BALANCE

Chapter eleven of "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell discusses the importance of having balance when designing a game. As I read this chapter I compared the twelve types of balance with the game my team is currently designing. I found that we have included, purposely excluded, and have not addressed the types of balance. Types of balance range from fairness to simplicity and complexity.

Fairness

      The first type of balance the book discusses is fairness and whether a game is symmetrical and asymmetrical. I believe our game is asymmetrical because we are creating a game with an interesting situation. Our game is centered on a very interesting situation. People in this city have disappeared through a scientific experiment and Carla, the main character, finds out this was the doing of her colleague. She tries to find out what happens through exploration. This situation causes for an asymmetrical game that will require a lot of balancing. It is important that our game is fair and provides a challenge to all those who play.

Challenge vs. Success

      Challenges in our game include puzzles, encountering lab assistants, and the overall challenge to collect all the pages to the lab notebook. The book stresses the necessity to have good balance between challenge and success. We do not want our game to be too hard or too easy. We have planned for our game to be balanced in this regard. Our challenges will accommodate a variety of skill sets and be a mixture of easy and hard puzzles depending on the level the player is on. Also, Carla will encounter two lab assistants who also survived the experiment. One will be of help to Carla while the other will be more on the side the colleague that has cause this disaster. The level of challenges will increase as the gameplay goes on with several types of puzzles to conqueror. The player should be able to achieve success on all the challenges they will encounter.

Skill vs. Chance/ Heads vs. Hands

         A game should have a good balance of skill and chance. We want the players of our game to take risks and to be subject to some judgment. Majority of our game is directed towards chance as Carla explores through the game space for these missing pages; however, some skill is required to solve the puzzles within the levels. This goes hand in hand with the balance of physical and intellectual skill. Players should be expecting an intellectual challenge when playing our game through solving the puzzles. There will be a physical component to our game because our game does have the platform aspect. To create a good balance of physical and mental, the player's brain will have a chance to relax as Carla navigates throughout the building.

Short vs. Long

      Time has been mentioned in our group meetings but the length of game play has not been address but we recognize that there needs to be a good balance between short and long. We have considered implementing a time limit on the puzzles to make the game more interesting. Also, finding the first set of pages may be faster to find than the pages toward the end of the game.

Rewarding

      We hope that our game will overall be rewarding. There are three types of rewards our game consist of based on the text. We will use completion, gateway and resources. Clearly, Carla collecting all of the pages and finding out what happened to the city people at the end of the game is an example of a completion reward. Carla will need to solve puzzles. With the completion of these puzzles, she will be rewarded with a key card or code to gain access into a building or room. We as a team have discussed resources, such as, a gun, health bars, and a vending machine for restoration.

Freedom vs. Controlled

      When it comes to freedom and control during our game, Carla has the freedom to navigate through the building until she encounters an area in which she will have to gain access through puzzles. It is debatable that Carla has to much freedom to roam the game, however, that can be fixed with possibly a map or some directions on where she should look for the lab notebook pages.

Simplicity vs. Complexity

      In the beginning our story was too complex and still may be but this is an area the team will have to work toward balancing. We hope that the puzzles will have a level of complexity to it while the game as a whole might be simple.

Detail vs. Imagination

      In our game we have put great detail into the story, maybe even too much. After reading this section on balancing detail and imagination we may want to omit some pieces of the story and leave it up to the player's imagination. During our initial game planning we decided to incorporate detail and scale back where needed, which I believe is easier than not having enough detail and added to it later.

      We hope to continue to refine the balance of our game using the types listed in Schell's book. These types help to improve our game and make sure we have considered and covered all aspects of the design of our game. We may even be able to incorporate triangularly, meaningful choices, and punishment.