Balancing a game

I recently misread a post over on BoardGameNews on the game called Age of Discovery. I thought the writer was talking about Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, but it turns out Age of Discovery is a different game (although with enough similar terms to make me confused.)

In any case, the point of the article was about game balance and it got me thinking. There are clearly some games that have victory conditions that could have been better balanced. I can't believe this is a design choice when one of a few simple possibilities could have been added to the mix to better balance the game.

While that makes a fine discussion in itself, there are a few ways in which a game can be balanced but make me wonder if the game balancing mechanism is more of a cop-out rather than a well thought-out and thoroughly playtested mechanic. I'm talking here about Auctions, natural "pick on the leader" player balancing, and risk management. I'm sure everyone has their own opinion on these, as do I, but whether you like or dislike them I think an argument could be made that they are one of the simplest ways to balance a game that might otherwise have some problems in it. On the one hand, any of these could be added to a poorly balanced game to make it slightly better, but I wonder if some so-so games that incorporate these mechanisms might have made it to the "next level" had the designer found some additional ways to tune their game to rely less on these balancing options.

Lets take them in order. Auctions are found in so many games, and while I enjoy an auction game as much as the next guy I also think some are rather a cop-out when it comes to game balancing. As long as everyone gets a somewhat fair shot at whatever is being bid on it is difficult for an auction based game to become imbalanced. If there is a really juicy, powerful item to be bid on, players can simply bid it up high to make sure things balance out (can you say "Jester in Princes of Florence" - I knew you could....) The main drawback for this style of play balancing is that players simply must know and understand the value of what they're bidding on. Thus, a decent auction game is really only at its best after at least three or four games. Another example is the simple game No Thanks! I really enjoy the game as it is quick to teach and still has some decent decision-making going on. What players are really doing during the game is a sort of reverse auction by bidding on NOT taking cards. The first teaching game I play with people always acts quite strange as some players overvalue the chips and others undervalue the cards. But after two or three games most people settle quickly into a very similar valuation to cards and chips. The fun remains in the game due to its push your luck nature and the fact that it plays fast so taking a risk here or there doesn't doom a player to another hour of painful loss before the game can end.

Expanding upon the auction mechanism for game-balancing is when a designer leaves it up to the players to continue to balance the game as it plays out. Basically, requiring players to "bash the leader" or at least the perceived leader. While nearly every game has some mechanisms that allow players to interact some have very few and limited mechanisms while others have many and encourage lots of player interaction. One extreme might be Goa or other games of its ilk that are sometimes considered “multiplayer solitaire” (although I love Goa.) While the other extreme would be a wargame like Risk where nearly everyone can pick on one person exclusively if they so choose. In a poorly “balanced” game, player interactions can overcome a single player’s advantages but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth to have to gang up on a person simply to take them out because they had a lucky draw or lucky starting position. Also, having players do your “dirty work” in balancing a game can make the game last a long time as each successive leader is beaten back into the pack until someone sneaks in a win. This can be fun, but since it often rewards the sneakiest or best fast-talker in the group, it can be annoying for others. (To keep my conscience clear I will admit I tend to be one of the better fast-talkers at most of my gaming tables… however, I like it best when I can claim superior play in addition to “good negotiation”.)

A final style of balancing a game (that I’ll be covering) is introducing an element of risk. (No, not the game.) While some players hate risk (and tend to call it “luck”) in their games, I am not adverse to at least some semblance of risk in my games. An example of this type of balancing could be done by comparing Puerto Rico to Age of Empires III. In both games, the end-game has upgrades (buildings in PR, capitol upgrades in AoE3) that help players score additional points in the endgame. In Puerto Rico the buildings are known from the game start and are available to the first player who can purchase them. While a couple of the buildings are usually slightly better than others, they are all quite comparable in the number of victory points they grant. In contrast, Age of Empires III has several capitol upgrades at the end of the game that add victory points but not all of those upgrades are going to be available in every game. Additionally, players have to vie for placement when trying to purchase them, they aren’t simply available to the first player who can afford them. They pop into existence (if at all) when the third age of the game begins. Thus, strategies that rely heavily on capitol upgrades (like most of the money-making strategies) may not always get the upgrades they need (or want). Just which upgrades become available may determine the game. So, while I think some of the money-making strategies are the strongest ones in the game, they also rely on getting good capitol upgrades and thus are more likely to suffer the whims of fate in the last few rounds. Thus, what some might call (me) “stronger” strategies are leveled out somewhat because they become slightly riskier. Push your luck types of games could be put in a similar category. Pursuing riskier strategies can provide larger payoffs, but are also more likely to fail in a big way. While I would have a hard time accepting a large effect of this type in a longer (an hour or two) game, it is perfectly acceptable in a shorter game.

