Imagine the first chess players "are two knights worth more than a rook?" "I dunno. Guess we need to wait hundreds of years for more people to play this game."
I love what he said about math being a learnable skill. I never considered myself good at math, but when I finally found a need for it outside of high school, I learned what I had to. I think a lot of people also think being good at math means being able to calculate things on the spot in your head, but really it's just knowing what mathematical tools to use and when. Much like Excel, it can be a tool that with a bit of setup, does a lot of the work for you.
I'm a big fan of teaching kids basic logic first then teaching them math so they learn WHY 1x2 equals two instead of just memorizing tables and flash-cards.
To truely become good at math, then for each math topic you approach you need to first understand the concept of it, and then train in using it until you gain intuition for how to apply it. This intuition can then be used to understand further topics in math, and so on. Memorisations in math is what you use when you have given up on gaining actual understanding and intuition, or when you want to have an extra shortcut to a result, that would be tedious to calculate again (this is what memorizing multiplication tables should be for). In my opinion, most people that consider themselves bad at math (and are bad at actual math, not just calculating numbers in their head), are bad because they do not have sufficient understandment and intuition of the math needed to solve some problem. For instance, if someone is struggling with isolating some variable in a formula, it might be because they have insufficient intuition (read training with using) of the math topics used in the steps to perform the isolation. If they have a lot of training with using those math topics, they will be able to recognise what type of path to a solution there could exists, and will have an easier time solving the new problem that makes use of it. If they have build their understanding of a topic on purely memorization, they will not really know when they are recalling something wrong, and can easily make competly incorrect steps, making their path to a solution instead be a path to them becoming lost in the math jungle, with loss of confidence in their math skills being lost just the same. If they just have insufficient intuition of the used math topics in the path to the solution, they will strugle a lot with finding said path, and may take a misstep here or there, and they might either luckily arrive at the end or just give up after not being able to find a path. That said, not everyone really needs higher math, though if you expect to become a good programmer you are probably going to need it. The higher into math you want to venture, the better a good foundation in basic math will be for you, as it is a lot like building a skyskraper: For you to build the next floor, it must stand on the solid foundation of the previous, and all the previous floors have to carry the weight of all the higher floor, so the lower floors must be that much more rebust than the higher ones. It should also be mentioned that you can get far by "just" understanding each problem, and understanding what the preceding steps are, but you might not end up being very good at manipulating math on that level if you go that path, and you will strugle a lot more.
Best thing I ever read about maths was some of the freely available MIT coursework. It was actually about the concept of a proof, and what an axiom is, and how when you get to the actual logic and reasoning behind it, a statement like 1+2 is actually incredibly complicated, and it takes many, many steps to get from a fundamental axiom to a statement like that. But yes, practice matters. I have a good grasp of vectors, even though I suck even at something as basic as algebra. Why? Because I spent a lot of time coding stuff which had tons and tons of vectors in it. Practice, having a purpose for it, and just general exposure helps a lot.
Yeah learned this the hard way as well, but they too have to understand that the learning curve for everyone is not as easy as from person A to person B, thats why being in college that requires you to learn something within a 'specific' term (3 months for example) and while learning it halfway there you're to be pressured with other stuff as well, its kinda hard .
I'm a math major and a tutor. It's absolutely true that anyone can learn math. People think about math in different ways, but they all have the ability to understand what's happening. I like the approach of teaching the basics and intuition to people first, but this doesn't work for everyone unfortunately. Sometimes, people need the applications to understand the math. Other times, the "intuition" is hardly intuitive. I took a class called model theory where we analyzed different frameworks of math, and this is essentially the basis of why 1+1 = 2. We ascribed names and symbols for those values and then using the things in our world, we modeled "2" in a symbol. If you're lost here, that's why it's not always good to start with the "fundamentals". Math classes go backwards. You get up to differential equations and then start working your way back down with analysis and discrete math because logic and fundamentals can be hard when you don't know where it's going or what the overarching theme is. As an example, I had a 7th grader who needed help with his homework because they were teaching him logic. Well, he had to do proofs (very structured thank god), but one of his proofs was "prove that the product of two even numbers is even." My first thought was, that's so cool. Having students prove this for themselves would help a lot. And then, walking through the proof, I realized you need algebraic intuition to know that 2x*y can be written like 2z, thus finishing that proof. It isn't that the proof isn't possible without algebra, you technically don't use it, but it's much harder to see the solution. This is the case for lots of fundamentals.
