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Game Designer Conceptions of Game Balance: To whom do Game Designers Balance their Games?
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Game Design.
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Game Design.
2019 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This study surveys game designers about how they conceptualize game balance. We base our investigation into those conceptions on our theories about how game balance seeks to equalize the strength of strategies and that strength depends on the player using the strategy. Therefore, we argue that any conception of game balance has to focus on one or many players in order to be coherent. We use this theory and create a questionnaire with questions featuring situations in which one player to be prioritized over another with regards to balance. The participant must then answer which of these players they prioritize. In addition, we divide “developers” as a group into indie and aspiring developers and analyze the difference in answers and look at what those two groups self-report as more important in their balancing decision making; marketing and business or their own conceptions of game balance. We found that indie developers preferred balancing towards player who discuss the game a lot on forums while aspiring developers preferred balancing towards the average player. Both kinds of developers preferred making good strategies weaker compared to making bad strategies stronger for an arbitrary player.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2019. , p. 39
Keywords [en]
Video games, Game balance, Game development, Developer opinion, Artificial Intelligence
National Category
Design Computer Sciences Media and Communications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-541941OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-541941DiVA, id: diva2:1910823
Subject / course
Game Design
Educational program
Bachelor's Programme in Game Design and Programming
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2024-11-06 Created: 2024-11-05 Last updated: 2025-12-01Bibliographically approved

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