Within the field of game design, game balance can best be described as a black art. It is the process by which game designers make a game simultaneously fair for players while providing them just the right amount of difficulty to be both exciting and challenging without making the game entirely predictable. This involves a combination of mathematics, psychology, and occasionally other fields such as economics and game theory.
Game Balance offers readers a dynamic look into game design and player theory. Throughout the book, relevant topics on the use of spreadsheet programs will be included in each chapter. This book therefore doubles as a useful reference on Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet programs and their uses for game designers.
Key Features:- The first and only book to explore game balance as a topic in depth
- Topics range from intermediate to advanced, while written in an accessible style that demystifies even the most challenging mathematical concepts to the point where a novice student of game design can understand and apply
- Contains powerful spreadsheet techniques which have been tested with all major spreadsheet programs and battle-tested with real-world game design tasks
- Provides short-form exercises at the end of each chapter to allow for practice of the techniques discussed therein along with three long-term projects divided into parts throughout the book that involve the creation
- Written by award-winning designers with decades of experience in the field.
Author Bios:Ian Schreiber has been in the industry since 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on eight published game titles, training/simulation games for three Fortune 500 companies, and has advised countless student projects. He is the co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest in-person game jam event in the world. Ian has taught game design and development courses at a variety of colleges and universities since 2006.
Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist, and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the
Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the
Wizardry and
Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon,
Dungeons & Dragons, and Def Jam franchises. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games,
The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly
Train and Siochn Leat, a game about her family's history, which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. In addition to a BAFTA and a Fulbright, Brenda is the recipient of multiple lifetime achievement awards, a Grace Hopper Award, and a GDC Ambassador Award. Many of the games she has contributed to have won numerous awards. Romero is the CEO and co-founder of Romero Games based in Galway, Ireland.
