Homework 9: balance

Address each of these aspects as it relates to your own team game. Homeworks are individual. If a particular item does not apply, say so. Each item must be addressed, and the answer should use complete paragraphs.

      This assignments is about reading chapter 13 from our class textbook on game design. and interpreting which forms of game balancing mechanics are applicable in our game. There are a lot of things to look at regarding balance, and the book ivides them for the most part into 12 different catogories.

      The first topic of course, is fairness. The book discribes fairness by dividing it into symmetrical and asymmetrical games. A symmetrical game is one where every person has the same reasources and powers, while an asymmetrical does not. Since our game is a single player game that is ment to focuse on stealth against an AI then the best would probebly be asymmetrical. Where the AI has the ability to catch the player and imprison them. This way the player actually has a reason to hide from enemies and would build some tension and difficulty.

     The next topic is that of Challenge vs. Success, keeping the player from getting board with an game that is "too easy" while not making it so hard that that player is frusterated. THe books sudjustions for this are a variaty of methods such as dividing gamplay into levels and increasig the difficulty in the later ones. THe genneral plan for our game i sto actually do that. THe game is divided into 7 days, with a goal of killing at least 1 person each day. As the player kills more NPCs then the hard the game becomes. With the NPCs grouping together or hiding from the player so that it is harder and harder to kill them. The challange will come from trying to kill as many people in the orphanage with out getting caught, while to finish the game you only need to kill 7 people.

      After that is the idea of Meaningful Choices. Allowing the actons the player makes to have some significant effect on the rest of the game without creating some Dominate strategy. However for our game, since it is a stealth and murder game, the choices will likly not be more than what weapon the player uses to murder characters, or how they choose to be stealthy.

       Skill vs. Chance however is a component that every game has to have in one way or another, and is pretty straight forward. As our game is stealth based, with the intent being the playes skill at evading dectection, then putting to much chance in the game would be very frusterating for the player. The NPCs will have slightly predictable movements that they go through that the player would have to notice to get past, with the ways of murdering characters being a players choice not a random event.

        This goes directly with the balancing type of Head vs. Hands. Our game is a thinking game, ment to draw out tension before short violent outbursts involving the death of an NPC. Most of the focus would be on planning out how to murder your target without getting caught. While allowing the player to attempt to elude capture by running away and trying to loose your pursuers.

       Unfortunatly the next balancing topic of Competition vs. Cooperation is almost entirly out of the question in our game as it is a single player working alone in a closed environment. The actions and the results of those actions are the players choices alone.

       When looking at Short vs. Long and balancing them, the goal for this game is to have 7 levels that essentially will only take as long to complete as the player takes to kill NPCs and get blood back to the Flower. If a player wishes, then can attempt to kill the first NPC they find and try and get away with it, or instead try and plan out the safest way to approace the problem.


        Rewards in our game are a bit less straightfoward than many of the other things in the game. By design the player is a child in an old run down orphanage, killing people in order to feed the Flower Below then orphanage. What we have decided is that portions of the game are going to be blocked off depending on what day it is and eventually the player gains access to more and more parts of the map. then they can obtain different weapons depending on where they are, and more ways to kill people. Though at eh same time for each kill that you feed to the Flower, we are thinking about gving the Player slight buffs or powers to play with.

     Punishment in our game is also a bit different as the way it is set up is the player cant be caught killing a person. If they are the day will reset and they have another go. But at the same there has to be a reason for they player to be stealthy. our solution to that is that the adults that are in the orphanage will take away weapons from the player if they see them, or punish them by sending them to their room if they are acting strangely or disobediently. This punishment will have the affect of setting back the players plans without having the entire level reset if they have spent time working toward a goal.

     As for deciding if our game should involve more Freedom or a more Controlled experience, due to the limitations of time mostly. the game has been limited to 1 building and the grounds around it. To keep it from feeling confining the building will have 3 floors and many rooms, as well as a playground area and some room around it blocked by a fence. Within these confines the player is only really limited by skill and intelligence. There are areas that thy will not be able to get too early on, but as long as they don't get caught, with can wander freely.

      As far as Simplicity vs. Complexity, this is a difficult one. The book describes 2 categories, Innate complexity and Emergent complexity. Innate complexity is when there are lots of exceptions to rules that make the game very difficult to play. While the Emergent complexity is described as balanced surprises, things that keep the game interesting every play through. The hope is that our game presents a variety of ways to play, enough that many play throughs are warranted, while still being simple enough that we have the time to finish it.

Finally, when looking at Detail vs. Imagination the book has some interesting suggestions. The first is that when making a game, only detail what you can do well, and has the very helpful advice that if voice acting is hard to pull off, then Subtitles are a very cheap and easy thing to implement that allows the player to let their own imagination fill in the voice of the characters. our current play involves voice acting but we may simply limit that to the important parts of the game and let the imagination of the player give them personalities. The other bits of advice are less easy though, giving details the imagination can use or that inspire imagination are very vague statements. Both use chess as an example of creating a fantasy of war that I honestly never even would consider even when i was younger. The best i can think is that things like weapons or poisons would be easily identifiable without details of how they work. A bat is something you just hit someone with and a vial of poison will kill someone sneakily. The player would know that and it requires no more effort than creating the items to implement.