Essays
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The "Laws of Online World Design" in various forms.
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A Theory of Fun for Game Design
My book on why games matter and what fun is.
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A book I started and never finished outlining the basics of online world design.
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Raphael Koster.
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The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily endorsed by any former or current employer.
Another post from MUD-Dev.
There's a philosophical question to ask ourselves, one alluded to in that Shannon Appelcline essay that Michael Tresca just referenced. To what degree is "balance" something that we as designers desperately pursue, as opposed to the "balance" that players pursue?
After all, if there's an overpowered class according to player perception, they seek and find equilibrium. The correct proportion of each class naturally emerges, as players who are too invested in particular character archetypes refuse to change, and those who are min-maxers pursue the class or profession du jour. Often a designer's "fix to balance" doesn't come along until well after this new equilibrium has been reaches, so all it does is upset players, rather than aid in this mythical "game balance" anyway.
So the philosophical question is, if something is out of whack, should we as designers care? Do we need to always have everything in mathematical perfection?
As an example of where we are wrestling with this in Star Wars Galaxies--we have several very large overlapping constituencies of likely players. One, for example, is all those players who want to be Jedi. And Jedi, frankly, crush everything else in the setting. Then there's all these players who want to be melee fighters. All those who want to be Rebels and Imperials.
In the movies, the Rebels win by luck and pluck. It's not surprising that many players want to play Rebels. They are also all continuity fanatics, and keep insisting that everything be as like the movies as possible. If it were, the Rebels would wink out of existence in the first week the servers went live. We as designers feel an imperative to supply balance there simply because otehrwise, a major attractant to the game goes away.
On the other hand, we're just plain giving up on the issue of melee combat. A good ranged guy is always gonna take a good close quarters guy, and there's no getting past that. Yes, we've innvested a fair amount of time in vibroblades and stun poles and what have you, and there's skills to learn for melee, motioan captured moves, and all sorts of goodness. But really, we already know the min-maxers won't use that stuff. So it's there for those whose self-image really calls for it.
Lastly, there's those pesky Jedi. They're barely balanceable. So we're making them extremely rare (and no, I'm not going to say how, not even here. ;) and we're going ahead and giving them the power. They're gonna be superbeings, and if you see one, run.
Mathematically elegant? No, not really. But frankly, I'm going to sacrifice the "balance" for the sake of the players' wish-fulfillment.
We're getting asked whether the crafters and the peaceful people will get equal access to the goodies as the people who are declared Rebels and Imperials. Well, the answer is yes and no. There's perks on both sides. Are they "balanced"? I don't know. My main concern is whether the two playstyl;es each have fulfilling gameplay that they find fun. They're not even advancing on the same scales, so that they do not feel like they have to compare themselves. Nonetheless, they already do, and I don't doubt they always will.
Yeah, it may be heretical as a game designer, but I think balance is overrated. Fun is more important.