since my money worth 5 times less than dollars, probably mean that I also will never take it. Anyone manage to find his book? That is the closest thing that my money may allow me to have
9:57 I thought a game that lies about probability to the player would be hard to find, but the GBA Fire Emblem games instantly came to mind. When the game says you have "99 hit", you intuitively think that your chance to hit an attack is 99%, but the game rolls two numbers between 0 and 99, then compares their average to 99, resulting in a 99.99% chance to hit. This discrepancy is more noticeable near the extremes, with "10 hit" being 2.1% chance to hit. All this goes along well with the players thinking "90% never misses" and "10% never hits", which sounds like a fallacy when I write it like that, but that's really how we video gamers think.
@@DagarCoH its also why a lot of people have the opposite thought in their minds, many people think that the hardest difficulty cheats against you simply because of this. When the opposite its true
Depends on FE. As far as I know enemies have LOWER chance to hit you because they take worse roll out of 2 while you get best one. So you can vitness miracle on your side while AI plays with handicap.
In Final Fantasy Tactics, there are two axioms: 1) Nothing is more unreliable than having a 97% hit rate 2) Nothing causes more anxiety than an enemy with a 3% hit rate.
XCOM 2 does a similar thing where the RNG hit chances favour the player compared to what is shown. It's pretty interesting, most players seem to think that it is the other way around if anything.
I've now been in the industry for 8 years, and your blog Game Design Concepts has been decisive in building my skill Mr Schreiber. I'm happy to find you here now that I understand how much I lack a thinking in Game Balance. Thank you 🙌
16:20 "In reality the data is always trying to trick you, they're very mean" Respect Ian, been following you for a while now, and a lot from my teachings is based on your wonderful, free, courses.
I wish my college had this course. This is the kind of stuff as i child went through my head and now as an adult i try to piece together. Amazing talk thank you so much for this.
99% of all balance oriented classes on TH-cam also suck though... I mean, there are literally almost none that even mention the rock-paper-scissors mechanic, not to mention explain how to use spreadsheet balancing to get a mathematically sound balance in your game. In reality game balance is NOT an arbitrary thing based on huge nerfs on whatever meta-game is popular and 'needs' a change. It's a bit sad there isn't more proper info out there on this.
@@wontcreep Because he's comparing apples and oranges. He says game development courses on Udemy are "bad" (for some reason), and this one (a game design course) is "good". Game development is one thing - game design is a totally different thing.
@@floatingchimney No, the courses he is talking about call themselves "Game Design"-courses, but what these courses are are Game Development courses. There is very little material on practical Game Design. The same is true for books. So many use Jesse Schell's book as a great book on Design, but its just vague. Earnest Adams on the other hand is far more concrete.
This class is masterfully crafted. I look forward to seeing what Ian creates in the future. So happy he is making a textbook so more students can benefit. Brilliant!
The disconnect between actual probability and intuitive probability is well known in X-Com....any shot with a hit chance of less than 90% only hit 10% of the time.
XCOM uses real probability: a good chance to hit has a good chance to hit, but you still miss a 90% shot 1 out of 10 times. Fire Emblem uses an altered probability where the hit chance lies to you, but feels much more "accurate" to your experience. A very good example of how game balance is both math and player experience problem, with both cruel honesty and gentle lying having their advantages.
