Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers

Chapter TwelveBalance

Introduction

Balance is an evocative term—it brings to mind not only the scales of justice, but also a precarious state in which one poor choice can tumble a tower of Jenga pieces. In game design, balance refers to how well the game mechanics are working. A game is out of balance when its mechanics encourage dynamics that are deemed to be undesirable by its designers or players. When a game’s mechanics are so out of balance that they threaten to destroy the play experience entirely, the game is often said to be “broken.”

The learning objectives for this chapter are:

1. Be able to identify and categorize game imbalances.
2. Be able to employ a variety of techniques for achieving game balance.

Balance in Games

The process ...