Category Archives: Talks

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XIX

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And there it is! The big detail!

It’s a large change. It’s very easy to convince yourself that you can feel tiny changes, but you will be fooling yourself. The balance never hinges on a 2% difference in a single value!

It was a smaller change than we tried initially. I think originally we changed it to 0.9, which broke the flow and wrecked the weapon, but did fix the problem, so we knew we were on the right track. In general, you want to overshoot and then come back. You have to make sure your change accomplishes your goal, and then dial it back.


There are lots of ways to verify that a change was successful. In this case, the Sniper Rifle didn’t get any less popular; People still use it whenever they can get it. But Optimizers stopped using it exclusively.


The other reason we could tell it was balanced was because we could compare how the behavior we were seeing in playtests matched the desired role we described in our paper design. It’s not quite an objective test, but it should help. And most importantly, I no longer got nervous when I watched people use the Sniper Rifle. You should verify a change with both your brains and your guts.


Ship it!

At this point during my GDC talk, the audience started clapping, cluing me into the fact that I was completely out of time.
So I just went with the flow and ended it there, which was fine. I had walked people through the balancing process, brought up the important principles, and applied them to the sniper rifle change. But I had also intended to mention a couple of things about the last stages of balancing, which I will get into next week!

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XVIII

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Here’s what we didn’t do. We didn’t touch the Strength Knobs. In most cases, they aren’t the problem anyway. When a weapon is being used as intended, it should feel overpowered. So most imbalances come from using a weapon outside its role, in which case changing the strength knobs won’t fix anything, it will just make the weapon worse.

We also didn’t try to add a weaknesses. It often feels like the only option, but find something else! That sort of “a little hot, a little cold” design never ends. You’ll just chase your tail until you run out of time.

Your strategy should be to find where the element is being used outside of its designated role, and change the mechanics to constrain it better.


But if you can’t touch the Strength Knobs, you have to touch the Flow Knobs. (Remember, there isn’t anything else, because we removed all the extraneous mechanics!) The tricky part is to fine tune those Flow Knobs without losing the flow state you worked so hard to capture. Revisit them in light of what you now know about the game and don’t change them so far that you break flow.

Of the components of flow, cadence is the most flexible, so many problems can be fixed by adjusting cadence. Hopefully not so far that you lose the rhythm.

Most importantly, at this point you must not rely on your gut, it will steer you wrong! You need a very clear chain of cause and effect, so you can make as small a change as possible to fix the problem.


So what are the possible flow knobs we can tweak? What will achieve the balance objective with the least amount of ripple effect?

We could have changed the number of shots in a clip. That would have changed the cadence to cause the player to reload more often. But it would also have meant a sniper couldn’t kill two enemies without reloading unless he got a headshot. That would have ratcheted up the pressure quite a bit, and moved the Sniper Rifle out of the skill range of most players.

We could have increased the length of the reload. But dying because you can’t fire back is frustrating. To be honest, this change was a contender, but it felt too much like adding a weakness.


We could have changed the time to it took the Sniper Rifle to reach full zoom. We actually tried this as a solution (and found some bugs in the camera code, too!) But in the end, it encouraged players to fire without zooming, which broke the role worse than the original issue. In fact, it exasperated the problem of players using the Sniper Rifle at close range.

We also could have prevented the Sniper Rifle from doing headshots when unzoomed. Unfortunately, this removes a uniquely cool moment, which even average players can experience if they get lucky.


We could have changed the maximum total ammo. The problem is, this would have limited the overall effectiveness of the Sniper Rifle without changing the experience of any individual combat encounter. (For more on the perils of this technique, read Against Statistical Design.)

Finally, we could have changed the time between shots. We didn’t choose this option immediately; we tried, tested and reverted almost every value on this list. In the end, increasing the time between shots was the only one that fixed the balance problem with a minimum of side-effects.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XVII

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This is the point in development where we finally changed the Sniper Rifle. Now I will try to describe how all the work from previous passes informed this decision…


The Sniper Rifle was overpowered — that’s what we intended, remember – but it made the other aspects of the game feel weaker.  We couldn’t make the rest of the arsenal strong enough to keep the Sniper Rifle in line.  One way we could tell was because the players we had picked out as Optimizers were using it exclusively.  Role Players, on the other hand, were still not using it, but suffering for it.


