Designing Self-Balancing Games
Table-top and board games are an ancient technology. To play a modern board game, you need just the components in the box. It is a self-sufficient system.
A challenge to board game designers is after a game is released, they will never get to change the way the game is played again. This is in contrast to video games, where post-release development is common, and the game can continue to be tuned through updates/patches.
Note: There are of course exceptions to this rule. Various Axis and Allies editions have actually released official starting placement adjustments in an attempt to improve/balance the game post-release. This is more intended for a hardcore audience that will stumble across these improved versions online. This is not typical of board game culture. There is no expectation that you will search online for patch notes before you start.
The challenge to board game designers to produce a product that is “final” results in a difficult design constraint. But, from a pressed circumstance, comes innovation! Some game mechanics have evolved and propagated to help board games thrive despite this challenge. To give you an idea of how certain game mechanics can create self-balancing systems, I briefly cover three: Auction/Bidding, Drafting, and Increase Value of Unchosen Resources. In future posts, I will focus more in-depth on some of these individual game mechanics and some of their other benefits, so if that interests you, please subscribe.
What is balance and why is it important?
Most definitions of “a game” will be tightly wound around the idea of a “competition.” This competition may be decided by ability, or luck. When it is decided by ability, our competitive spirits will come into play.
Everyone knows that life is unfair, but it doesn’t feel great. When we go to our escapes such as games, we usually crave this feeling of fairness. Creating this experience, falls on Game Designers. Game designers/developers must “balance” the game in such a way that all competitors have fair, and ideally equal shot at winning.
It's worth noting that “balance” is somewhat subjective and dependent on differing game cultures. “Balance between competitors” is just one type of balance. In some games, this is enough. In chess, no one is complaining that f3 is a worse opening move than e4. But in other games, things like “balance between strategies” and the choices players make become important considerations.
Examples of Self-Balancing Game Mechanics
Auction/Bidding
In some games, players will have the opportunity to take control of some resource. Typically something like goods, buildings, factories, territories, etc. In order to add an interesting amount of depth to the game, this resource may vary in traits it exhibits, or what it can get you. Theoretically, all of these resources could be balanced between each other, in order to make sure when they are divided up no player gets an advantage when they are allocated. In practice, this is impossible to achieve in most circumstances, and if over-indexed for, you may get rid of some of the interesting variation that added depth and appeal to your game.
Instead, board game designers have increasingly relied on “auctions” in order to introduce balance and increase their freedom in design space.
Example of an Auction/Bidding Mechanic
Suppose there are 3 players, and 3 “lots” referred to as A, B, and C.
Each lot has a base price of 10 “coins.”
Players in sequence will place a bid on the lot that most interests them.
If the lot has no bid, they may signal their interest at the base price.
If they would prefer a lot that someone else has bid on, they can place a higher bid, and mark their interest. This “kicks” off the player that was already bidding there.
If no one has kicked them off their choice, their bid turn is skipped.
When all players bid turns are skipped, the auction is over. Each player pays their bid for their lot.
Note: In this style auction, it will end when 2 players have bids out, and the 3rd player chooses to take the lot that was never bid for at the base price.
Self-Balancing Properties
With auctions/bidding, the game designer doesn’t have to worry about perfect balance between options. If one option is better than the others, it will demand a premium in some sort of cost that affects the player. This will create a counter-balance to the power of the resource.
This mechanic will usually improve both balance between competitors and strategies.
Additionally, there is even a benefit if the power-level of certain resources changes throughout the game. For example, some options could provide much more direct scoring in the end game. Bids will make sure that these demand a premium exactly when they are premium. This opens up the design space, and thwarts a big concern of game developers that something must be equally viable throughout the game.
Drawbacks
The downside of an auction, even in its most simplest form such as a blind bid, is that it will often slow down the game compared to simpler allocation methods. Randomly assigning, or players taking turns choosing, will be much quicker. It can also demand a lot of mental overhead. It forces the players to be assessing sometimes very complicated differences, and how much it will help them.
Drafting
Many games feature branching strategic pathways. Everyone likes to see varying styles pitted against each other, such as the classic rabbit versus the tortoise. Balancing various strategies in your game can be very difficult. Especially because the more they contrast, the more interesting the competition. On successive replays of the game, competitive players will attempt to win with the best, most reliable strategy. The other less optimal strategies will stop being part of the game.