How about you, are there ways you feel that games can be balanced (ie. The various strategies/cards/abilities) more than they are? Are there no-brainer styles of game balance (like just letting players take care of it themselves) that you find overused?

Parlaying Success

A couple of months ago I played several hands of Parlay. This is a Poker/word-game that I reviewed last year. I thought it was excellent then, and even though I couldn't put together a decent word to save my life in this recent game, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

Parlay has a unique mechanism whereby you collect a hand of 7 cards from a normal 52-card deck, with each card also featuring a letter. Then you try and simultaneously put together a top-rate 5-card Poker hand and a good word of up to 7 letters.

After each player has assembled his final hand of cards, he then decides whether to stay (betting that he has a better total hand value than anyone else) or fold.

If a player folds he earns points equal to the value of the letters he used to form his word, and then he's out. If you have a decent ability to form words you can get 50 points a hand just by doing this.

If a player stays he must add up the total value of his hand. This is the value of the letters in his word, plus a length bonus for words of 5 or more letters. Then the players compare their Poker hands, and whoever had the best Poker hand gets to add the value of his letters again. But, this is an all or nothing affair: whoever stayed and had the highest total value gets all his points, while everyone else who stayed doesn't get anything, not even his letter points.

My review includes a picture of a nice example. One player formed the word "quirt", which is worth 55 points for its letter, plus another 15 for its length. He also had three 2s which won the Poker hand, giving him 55 more points for a total of 125. The other player formed the word "deposit", which earned 50 points for its letter, plus 100 for its length. His Poker hand was just a pair of Queens, so he didn't get the Poker bonus, but his 150 points still beat the other players 125.

Chaos, Risk, and Reward

In talking about our recent game, a few players opined that it was too "chaotic" or too "lucky". They felt like they couldn't accurately assess whether their hand was good enough to win or not, and thus whenever you decided to stay it was a crap shoot.

I disagreed. I don't find Parlay chaotic or lucky; I find it heavily dependent upon risk/reward. Players can stay in with a half-good hand because they hope it's good enough to win, but the lower the point value they stay in with, the higher the chance they lose out.

The "deposit" player that I mentioned above probably didn't have much doubt he was going to win. He could have hoped that his pair of Queens might win the Poker hand too, bringing him to a total of 200 points, but really he shouldn't have been counting on more than 150. Though the three 2s was a better hand, it wasn't necessarily a better winner. That player should have probably counted on earning 70 (word + length), with some probability of the full 125 (word + length + poker).

Continued experience could tell you which of these values was likely a winner and which not, just like it could tell you which of the Poker hands were likely to be a winner. Using that information is then exactly what turns a game of this sort into risk/reward and not a crapshoot.

Gotta Know When to Fold 'Em

Ironically I say that having "fold"ed every hand except my last-round-I-had-to-go-home-Hail-Mary. In other words, I never though the risk was low enough or the reward was high enough, so I just kept earning my 50 points a turn. Not being able to form a word of more than 4 letters helped keep me from being greedy (because it meant there was never a "word length bonus" that I'd only win if I stayed). Before that last round I was in second place out of five, suggesting my slow plodding way was winning out--mostly.

As I was packing up that night having finished up Parlay I came to realize that the game's play was actually very much like the gameplay of Texas Hold'em--whose success it was clearly meant to build upon.

In Texas Hold'em your standard turn is to look at your cards, assess their value, determine their value isn't high enough, then immediately fold. In a typical 10-player hand of Texas Hold'em the vast majority of people usually fold out, and an even higher number would if two players weren't forced to ante up, just to keep the game from breaking.