Worse, the Sniper Rifle was being used at close quarters, which is clearly outside of its role.  And nothing the targeted player could do would allow them to avoid being sniped.


When something impacts you emotionally we say we were “moved”.  Emotions are what compel you to act — not graphs and data.  Use your Sense of Balance to feel when something is wrong and trust those instincts.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XVI

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Sometimes you have to let your head drive.

I’ve claimed in this talk that your rational brain is a feeble instrument and cannot handle the volume of input associated with balancing a multiplayer game. This is true, but that is not an excuse for presenting your design decisions as inexplicable black magic guided solely by intuition and guesswork. You need to have solid design values that you can point to as a general explanation for how you make decisions, and then provide specific reasons and supporting data when necessary to convince the team. Just because you don’t have time to carefully examine every detail doesn’t mean you can’t logically examine any decision. Other designers and developers have instincts, too; if they clash with yours take it as a sign that you need to look closer.


Here are some good design values to use when balancing a complicated game system. First, fix imbalance with physics when you can, and only revert to math when required. The player cannot directly experience the math behind the system, so tweaking elements by changing mathematical formulas is difficult to perceive, tough to evaluate and even if it does fix the problem in the long-term, it may not feel fixed. Of course, at their most basic level all video games software are math, so it may be impossible to address a problem without making changes to numbers and equations, but don’t resort to that immediately. I think a lot of designers got their start with board games and pen-and-paper RPGs, where the math is explicit, but modern games are simulations and respond more readily to behavioral changes than to statistical ones.


Hey look, a totally fair game… A totally boring, pointless, frustrating, fair game.


You cannot make a Sniper Rifle fair. The person being sniped cannot counter-attack, faces near-instant death, and usually doesn’t even know they are in a fight until it is too late! If you make fairness your goal you will end up removing all the interesting asymmetry from the game. Instead, focus on longevity. Create a Sniper Rifle that doesn’t make the person that was sniped want to quit, and you will succeed.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XV

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Without anyone getting kicked in the face…


You always need to listen when people don’t like something. You are too close to the game; You probably already fixed all the things you didn’t like, so you should value a fresh perspective. Keep in mind that you can always trust someone’s emotional reactions, they are always authentic and valuable, but never just blindly take their advice. The designer’s job is to separate emotional feedback from thoughtful suggestions and treat the appropriately.


Before you can interpret someone’s feedback, you need to understand the source. Feedback means “the game in my head is different” and often times your response to feedback should be to probe about what kind of game they are imagining. You don’t necessarily need to agree on the game you are making to benefit from their feedback; they probably represent some portion of your audience.

You see Development Bias a lot with the public when the development process is very open. Playtesters know the game isn’t finished, they know you expect them to provide constructive criticism, so they become a lot more sensitive and more likely to complain. Once the game is on the shelves, those small problems fade into the background and players rarely notice them.


You also need to understand the source of feedback; If you can categorize someone’s play style, it will help you understand how to react to their feedback. You can weight their comments appropriately.
Here are some examples:
(The names have been changed to protect the guilty)


I used to balance “Easy” by playing with my nose (true story) but Steve still couldn’t beat it. I miss that guy, he was incredibly useful for balancing.


Even more important than categorizing other players, you need to understand your own playstyle. For instance, I’m a “role-player”, so I tend to ignore small balance problems if the results are still dramatic. I have to recruit “pros” that are more sensitive to useless or underpowered elements.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XIV

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If you were disciplined in writing your paper design, and stayed firm while doing setting up the rough balance, this stage should be very rewarding and exciting.  If not, it is going to be disappointing and frustrating.


The timing for this stage is tricky.  If you start too early, your balance changes will be swallowed up by the churn of new features coming online.  If you wait too long, the rough balance will become entrenched and the team will object to changes.  Generally, this coincides with a “First Playable” build where everything is at least in the game and functioning.