One mechanic that can help with this is “drafting.” Drafting takes advantage of the very principle working against you—the player’s desire for playing an optimal strategy—and creates a counterbalance against it.
Example of a Drafting Mechanic
Three players divide a deck of 18 into one pile for each player.
Each player secretly looks at the 6 cards in a pile, secretly chooses one, and passes the rest to the player on the left.
Repeat step 2, with 1 less card each time.
When out of cards, the draft is over.
Self-Balancing Properties
The self-balancing quality of a draft is that multiple players who are both going for Strategy A, will often be competing for the best options that help them with that strategy. In a 4 player game with 3 strategic paths, the 2 players competing for the best strategy may actually hurt each other enough that players going for the “worse in a vacuum” strategies have a better chance of winning.
There are many forms of drafting, and Worker Placement in particular has become extremely dominant in the board game scene. Worker placement is typically implemented as a multi-round action-draft, where the choice of a player is in a changing turn order and public.
Drawbacks
The drawbacks are usually quite specific to the particular variation of drafting that is implemented in the game. In a secret draft like described in the example, discrepancies in game knowledge can lead to bigger discrepancies in player performance. This is because knowing what options are available but not currently visible, and knowing what your opponents are choosing despite never seeing the option can give you a big leg-up.
Conversely, in a public draft such as worker placement, even new players have perfect information, meaning game knowledge discrepancies are minimized. A downside of a public draft though, is that players may have their preferred options stolen from them leading up to their turn, and find themselves having to re-think strategies. This can cause them to have a slow turn, and slow the pacing of the game.
Perhaps a hidden drawback of drafting, is that it is a mechanic with so many benefits it tends to take over and become the core of the gameplay.
Increase Value of Unchosen Resources
A rational player faced with a choice between several options will always take the best option. Less optimal choices will go unchosen. This will end up in the variety the game has to offer being cut short. However, when multiple players are not choosing the same option, the players are quietly telling the game that option is worse.
A game designer can sweeten the deal for these unchosen options, by increasing their value marginally whenever they go unselected.
Example of an Increase Value of Unchosen Resources Mechanic
There are 3 players and 5 actions.
In a given round, a player may not select the same action as another player.
Players take turns selecting actions.
At the end of the round, 2 actions remain unchosen. A “coin” is placed on these 2 actions.
Any player taking these actions in the future rounds will get the coin in addition to doing the action.
The actions going unchosen again will stack an additional coin.
Self-Balancing Properties
This mechanic can help a game designer ensure that the full breadth of their game will be explored, even with hyper-competitive players. Underutilized resources will become more appealing each time they go unchosen. This improves balance between strategies.
Drawbacks
The primary downside of this mechanic is that it can be hard to fit into the game without other mechanics. For example, the above example includes drafting.
Self-Balancing’s Place in Game Design
Self-Balancing Mechanics have been an interesting and evolving development in board games. They are an important piece of creating replayability in a board game. I only cover 3 above, but there are other examples, such as multi-category place-based end game scoring, or catch-up mechanisms. Feel free to comment below some of your favourites.
I hope this post provides a clear explanation, and is helpful to board game designers looking to leverage mechanics that have these properties. However, I also think that video game development can potentially learn from some of these lessons, as many rely entirely on proactive balance patches.
If history teaches us anything, it is that from an unfortunate circumstance comes innovation. That innovation can create a leap that ends up giving a larger benefit than the original unfortunate circumstance. A favourite example of mine was in the history of the Netherlands.
The Netherlands had marshy lowlands prone to flooding, and not ideal for simple farming. This introduced a more difficult circumstance. Because of this, they purposed windmills to help drain water from the land via pumps. This dependence on and resulting proliferation of windmills resulted in the invention of more efficient sawmill technologies in 1594. With increased capacity for lumber processing, came cheaper ship construction. The Netherlands then went on to have the most powerful navy the world had seen, and were launched into their Golden Age.
Maybe in this case board games are the marshy flatlands that instead of windmills, necessitated self-balancing mechanics. But perhaps self-balancing mechanics are broadly helpful, and video game designers would do well to use some of the lessons for their own design choices!