I suspect Parlay would seem less chaotic to some if they took the Texas Hold'em mindset: Assess the value, then fold, unless you've got a great hand.

(It should be noted that Parlay is a lot more fun, even when folding, since you still get to make a word, and thus earn points based on your cleverness.)

Alternative Bids

Part of the reason Parlay can seem chaotic is because of the blind-bidding. Sure, you might have an atrocious hand, but what if everyone else drops out? In that case your atrocious hand could win, and you effectively double your points thanks to the Poker bonus. Especially if people were moaning and groaning about their hands, shouldn't you take that chance?

The difference between sequential bids and blind bids can make huge differences in games of any sort, and I think this displays it well. So, I offer the following alternative:

Try Parlay with open selection of stay or fold sometime. Make sure you rotate the dealer, then when players are ready have them choose stay or fold clockwise from the dealer. I expect it'll make players a less likely to hope for a big win on nothing, and thus more likely to only stay in when they assess their hand as good.

Keeping players from taking a less viable strategy can often be a great way to reduce the apparent chaos of a game.

Five Game Design Don'ts

If you're designing a game, here's a short list of five things that you shouldn't do:

Don't Reward the Last Man Standing. This is one of the things that Eurogames do right, so it scarcely needs to be said any more. However, it's still an important point. Unless your game is really short, you shouldn't allow player elimination, and you especially shouldn't decide who wins your game based on the same. After all, what are the eliminated players supposed to do until the game ends?

Although, as I said, most Eurogames don't use last-man-standing mechanics, nonetheless there are some who allow players to be effectively eliminated. Mare Nostrum is an example of this from the warfare side of things: you can get to a sufficiently bad state that you just don't have the resources to come back. Likewise there are any number of games where you can look at your score and quickly realize that you have no chance of winning.

This is one of the great benefits of hidden scores. Even if the information is all technically trackable, a losing player is the player least likely to take advantage of that ability. It's the old happier-if-you-don't know idea that your parents used to love.

Otherwise, you need to have some way that a player can catch up. Risk-reward systems usually allow this. If you have a big risk that has almost no chance of paying out, then the big reward might get you back into the game ... and it gives you something to do until the game is over, anyway.

Don't Confuse Complexity with Depth of Strategy. This is another one that Eurogames tend to get right ... usually. Lots of modifiers to die rolls, lots of different options, or generally a game that's more complex than others out there isn't necessarily better ... and may well be worse. There's much to be said for cutting out complexity until you have the shining gem at the core of your game design, and only then looking to see if anything else actually added to your gameplay.

Unless you're trying to write a simulation, and you know your players want to play a simulation, complexity is usually not the right move.

Don't Support False Strategy. False strategy is a somewhat hard thing to define, but I know it when I see it. Unfortunately, it also seems pretty hard to convince a game designer that his game includes false strategy ... and I've tried. False strategy involves including choices in your game that are essentially meaningless.

Nautilus was one of the games that I tagged with this label. There you make really careful choices about where to go and where to explore, but the actual results are so random that any strategic gameplay is largely outweighed by whether you got lucky or not. I think that having luck weigh considerably heavier than strategic choice is probably the easiest way to introduce false strategy into your game.

Don't Include Rock-Scissors-Papers. I think games that include important rock-scissors-paper mechanics are fine examples of the idea of false strategy that I just mentioned. These are usually blind-bidding games where you have three essentially equal choices, in which there is no way to choose intelligently between the choices.

A game like Basari where there is a meaningful difference between the rock (points), the scissor (gems), and the paper (die roll) is different because you can try and balance what choices people might make based on the options presented to them, but without that difference ... people are worrying about a choice that has no actual meaning.

Don't Develop Your Own Game. My heart aches every time I see a game that could have been a contender, but isn't because someone insisted on self-publishing. Unless you've already gotten 20 or so games under your belt, you don't have the ability to remove yourself from your game design and see its flaws, and you don't have the fortitude to cut out those beautiful subsystems that don't really improve the game. An external developer does and he will make your game better.

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If you consider these points, game reviewers and game players alike will thank you.