It’s crucially important to communicate this new phase to the rest of the team, so they know what to expect and understand that now is the time for them to give the feedback they have been patiently waiting to deliver. One way to do that is to implement a controlled opportunity for them to play the latest build and provide their feedback in a structured format.  Make sure you tell them what you are currently working on, so their responses will be relevant, but don’t tell them exactly what has changed or you may bias their opinions.


So how do you balance a Sniper Rifle? It is not by adding weaknesses!  Don’t undo the work you did in making it powerful!  Balance it by narrowing its role through limitations.


The best way to detect which elements need to be limited is by watching for the game to become predictable.  If the same strategy is being used in a variety of different situations, to the point where players are no longer required to think about which strategy to choose, it means an element is too useful outside of its designated role.  If the Sniper Rifle is not only the best weapon at long range, but players are carrying it indoors and using it against vehicles, it needs to be constrained.  Give it some time first, because the playtesters might just not have figured out the new balance yet, but if it is consistent for a few tests, start looking for ways to limit the dominant element.

On the other hand, if the game is completely unpredictable, it is a sign that the elements are not effective enough at their roles.  A truly random strategy should never be as good as intentionally selecting an element that is strong in the desired role.  It may also be a symptom of a role going unfulfilled.  If there is no Sniper Rifle, the Shotgun and the SMG are equally terrible at long range combat, so it doesn’t matter which one you choose.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XIII

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Certain things about the Sniper Rifle make it strong. (Here are a few of them, for reference.) Just like with the Fun Knobs, you want to know what makes something strong, so you can avoid backtracking. Once you move on to the polish stage, resist changing the strength of an element. (At least without admitting that you are doing it, and reflecting in the schedule.)


Don’t do half measures, if you find something that works, CRANK IT! This is especially true of power. Make everything overpowered without fear! To paraphrase The Incredibles… If everything is overpowered, nothing is.

This is the most important slide in the entire talk! It’s so easy to understand, and so difficult to stick to without wavering.


So at this point, the Flow Knobs are set, The Power Knobs are set… It’s time to flatten the rest! Eliminate the chaos and noise, put your design through the cleansing fire and get rid of all the extraneous detail. This stage takes discipline, it is the point at which you must stop adding new ideas, and start closing out the design. Luckily, if you set a determined course, you will find yourself with plenty of time at the end to add all the fine detail and polish that you want.


Assuming you are working on a game that has both single and multiplayer, you should balance for multiplayer first. Multiplayer balance is very unforgiving, live opponents will exploit any loopholes. The AI in singleplayer are a lot more flexible and malleable, so the balance doesn’t need to be as precise.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XII

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Notice that these guys are getting stronger and stronger as we go?


I actually got this bug. Not only is it balance feedback presented with the authority of a bug report, it’s so incredibly early in the process, there is no way to know if the Sniper Rifle was balanced or not, since most of the game didn’t even work! Ideally, production would help shield a designer from this kind of inappropriate feedback, but in all likelihood they are the ones filing it in the first place.  [Pause for laugh]

Remember, you are getting paid to be the designer, it is your duty to use your best judgment and not swing back and forth based on the latest feedback, especially at this early stage. Hopefully the team will understand that and you will get to see it through.


If you design by committee, you end up like these guys.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail XI

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So how do you recognize strength when you see it? How can you train yourself to appreciate strength?


The first way to develop a sense for strength is to change the balance constantly. People hate it because it resets their competence, but it will prevent them from optimizing their skills and their strategies. One theory about Beginner’s Luck is that when you first attempt a new skill your brain is very engaged and thinks the entire action through very carefully. On subsequent tries, your brian gets lazy and tries to take shortcuts, so you are more likely to be successful on your first try than on subsequent tries. Also, development is hard, and deadlines are approaching, so the temptation is to lock things down as soon as possible. Resist temptation and keep the balance changing until you find the true strength of the game elements.


