How to Create a Design Portfolio - Part IV: Game Balance & Playtesting

So we've looked at the broad aspects of Mechanics Design and Level Design and potentially have a working game. Generally the refinement of a game comes via Game Balance and Playtesting (the latter part is essential to get proper game balancing in my opinion).

Game Balancing

Game Balance is a wide and complex topic, and a design skill that is often overlooked. The approach to balancing can also differ greatly between projects ore even between individual designers.

Simulation
Simulation is the concept of roughing out your gameplay in a reduced form - this might take the form of a board game, a spreadsheet, or a myriad of other ways.

The idea is to simulate the concepts and math behind the mechanics and by doing so, tune the various numbers that make it up. Generally I find the spreadsheet approach works best for modelling more complex games, as you can model in detail the underlying math that is involved.

Board Games, or Card Games can work well for digital versions of turn based video games, and allow the designer to see if the numbers for the turn system work. It can also result in some fun board games!

Data Analysis 
Rather than simulating the game, the other approach to game balance is to analyse data to look for patterns, or to calculate specific values that help you determine the game balance. Almost always this will take the form of a spreadsheet, as it really is the best way of laying out numerical data and creating charts, etc to visualize this data.

When balancing mechanics you need to determine a value to balance against. This will vary depending on what aspect you are attempting to balance:

• Damage Balancing - in an action game the likeliest method for balancing weaponry is based on Damage Per Second (often abbreviated as dps).
• Cost Balancing - if you are looking to balance the cost of items then you need to establish the worth of each element. The criteria for determining worth will be based on the main mechanical purpose of the elements in question (for example weapons are likely to be determined by dps).
• Ammo / Charge - distribution of ammo or level of charge for a weapon or skill is balanced by working out the ideal level at which ammo / charge should be kept compared to the number of shots to take down an enemy.
• XP / Levelling - determining how fast you want a player to level is the first step, from there you can work out the amount given per kill. You'll then want to increase the bar for each subsequent level so that you can prevent farming of XP in lower level areas.

Playtesting

Showing playtesting in your portfolio can be a little tricky, but there are a couple of ways you can approach the subject and prove your thinking in regards to playtesting methods:

• Create a playtesting plan for a specific game
• Detail elements that might be suitable for instrumentation
• Analyse data from an existing game and create a plan for improvements

Ideally you'd have your own game on which to perform these actions, but even without this you could use existing games to test your mettle.

Playtesting Plan

A playtesting plan should specify the conditions for playtesting, and the specific purposes of each test. There is a lot of great information about playtesting that can be gleaned from the web, but the real masters of this are are Microsoft User Research. Now these guys have state of the art equipment and environment for studying users playing the game, so unless you are detailing the playtesting of a AAA game, you are unlikely to be able to replicate their exact methods. You can however make sensible suggestions to get similar results with less equipment, and also detail what type of questions you might ask to gain insight as to how players are feeling playing the game.

Instrumentation Variables

Instrumentation is the act of outputting data from the game into a database so that various mechanics can be analysed and player progress monitored in detail. The type of data will of course depend on the game you are making, but typically you want to track various categories of data:

• Injury / Death - when a player is close to death, or where death actually occurs 
• Actions - places where particular actions are performed (combat, jumping, etc)
• Time - where players are at particular times - can be used to see when players are stuck)
• Fun - prompting the player to score their enjoyment at specific intervals can be used to see where players are or are not enjoying the experience

These data points should also store positional data, so that you can create Heat Maps - information that can be overlaid onto layout maps to see where particular events are occurring.

Data Analysis and Change Implementation

Data Analysis is required to make sense of any information gathered through questionnaires and via Instrumentation. This generally is done via either a spreadsheet and charts (particularly for questionnaire and mechanics data) and Heat Maps - positional data mapped onto a layout map. Heat Maps have been used in a lot of statistical analysis, even in sports such as Baseball. They are particularly useful for level design issues.

Ideally you'd have performed playtesting on your own game and have your own data sets to work with, but without this information you can attempt to perform analysis on existing data - such as Heat Maps shown for games such as Halo.

Determining how to interpret the data and present a list of suggested changes can be a lot trickier. Really a lot of it has to do with the philosophy of the game - what are the core themes of a particular level? Is the game ammo starved? Is the player meant to feel powerful or vulnerable?

Analyze each of the problems, then present a list of changes that you feel would correct these issues and detail how they would resolved the problem (without impacting something else).

If you are analyzing your own game then determining this philosophy is your own task. If you're analyzing an existing game, then you will have to show evidence of how you would balance a particular element to suit the game's approach. The latter can be harder to get right - particularly if you are presenting this data to the team from which the game originated.

Conclusion

Game Balance and Playtesting are two fundamental skills that a designer must learn. As a portfolio piece they can be difficult to display adequately. However, it is unlikely that many other applicants will bother to show their skills in these fields, so presenting such information can be the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd.