Importance Of Game Balancing Essay

Game balancing is a crucial step in game designing, as it can make or break a game. Usually, the more complex a game is, the more balancing is required. Game balance is about tweaking and fine-tuning its mechanics, so that the game itself will be much more appealing to its players. This is important because no one would want to play a game that’s flawed, unclear, or simply broken. Game balancing falls under three categories: fairness, stability, and engagement.
4.1 Fairness
The following paragraph is paraphrased from McGuire and Jenkins [9]:
For a game to be fair, it must allow all of its players to have an equal chance of winning from the start of the game. Therefore, if any game consists of four players competing against each other, every player must have a ¼ (25%) chance of winning from their starting positions. All players must have an equal potential

Competition is what drives most, if not all, players. Most players would feel engaged in FIFA 17 (especially those who are soccer fans) because the game is designed to have players into the flow of playing soccer to win. If the game was too easy, then it would be boring. If the game was too hard, then it would be very frustrating and cause anxiety. However, finding that sweet spot in terms of the game’s difficulty is what makes players dive into the game’s flow. As mentioned, FIFA 17 is purely skill dependent because in order to win, players must know how to use their chosen team properly without any special twists or power-ups. The game feels fair, so players would feel that any mistake made during the game would be their own fault, and can’t blame the game itself. Therefore, if players were to lose, they would try again because they would feel that they can always do better. That’s what engagement is all about; making the player want to keep on playing the game to have that desire to feel satisfied upon