As you strengthen an element, the other elements become relatively weaker. After a pass through the elements, you will find that the first one can no longer compete, and must be strengthened again. Keep doing this until all the elements feel powerful.


This guy is really good at Halo…


Pro-players often complain that “The guys making decisions suck at their own game” and it’s true! I’ll admit that I’m not very good at Halo. I’ll even claim that I’m not good on purpose! The problem is that the dopamine released for being a good player is the same as the chemical reward for being a good game designer. Since you can’t tell the difference, you may mistake the thrill of winning for the satisfaction of balancing the game. You should always feel like you are learning about your game, and if you start to feel like you have mastered it you need to change something so you aren’t good again.


You must acknowledge your own tendency to optimize and ignore problems once they have become familiar. Don’t work on the same element for too long, don’t become comfortable. If something feels so familiar you stop noticing it, change it.


At the same time, if something is right, if it is just perfect and you don’t want to lose it, you need to play it so much that it becomes part of you. I can still, after years and years, drive a new Warthog and tell you if it is tuned correctly or not. I’m known in the Animation Pit as “Three Frames” Griesemer, because if they added a single extra frame to a Halo melee attack I could tell immediately. You need to hone your sensitivity by playing with a finely tuned element over and over until it is ingrained in your muscle memory.

GDC 2010: Design in Detail X

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A big part of knowing if something is strong or not is Affordance, a visual clue to the function of an object. Strength tends to be obvious; it’s not a hidden feature that a player is going to have to guess at. If an object doesn’t have affordance, it probably doesn’t have a strength. [Read more about Affordance]


This book is a hardcore textbook and it rocks. (And by that I mean it is dense and hurts your head.) The authors define competence this way and try to show that the desire to show competence is a major human motivator.


Sniping starts off hard, but the more you learn, the more competent you get. In general, strengths are things you can get good at, meaning you can demonstrate competence at using an element’s strengths. But why is competence so important?


Because competence is an implicit motivator and remember, balance is longevity, so you need your players to have long-term motivation.

[To be continued…]

Balance of Power II

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Tank Beats Everything

Even in the case where an element cannot be limited by role, it can be limited by availability.  Sometimes the Player should feel overpowered, either as a reward for a good player or as a temporary boost for an average player.  A game that is nothing but a relentless competence test can become monotonous, especially once a player has reached the limits of their physical ability to get better.  Giving them an occassional taste of unmitigated power relieves the pressure to perform and is an excellent palate cleanser.  An element that is fun and fulfills a player aspiration but can’t be limited to a single role is an excellent candidate for this experience.

No mana? No problem!

Take that, Rock, Paper and Scissors

A successful transition from “balanced” to “overpowered” usually requires some changes, though.  It needs to be exaggerated so the sounds, effects, even the fiction, match the new power level.  It should become a featured element on a single level or two, the player should feel special for getting to use it, and the enemy resistance should be ratched up as well to highlight how strong they have become.  The element should also be made as modal as possible, so the player knows when the “overpowered” experience begins and it is clear when it is supposed to end and resume normal gameplay.

In a Corner

Let’s say an overpowered element doesn’t fit in any of these categories.  It isn’t just a perceived imbalance, the other elements can’t be strengthened to an equivalent power level, the role can’t be limited or enforced, and it isn’t appropriate for an over-the-top set piece.  If nothing else can be done, it has to be weakened somehow, right?  Let me tell you about The Needler…

The Needler is a weapon from the Halo series.  It fires a stream of neon pink projectiles that actively track enemy targets.  On impact, each needle embeds itself into armor or flesh, remaining there for a few seconds before detonating and causing further damage.  If a character ever has more than 5-6 needles attached at any given time, they all explode in a particularly lethal chain-reaction known as the “Pink Mist”.  It first appeared in Halo 1 and was the bane of my existence for 10+ years because it was incredibly fun to use, but equally impossible to balance.

Like this, only a couple feet lower

I feel a headache coming on

It would start out too powerful, so we would weaken it.  Which would make it useless, so we would change the mechanics.  Which would make it effective in too many situations, so we would limit its placement.  We ended up drastically weakening it right before we shipped to prevent it from wrecking the game.  Three times!  The amount of effort, thought, debate, programming and art resources, playtesting surveys, data analysis and sleepless nights that were poured into the Needler far outpace any four other weapons combined.

