Whatever you do with the rules, it's important that they have balance. And what do I mean by that? Well, here's a short example. Hey, do you want to play an awesome game I just made up? >> Oh boy, awesome games are my favorite kind of games. >> Great, it's called super checkers. It's like regular checkers, only I start with the regular number of 20 checkers and you start with just one checker. That makes your checker 20 times more important to you, and it makes the game 20 times more challenging for you. What do you think? >> You have ruined checkers. >> Clearly, this would not be a balanced game for both players. How do you make a multi-player game that has balance? The easiest way is to have both characters start with identical abilities. In this example, we'd go back to the regular game of checkers with both players starting with the same number of checkers. What happens though when you want a game where both players need to have different abilities? That's where we need to think about balance in our rules. Now most of you have seen this before. Think of Street Fighter type games. There is usually a choice between characters with different advantages and disadvantages. A character might be powerful but slow. Another might be weaker but fast. Ideally, none of the character choices should be a guarantee of victory or defeat. If that were the case, why play the game? Try out your character balances with play testers and if they can't all agree which character is the best choice, it's a good sign. Let's go back to Super Checkers and try to fix it. It's no fun if one person has twenty checkers and another only has one. There's no balance there. But what if the person with only one checker could make five moves in a row or move backwards or what if their checker could shoot lasers. You could draw an imaginary line on the board and it could zap opponents along the sight lines. I mean these changes can make the game more balanced. People might want to try both the 20-checker character and the 1-checker character instead of feeling like they're stuck with the bad character. Of course, this would need some play testing to make sure things are balanced. And numbers would need to be tweaked. Maybe you could only get 5 laser blasts or a few consecutive moves. It would need some testing. >> Oh, I volunteer to test the super checkers. Where are my lasers? >> Another type of balance we need to talk about in multiplayer games, is a balance between winners and losers. Have you ever played a game where at some point it felt like you were starting to lose and after that, it felt impossible to come back from behind and win? This can be disheartening to a player. It can make them stop trying, and can leave them feeling disconnected from your game. Hopefully a player will always feel like they are capable of winning, until the moment they lose. If you've seen any movies about sports, you know that these movies are rarely made about 60-0 victories. Close games are fun to be a part of, and they're interesting until the end. What are some methods to balance winners and losers in a multiplayer game? Well, there's a reason that when one character zaps another in a first-person shooter game, the loser just doesn't re-spawn right in front of the victorious player. That would not be a challenge. They re-spawn somewhere else where they have a chance to gather their senses and try again. Another example would be a battle type racing game like Mario Kart. Most cars have weapons that fire forward and visibility that's better in the front. This gives the winners a sleight disadvantage, as they can't see or shoot if the player is behind them. It also gives the losing players an advantage, they can pick off the players in front of them and take the lead. Balance is very important in multiplayer games. It's important to give the players an equal chance of winning the game. And it's also important to make sure that the game is designed to be a close game in order to keep it interesting all the way through for both players. And not just the winner.
