Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
when players use an action in a way that you did not expect. For example, in an old
side-scrolling space-shooter game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
(which this topic does not name to avoid embarrassing the individuals responsible),
the player could, after upgrading her weapons to a certain level, make her way
through the rest of the game without ever losing a life by traveling as low on the
screen as possible and keeping her finger on the fire button. Although clearly unin-
tended, this position made her invulnerable to enemy attacks.
No one has yet invented a way to prevent these problems other than through play-
testing, trying as many actions and as many combinations as possible on each
challenge. The smaller the number of actions that you implement in your game,
the less likely you are to introduce a dominant strategy by accident because you
will be able to test them all rigorously. Be especially careful with powerups and spe-
cial actions that give the player more power than usual; these require extra testing.
The role of chance varies enormously from game to game. Some games, such as
checkers, make no use of chance at all; in others, such as craps, chance is all-impor-
tant. We've seen that skill, not chance, must be the primary factor in determining
the player's success. If chance plays a role, how can we ensure that the more skillful
player wins? Here are several recommendations.
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Use chance sparingly.
Design the game so that chance affects only a minority
of the player actions that lead to victory and the majority of actions depend on
skill. This is the simplest solution, but it's not suitable for all types of games.
If chance is to play a larger role in the game, balance its effects as follows:
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Use chance in frequent challenges with small risks and rewards
rather than
infrequent challenges with large risks and rewards. Poker provides a good example.
Chance plays a large role in each hand, but smart players don't bet large amounts
on a single hand; they count on the cumulative effect of good play over many
hands. Player skill remains the major factor that determines winners if a game includes
enough hands. This approach also appears in war games, in which chance plays a
role in the mechanics governing combat between individual units (although not a
large role) but plays no direct role in the victory and loss conditions of the mission.
The influence of chance on victory and loss occurs frequently but only on a small
scale, so good luck tends to cancel out bad luck over time, leaving skill to deter-
mine long-term results.
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Allow the player to choose actions to use the odds to his advantage.
If the
player knows the probabilities that significant events will occur, he can make deci-
sions that he believes will be to his advantage. Even in a game in which chance
plays an enormous role, such as craps, the player may choose to bet on different
outcomes that he believes more or less probable. His skill in making decisions in his