So, even if an element cannot be balanced in any other way, the answer is still not to weaken it, but to cut it completely.  It is too difficult to weaken an element without destroying what made it fun in the first place, and the end results won’t be worth the hassle.  It’s best to just save it for another game where it will fit without compromise.

Balance of Power

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“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another”

-Proverbs 27:17  [ESV]

“The whats-it is too powerful.”  It could be a weapon, an RTS unit, a character in a fighting game, a multiplayer class… it doesn’t matter because all chronic balance problems follow the same general pattern.  The game starts to revolve around a single dominant element, which is inherently overpowered and reduces the game’s strategic complexity, ultimately limiting its longevity.  Nobody notices when a single element is too weak, because they just avoid it.  And nobody complains when a dominant element increases strategic complexity, because that makes the game better and more fun.  And a simple problem, like a damage value that is just set too high, usually has a simple solution that is quickly applied.  But for chronic, fundamental balance problems, the designer is repeatedly faced with the same decision.  Should the dominant element be weakened for the sake of balance?  (Hint:  The correct answer is always “NO!”)

Perception is Reality

First, it is important to recognize that the only “balance” that matters is the balance that players perceive.  The goal of balance is longevity, and if players continue to play because they believe the game is fair, it doesn’t matter if it is objectively balanced in some measurable sense.  In fact, if a large enough community perceives the game to be balanced, but your metrics claim it isn’t, then the metrics are wrong.

Nice Gear

Sometimes power is deceptive

So often the problem isn’t that an element is too powerful, but that it feels too powerful.  Maybe its a gun with a really great firing sound.  Or a new unit that players haven’t figured out how to counter yet.  Or perhaps it appeals more to skilled players or everyone is using it because it is new and novel.  These problems usually fix themselves if they are left alone.  I changed the perception of an “overpowered” weapon during Halo’s development just by announcing that I had fixed it (even though I hadn’t actually changed anything.)

The Tooth Fairy is Overpowered

In almost every case, there is no such thing as an “overpowered” element; there are well-tuned elements in a crowd of underpowered, ill-tuned alternatives.  The Sniper class is implemented and all of the sudden you can’t take three steps without being headshot from across the map.  The problem is not that the Sniper is strong, but that the Medic and the Engineer are weak.  It’s easier to make a potent Sniper, so it immediately outclasses the rest.  Instead of spending time figuring out how to cripple the Sniper, focus on making the other classes equally awesome.  Or better yet, ditch the ones that will never feel as powerful as the Sniper and choose different classes that have their own natural strengths.

Get it? Because neither one exists!

His only weakness is his terrible agent

 

Too Powerful, or All-Powerful?

In the paper design balance pass, every element should have been given a role to fill.  Sometimes an element breaks the balance by breaking its designated role.  An anti-vehicle missile that can be used against a crowd of infantry.  A “glass cannon” that can hold his own in a melee fight.  A long-distance weapon that is just as effective at point-blank range.  The solution in this case is not to weaken the element, but to restrict it so that its strength cannot be applied in as many situations.

Often it takes ingenuity to limit a weapon without weakening it, but it isn’t as difficult as it might seem initially.  A global weakness will affect the player in every situation, so a heavy-handed global weakness will be a constant irritation.  But a specific limitation will only be felt when an element is being used outside its role, which a player can learn to avoid, eliminating the annoyance entirely.  Nobody complains that their fancy sports car doesn’t work underwater, they just stay on the bridge.

[Continued in Balance of Power II]

GDC 2010: Design in Detail IX

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Ok, now you have a flowing Sniper Rifle and all the other weapons are fun by themselves. How do you put them together?


This slide is for the Engineers. Design needs to start doing rough balancing in the middle of production, probably before you hit any kind of Code Complete milestones. Properly supporting the designers this early in the project is going to be mean violating several best practices, but we need as much time to iterate as possible.

