Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
gets to go first, but because a random roll of the dice controls who begins the game,
players accept this as fair. (See the sidebar “Who Goes First”? in Chapter 1 for fur-
ther discussion.)
So long as whatever you do for one player you do for all the others, your game will
remain fair, and little else needs to be said. However, video game players generally
consider symmetric games rather uninteresting. Symmetric games don't allow play-
ers to control different forces and study their relative strengths and weaknesses the
way asymmetric games do. Symmetric games also feel rather contrived, because lit-
tle in the real world is symmetric.
In PvP games, dominant strategies most often occur under asymmetric rules (the
next section addresses those issues), but a dominant strategy can also occur in sym-
metric games. Because all players start with symmetric attributes and positions,
they all may use this superior strategy, so it does not create an unfair advantage for
one player. Nevertheless, such a strategy leaves the players with only one good
option, so the game isn't as fun as it could be.
Balancing Asymmetric Games
Asymmetric PvP games run a greater risk of suffering from dominant strategies
because the players effectively play by different rules. In Fox and Geese, which
Chapter 1 describes, one player controls a single fox on the game board while the
other player controls 11 geese (see Figure 1.3). The fox may move in any direction
and jump over the geese, while the geese may only move toward the fox. The vic-
tory condition for the fox is to jump over all the geese (removing them from the
board), whereas the victory condition for the geese is to trap the fox so that it can-
not move. Thus, the rules provide entirely different units, available actions, and
victory conditions for each side. In designing an asymmetric game, you must test
the mechanics for each type of competitor against every other possible type of
competitor to make sure that none has a dominant strategy that confers an advan-
tage over all his opponents. This lengthy and involved procedure makes it more
likely that a mistake will get past the testers.
In addition to the risk of dominant strategies emerging, players often disagree on
the fairness of an asymmetric game. It becomes much harder to judge whether a
game really gives all players an equal chance of winning and doesn't disadvantage
any player who plays by different rules or with different resources. These arguments
often result in variants—alternative versions of the rules—which arise to rectify
what players see as problems. Several variants of Fox and Geese have emerged: one
that puts more geese on the board, one that includes two foxes instead of one, one
that lets the geese move backward as well as forward, and so forth.
