Uneven Balance
One of the most hazardous unquestioned assumptions of game design is that a game should be balanced. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly can be an issue if one tool is too strong, or many tools too weak, particularly in…
Tag Game Balance
Leaders
The conceit of strategy games is an interesting one. Most strategy games place you as the general of an army, or some other authority figure, and tasks you with managing an army or other complex system and directing it towards…
Life Isn’t Fair
As someone who likes games, I find the vocabulary that people use to describe games that they didn’t like, or that they found frustrating and infuriating, quite interesting. When you describe a game as mean-spirited, unfair, or disrespectful of your…
Balancing Numbers
There’s an issue I’ve noticed comes up a lot in game design, particularly when it comes to balancing items and abilities against each other: The differentiation and conflation of absolute and relative values. Here’s the first place I noticed it:…
Balance and Expression
The capability that games offer for self-expression is exciting, but can also be onerous. In much the same way as we are made uncomfortable by articles telling us what the way we move or dress or speak says about us,…