Balancing Bedlam

How balancing works, and why it matters.

- Xalavier Nelson Jr

Balancing is a vague and contentious term for a vital game development process. As Lemma developer Evan Todd puts it, “Balancing is the process of tweaking mechanics, and especially numbers, to reveal what a game really wants to be.” It’s revealing how Evan focuses on the numbers in this process. As glamorous as it might seem to be a game designer, determining what elements of a game are tweaked and how, many of these decisions come down to changing a set of values in a spreadsheet.

Yik-Sian Seow, developer of turn-based rouge-like Steam Marines, defined balancing as, “Making sure that out of the tools you give to the player, all are viable and none are too out of step in terms of effective power level.” The first thing that goal requires is a lot of tests. Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games, developer of Regency Solitaire and upcoming solitaire/ RPG mashup Shadowhand, found this fact firsthand.