Burning Freeways and Blind Bids! (Or: Real Life Auctions)

A week and a half ago a major interchange in the California Bay Area literally melted in a hellish inferno. Following a single-vehicle tanker truck crash, over eight thousand gallons of gasoline lit on fire, resulting in temperatures in excess of 2750° bathing the freeway. The metal frames holding the I-580 overpass together began to warp, and then one segment of the overpass came down in a thundering crash.

As part of the infamous MacArthur Maze (which I pass through every week on a BART train on my way to EndGame and back), the I-580 overpass was a central part of the road system which moved traffic between the East Bay and San Francisco, and suddenly it was gone. Dire predictions were made on the effects on traffic. Thus far, it's apparently been bad, but not terrible thanks to Bay Area companies' willingness to allow employees to telecommute and our decent public transit system.

Nonetheless, the I-580 overpass needs to rebuild and quickly. How can you find the company that could do it the quickest and cheapest? The answer was ... an auction.

Last week Caltrans gave nine construction companies the opportunity to bid on the reconstruction. A bid contract of this type used to be pretty common for government projects in the days before the Bush Administration, and thus isn't really that unusual in itself. As does any good auctioneer, Caltrans also set an expectation: that the total cost should be about $5.2 million dollars.

However, Caltrans also did something unusual: they introduced a very notable time-based kicker. They set the deadline for the work to be June 29, and offered a $200,000 bonus for every day the work finished early, else a $200,000 penalty for every day it finished late.

This Monday the bids came in and the winner was a bid for ... $867,075, which is to say an amazing 17% of Caltrans' cost estimate. The difference was, of course, in that $200,000 a day bonus.

Gaming Caltrans

As a major auction, played out on the local stage, the entire I-580 bid is interesting in itself. We may regularly play games that have auctions at their heart, but they're an important mechanic in real life too ... and sometimes by looking at those real life auctions we can come right back to game design.

To be precise, Caltrans offered a simple sealed auction, with the winner being the low bidder because it was a cost. This in itself is a wide difference from most board game auctions, which tend to use auctions to value goods (high) rather than to cost services (low). The outcome is probably the same, involving a comparison of outlay to return, but I'm surprised more games don't go in this contrary direction just to be different than the Joneses.

As I noted Caltrans cleverly put the expectation out there for what the project should cost. This is a trick also often used by real estate agents, who not only having "asking" prices for the homes they sell, but also tend to quietly mention to buyers how many other people are bidding (and thus "10 other buyers" might be code for "asking price plus $100,000", at least here in the Bay Area).

You tend to see it in games as a minimum bid. Wolfgang Kramer's new Colosseum, which I just played for the first time last week, is an example of a game featuring such a minimum. These minimums tend to tighten up auctions by getting rid of all of the irrelevent bidding at the start, but they also make sure that everyone is bidding in the right ballpark, and thus you don't tend to have quite as lucky of a buyer or a seller--which could otherwise entirely offbalance a game.

And finally we come back to that kicker of $200,000 a day. This is something that I definitely haven't seen in games, and I think it's the thing that could be more interestingly introduced to a game.

Whenever you're playing a good auction game there tends to be some element of risk. You're usually trying to make an adroit guess at the future value of merchandise. Modern Art is one of the most prototypical examples, with people constantly counting possibilities.

("Well, this is the third piece of art out for this painter, so it'll probably place first, but could place second. At first it's worth $50 and at second it's worth $40. Since the next person is also collecting the same artist, they may want to push it to closure, so I'll bet on the $50 valuation, and thus I'll offer an overly generous $40 for it.")

However the I-580 auction game takes things a step further and instead forces the bidders to bet against not future returns, but instead future resource allocation:

("Well, I don't have sufficient workers now, but if I win a worker auction next turn, I'll be able to get them into place just as the steel arrives, though that also requires me to make sure the steel pipelines are open, but given those two elements, we might be able to bring it in a full 30 days under schedule which would give us a $6 million bonus.)

One of the reasons that I find this mechanic interesting is that it could notably define a player's strategy as a game progresses, giving him real goals: benchmarks for success and possibilities for failure.

And it's those successes and failures that make games fun.

So how about someone go and design a kicker-services-auction game?