When designer Jason Jones was balancing theMarathongames, he had an interest-
ing technique for making sure the game was not too hard. If he and other members of
the development team could play through the entire game on its hardest setting using
only the game’s “fist” weapon, he figured that the game would be reasonably challeng-
ing for other players. Of course, other players get weapons far more powerful and easy
to use than the fist, and they do not have to play it on the hardest difficulty setting. Jones
handicapped himself in order to see how hard the game would be to normal players.
Using techniques like this is wise. If the designer can win the game with both arms tied
behind his back, other players will probably have a fair chance of playing it through with
both arms at their disposal.
In the end, balancing your game is often more of a “gut feeling” than anything else.
Some developers, such as Microsoft, have tried to develop more objective tests to
determine how well balanced a game is, accumulating player metrics about the average
time players spent in a level, number of times they failed a challenge before passing it,
how much ammo they used up, and so forth. Though this data can be quite valuable, it
can never fully replace design instinct. Though you may almost always assume that
your game is too hard, there are few other rules you can follow to balance your game.
You need to be able to see your game holistically, to understand how players who have
much less experience with the title than you will play it, and to realize what will chal-
lenge them without being unfair or even cruel. Knowing how to balance a game is a skill
that comes with experience, both from playing other games and from designing your
own. In order to become truly skilled at balancing, you must do both as much as
possible.
The Artistic Vision .............................
I have mentioned at various points throughout this book the evil that is known as the
focus group. It is important to understand the distinction between playtesters and focus
groups. Focus groups, particularly those gathered early in a game’s development, are
customarily groups of “off the street” people who are given a one- or two-hour presen-
tation, often on a series of different games. Many times they are not allowed to play the
games, as often the games have not even been developed yet. They hear about game
concepts and, based on the descriptions, are asked whether they would be interested in
buying such a game or not. Playtesters, on the other hand, are people whom members
of the development team know or whom they at least have a chance to get to know.
Knowing a person is crucial to understanding how seriously you should take their opin-
ion. Furthermore, playtesters get to play the games in question, while early focus group
members often do not. As a result of these key differences, focus groups tend to be anti-
thetical to the creation of original, creative games and encourage the development of
safe, less innovative games. As Mark Cerny has put it, a focus group can tell you pri-
marily “what was cool fifteen minutes ago.” One can only imagine how the focus group
for games likePac-Man,Tetris,orCivilizationwould react. We know from the interview
with Will Wright in Chapter 22 that the focus group forThe Simswent so poorly that the
game was nearly canceled. It should be telling that focus groups are run by the market-
ing department, while playtesting is handled by the development team. One group’s
primary interest lies in making money for the company in the simplest way possible,
Chapter 25: Playtesting 497