Stephen Harkleroad recently posted a thoughtful essay about designing gameplay balance using principles of self-balancing:
One of the trickier parts of designing a board game is balancing the game. You don’t want certain options that depend on luck to tip the game to the player who gets it; also, you want to make sure the costs and benefits are roughly even as to not make one strategy the overwhelming favorite. If one choice makes one player the front-runner for the remainder of the game regardless of all subsequent actions, it’s a bad game.
… Unfortunately, misrepresenting costs in decision-making is easy to do in board games. Until all of the factors and player personalities come into a real-life game, it is usually very, very difficult to put a static cost on anything and have it equal its benefit. (This is why playtesting is so important.) You don’t really know if pricing artillery at 10 gold is worth it when infantry is worth only 5 until the game gets going. Monuments might be worth one victory point or three. This is a particularly difficult concept to cover when designing asymmetrical games, where both sides are operating under different rules and options.
Thankfully, there are a few design components that will allow a game to “self-balance”–that is, you don’t have to put a cost on it; it naturally comes from the game itself. Note that I keep saying “cost,” since this is what a majority of board games actions represent, but it could be anything, such as turn order or victory conditions.
— Stephen Harkleroad @ Crank Crank Revolution
Harkleroad articulates several self-balancing design components:
- The Auction
- Changing Attractiveness
- Compensating Cost
- Balance By Proxy
He’s writing about board games in particular, but I’m sure the principles will be useful to designers in a wide range of games.
Go read his post for the details.
I’m reminded of Balance — one of my favorite short films:
See Balance (film) @ Wikipedia