Homework #9 "Balance"
Balancing
in gaming of all sorts is an often overlooked and underutilized aspect that can make or
break the game. You want to have a nice
balance of difficulty, entertainment, reward, fairness between players and a
game that does not have any outstanding feature that disrupts equal play in the
game. Balance is so important that by
shifting the systems of balance inside a game, you can completely change the
feel of the game and use the knowledge of balance to enhance your game and make
it function better, enhance entertainment experience of players, and simply
just solidify your game as a legitament game that is to be taken seriously.
Balance
in the book when looked over at a glance may potentially be summed up as a
vague set of fairness. And to a certain
extent, that is exactly what it is. But
perhaps a better way to look at balance in any game is to recognize that there
are many different types of balance in many different games, but what gives off
the illusion of “vagueness” in balance is actually the pervasive nature of
balance itself as a defining aspect of the game. It is simply intertwined within the game
itself, it is arguably the most defining aspect of the game, even over art,
technology, game story and game concept.
An unbalanced game with leave players feeling frustrated and disappointed,
with little to no chance that they will play the game again.
Balance
is the flavor of your game. Balance is
the part of the game that will influence whether or not players continue to
play your game and what ways they choose to play your game. It is my personal opinion that everyone in
their individual minds understands the fundamentals of fairness, no matter how
diverse or similar. It’s a concept that
is learned throughout life at a very early age and continuously brought up at
every other stage in your life. People know what fair is, they know logically
why things are fair or unfair and moreover they can feel it on an emotional
level. It is from this emotional level that
you see the experience of the game affect the person. It is from this emotional level that you can
see the benefits and wonders of virtual reality, mixed with technology, art and
design to create a truly unique experience within a video game, existing within
the mind of the controller.
An
example of this fairness could be shown in a game like chess. Though not completely fair, both players do
have all of the same pieces, all of the same movements, and have to take turns
moving there pieces one at a time. It is
true that one player moves first, but this is a smaller aspect of the
game. You can feel the fairness when you
have roughly the same opportunity to win the game as you opponent and whether
you succeed or not is based entirely on the quality of decisions you make in
respect to your opponents decisions. You
could imagine the unfairness you would feel, the lost sense of entitlement that
would come from allowing you opponent to move twice for every one turn you
move. This type of chess would hardly be
the same game at all. It would be
frustrating for you and boring for you opponent. This example mainly would affect the difficulty
and the overall functioning of the game.
However there are many more aspects to take into consideration when it
comes to creating a well balanced game.
I will
run through the twelve balancing types and how they pertain to out team’s game,
at this current stage of development.
#1 Fairness –
In our game, I hope to give the player all the tools necessary to succeed in
the game without playing the game for him.
Functionally the game should function properly and should be fair in the
sense that the game doesn’t seem like playing it is hopeless or worthless. There are games mentioned in the text that
are “asymmetrical games”, I do not believe our game should or is going to be
one of those games. Even if we were to
make our game character advantaged in respect to our enemies, you would still
have to implement fairness. And exaggerated
example would be a game that contains a weapon that kills all the enemies in
the level with one use, and from there you just make your way to the exit.
#2 Difficulty
– We want our game to be challenging, but not so much so that it puts off new
game players or average players. We
would also like to have experienced players enjoy the game with out feeling
like the game is beneath their skills.
To do this we will implement difficulty selection that can be toggled at
the beginnings of all levels of the game (mainly based on typing speed), with
each level getting increasingly harder.
#3 Meaningful
choices – I have not thought too much about what choices should be available in
our game or the weight that those decisions will carry, but I’ll think about
it. Right now it seems like our game is
relatively straight forward/ one pathed design for levels.
#4 Skill vs.
Chance – I think skill will show itself significantly more than chance in our
game. I can’t think of too many
reasonable ways that we would implement chance into our game and I quite
frankly don’t think we should include it at all, at least on any major level.
#5 Head vs.
Hands – I would say for our game that hands are definitely the most important
aspect of the gameplay, whether typing or shooting. If you are typing or shooting at something it
doesn’t necessarily take too much mental work to know what to do, your mind has
to engage and process the information but does not necessarily require too much
mental though.
#6 Competition
vs. Cooperation - Our game is a single player game and it looks like the nature
of the game will be competitive against the computer players/characters. And possibly high scores. I don’t see cooperation fitting in all that
much.
#7 Short vs.
Long – I feel that our game would best benefit, for the purpose of the class,
from being a short to medium length game.
The game should be long enough to feel like more than a level or too,
but unless we added many more features in the game it would become much more
repetitive.
#8 Rewards - The
way I imagine it, at the end of the levels you will receive a letter grade
based on your typing and shooting performance for the entire level. From this score you will receive a certain
amount of point to use on upgrades or other aspects of character development.
#9 Punishment
– If you wanted make your game completely balanced, then in theory every time
you offer a reward you would offset it by offering a punishment. I don’t think punishment has a role in our
game and if anything I would like the player to fail the level as many times as
they want with no penalty.
#10 Freedom vs.
Controlled Experience – It would be nice to offer our character more freedom
within the game. This certainly can be
done within the levels, but I believe it is too far out of the scope of the
class and our particular game to benefit from an increased level of freedom
(mainly speaking in terms of levels.
#11 Simple vs.
Complex – Our game will be simple and complex.
Mainly simple, but it you take a simple concept and apply it in a way
such that it becomes complex it adds a depth to it arguably more than a
standard complex game. In our game
typing will be the simple, the typing challenges will be the complex.
#12 Detail vs.
Imagination – I’m not sure how much should be left content should be left to
the players imagination in this game, because you are assuming the role of
someone else with a fixed mission. So at
least in terms of story, it is almost like an action oriented RPG.
