If you have designed thirty, you might have some insight on a question which has vexed me: are there automated or semi-automated ways to look for "fairness" and playability and such? Any guidelines?
I ask because I have a friend with a game idea that looks fun, but it has enough tweakable parameters that I could see a poor selection leading to unbalanced games, or a clever combo being difficult to beat, and so on.
Well, balance is a very very funny thing. There are lots of board game design articles about it. A lot of designers will employ spreadsheet and Monte Carlo to achieve "balance".
The thing is that players don't want actual balance; they want to feel like it is balanced. And much more importantly, it must be FUN! If a game is too balanced it might well be boring and that is worse! My goal for balance is to try to make it so that players of equal skill and exposure to a game all have a reasonable chance of winning any game play.
I do know of some designers who start with a perfectly balanced game so they have an anchor. Then they adjust it over play-testing sessions to be more fun or create the experience they are designing for. I have a game that is Dracula vs Van Helsing in a hidden movement chase. I KNOW that Dracula has a 60/40 advantage. However, during unattended play-testing (random people are just given the game and rulebook and I'm not there), players overwhelmingly reported feeling that Van Helsing was far too strong!! Perception is everything.
As for your friend, they should look at having it played during a Protospiel or Unpub event. Some are in person but there are others online. They will get immeasurable feedback to direct their design. They are also innumerable podcasts that discuss these topic like Ludology and Discords like Building the Game and Break My Game they could join to get more feedback and advice.
As for random set ups creating unbalanced games, that can sometimes be even the desired effect. It depends a lot of the type of game, length of game and target audience. For example, Uno is completely random and unbalanced in terms of game decisions. However, the point of the game is to allow kids to beat their parents while learning matching. It is a 15 minute game so you just play again and move on with life. The memories and excitement are the desired game experience, who cares about balance?
Ultimately, only ample real-world play-testing can answer these questions from a human perspective.
I share your concern though. You don't want to publish a game only to find, when attacked by real players in quantity, that your design is broken.
For the board game I'm working on, I've found running many simulated games with MCTS-based AI players has proved instructive in some respects. For example, balancing for turn-order fairness.
A big selling point of most games is that they're new somehow, you don't yet know how to play them. A mere possibility of analysis like this would probably constrain games to a solvable genre.
This works with patterns used to create games though. Few will play rock-paper-scissors a lot, but using it as a conflict resolution mechanic with known characteristics works great.
Comments
If you have designed thirty, you might have some insight on a question which has vexed me: are there automated or semi-automated ways to look for "fairness" and playability and such? Any guidelines?
I ask because I have a friend with a game idea that looks fun, but it has enough tweakable parameters that I could see a poor selection leading to unbalanced games, or a clever combo being difficult to beat, and so on.
Well, balance is a very very funny thing. There are lots of board game design articles about it. A lot of designers will employ spreadsheet and Monte Carlo to achieve "balance".
The thing is that players don't want actual balance; they want to feel like it is balanced. And much more importantly, it must be FUN! If a game is too balanced it might well be boring and that is worse! My goal for balance is to try to make it so that players of equal skill and exposure to a game all have a reasonable chance of winning any game play.
I do know of some designers who start with a perfectly balanced game so they have an anchor. Then they adjust it over play-testing sessions to be more fun or create the experience they are designing for. I have a game that is Dracula vs Van Helsing in a hidden movement chase. I KNOW that Dracula has a 60/40 advantage. However, during unattended play-testing (random people are just given the game and rulebook and I'm not there), players overwhelmingly reported feeling that Van Helsing was far too strong!! Perception is everything.
As for your friend, they should look at having it played during a Protospiel or Unpub event. Some are in person but there are others online. They will get immeasurable feedback to direct their design. They are also innumerable podcasts that discuss these topic like Ludology and Discords like Building the Game and Break My Game they could join to get more feedback and advice.
As for random set ups creating unbalanced games, that can sometimes be even the desired effect. It depends a lot of the type of game, length of game and target audience. For example, Uno is completely random and unbalanced in terms of game decisions. However, the point of the game is to allow kids to beat their parents while learning matching. It is a 15 minute game so you just play again and move on with life. The memories and excitement are the desired game experience, who cares about balance?
I play a ton of tabletop games, and it is very obvious when a game was developed by someone who doesn't understand this fundamental truth.
Ultimately, only ample real-world play-testing can answer these questions from a human perspective.
I share your concern though. You don't want to publish a game only to find, when attacked by real players in quantity, that your design is broken.
For the board game I'm working on, I've found running many simulated games with MCTS-based AI players has proved instructive in some respects. For example, balancing for turn-order fairness.
A big selling point of most games is that they're new somehow, you don't yet know how to play them. A mere possibility of analysis like this would probably constrain games to a solvable genre.
This works with patterns used to create games though. Few will play rock-paper-scissors a lot, but using it as a conflict resolution mechanic with known characteristics works great.