechanics and Payoff Matrices

Part Ill: Spreadsheets

26 Making Lists

27 Basic Formatting

28 Formulas, References, and Graphs

29 Absolute References

30 Advanced Formatting

31 Math Functions

32 Deck Shuffling

33 Organizational Formatting

34 Times and Dates

35 Iterative Calculations

36 Fancier Graphing

37 Matrix Functions

About the Authors

Ian Schreiber has been in the industry since 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on eight published game titles, training/simulation games for three Fortune 500 companies, and has advised countless student projects. He is the co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest in-person game jam event in the world. Ian has taught game design and development courses at a variety of colleges and universities since 2006.

Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist, and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons, and Def Jam franchises.