First, we need a solid build at all times. Easy for me to say, right? But stability is important. If the build is broken it interrupts the balance process and I have to start over. And if you don’t maintain the gameplay systems the whole time, the game will not have time to get fun. It sucks, but that’s why you are working on games and not productivity software.

I know the theory is to “optimize at the end”, but it is impossible to balance a game with poor performance. Not everything has to run at a playable framerate; you can turn off lighting or textures or whatever it takes, but designers need a responsive platform on which to build. Imagine coding if you couldn’t see what you typed until two seconds after you typed it. That’s what it is like trying to tune a game with bad framerate.

For example, I have seen this in playtest after playtest. If you a level doesn’t have good lighting in a playtest build, the AI will score lower. People will think it looks stupid for some unknown reason. I don’t know why, but it shows how performance problems make it hard to balance the game.


During this pass, you are balancing strength.


In What the Dog Saw, Gladwell tries to figure out why there are 50 kinds of mustard, but just one kind of Ketchup. He concludes that Heinz is the best because it has all of the tastes in balanced proportions.


Heinz Ketchup has every flavor your tongue can taste. Here’s some of the ingredients: tomatoes (bitter), vinegar (sour), corn syrup (sweet), salt (uh… salt) And then you put it on french fries (umami). Every flavor is strong (ie has a high amplitude) but they are still balanced against one another.


Halo is like ketchup! It has lots of very strong elements, but since they are all strong they blend together into a balanced whole. In fact, without strength balance is much more difficult, because random factors destabilize the experience. A game with weak elements is like ketchup with weak flavors; if they become weak enough you start to taste the plastic from the bottle and the rat poop from the bottling plant.

[To be continued…]

GDC 2010: Design in Detail VIII

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This picture has nothing to do with the topic, I just loved it.


Certain settings have a lot more impact on how fun an element is than others. Usually they must be set precisely in order to maximize the player’s flow. Make sure to note these values for later so you know what you can change and what you should avoid messing with at later stages.


In general, flow knobs tend to be those that are limited in one extreme. You can’t make a sniper rifle round travel faster than “instantly”. You can’t make it more lethal than “always lethal”. Try to set these knobs to the extreme without compromising. It is tempting to hedge and compromise because you know you will have to balance their strength later, but the game will be more fun if you find another way.

[To be continued…]

GDC 2010: Design in Detail VI

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After paper design, we move to initial settings. Usually there is a period in between while the programmers build the system into the game.


Some of the best producers I have worked with really understood the fact that this stage needs some breathing room!


How many of you are familiar with the concept of Flow? Lots of talks have been done on this, I’m going to assume you know what I am talking about, in general.
The problem is, he wrote in the ‘70s, he doesn’t address video games. So what does flow look like in a video game?


Smiling makes you happy; laughing makes you healthy. Certain finger movements make you have flow. We call that Cadence! This timing for the Sniper Rifle is very specific, because the cadence determines the type of flow created. It is different for different weapons or different parts of the game, but cadence is important in all kinds of flow.


Verisimilitude: the quality of seeming to be true. For controls this means that the physical action of your character in some way corresponds to (or at least doesn’t clash with) the action taken by the player. Remember the Paper Design for Halo 1? It speculated that zoom was on a trigger. If I could go back in time, it probably would be.


The sniper rifle doesn’t unzoom as soon as you fire your last shot (even though that would be more efficient). It unzooms with a slight delay so you can see the results of your last shot. Why is this important?
Studies have shown that blue sleeping pills work better. They are chemically identical, but the placebo effect is enormous. Slow-mo explosions look more “real”. Ask any action director, authentic explosions look fake because we have been looking at slow ones for so long. Your brain has expectations and when those expectations are met, the effect is amplified and that encourages your brain to maintain flow.

Let me tell you a story.


The Sniper Rifle looks great on YouTube because you can really follow the action.  Even someone that has never played Halo can figure out what happened.  Maintining a thread from beginning to end is a key component of staying in the flow state.  For more information, check a specific post I wrote on the topic.

[Continued]