@@racercowan you are wrong about this actually. XCOM, on the normal difficulty setting, deliberately lies about probabilities - it has an invisible boost to hit chance, exactly because people hate missing those 80% shots and feel like the game is unfair. This is then removed on higher difficulty levels. XCOM is great at teaching people than low probability events happen all the time as long as there are enough things happening. If your entire strategy relies on hitting that 95% shot, then after twenty missions you will on average have messed everything up once. Very thought provoking.
@@racercowan Xcom buffs your next shot after you missed to make you feel you got a dramatic comeback and you have + chance to hit on top of that on lower difficulties aka most of them.
I love the idea that someone's mind could be so entrenched in low level programming that they would start programming tools that could be achieved with a simple spreadsheet.
I mean, I see where you're coming from, but also I made a non-real time flight sim using a spreadsheet that uses jerk instead of acceleration for variable timestep.
He's right - I'm the living proof that math can be learned. For more than 30 years I could only do basic operations in my head and would literally have headaches when looking at a spreadsheet, but then I've caught myself in a situation where balancing a game demanded I knew more than my intuition allowed. I took an online course and changed my life. Not only I learned lots of things I deemed impossible, I even got somewhat addicted to math and sheets! As I work with game formulae, it often feels I'm cracking a puzzle or something, to the extent I now have more fun tweaking the sheets to find out solutions than going into the game to test them. Do not fear math. If you have a real purpose to it, you will come understand all those abstractions; the problem with math is not that it doesn't make sense (because it obviously do), but that we often don't make sense of it. When facing a game problem, all those numbers and letters will feel as natural as any other game mechanic for you.
I'll be heading for your website and snaffling up your materials before you change your mind about making them available! I already know a reasonable amount of probability and statistics, but have been looking for good information on balance. Thanks! Will keep an eye out for your book as well.
As soon as I heard "most of the focus in this course is on learning mathematical tools to do this modeling" I knew it was going to be good. Love gdc thank you thank you thank you
This talk is useful, but honestly, it’s going to be a rare scenario that a designer can actually apply this, unless they’re basically making simulated board games or card games. I suppose my main gripe is that this thinking is primarily useful within the existing multiplayer genres and paradigms (MOBAs, brawlers, etc), but realistically, there are very few but dominating successes within these genres, and the road to success is going to involve _defining new systems_ rather than rehashing existing ones that players are tired of (inventory systems, crafting, skill trees, etc). I’d prefer if the scope of the course included _how to structure interesting systems_, as its closely related and arguably more important. Will Wright gives a really interesting GDC talk on this, if you’re interested. Another way of looking at it: how applicable would this lecture be to an existing game, like Zelda OoT? Not very... you determine shrub/rock drops, and that’s it. Much more important is the game’s employment of items, its Z-targeting, and combat depth, all of which could be analyzed at a macroscopic, interaction-between-systems level. The framework structuring itself is more important than the analysis of few kinds of overly specific frameworks.
The vast majority of game design courses in reality focus on card/board games because they can be feasibly constructed in a fairly short amount of time for an assessment, and the skills that go into their creation are still relevant at a concept-design level for games of any type.
One simple trick to make enemy AI seem fair: make their first shot always miss (unless it could not). Nothing is more annoying than the player suddenly getting shot in the back.
Make number go big is not the core design principle of all games, and I d wager as much that all games that have make number go big as their core principle are quiet unimaginative.
"If player is getting stronger in an rpg through polynomial growth, and monsters are also scaling polynomially, then the relationship between the player power and the monster power will be linear, not polynomial" What?
Relative power stays similar. Suppose at level 1 you have 1 hp, and deal (on average) 1 hp damage. Monsters are the same. You level up to at level 2 to 4, hp, but deal 4 damage. Level 3: 16 hp, average 16 hp of damage. Monsters scale similarly. In this system, you are still one hitting monsters, even with a exponential growth in apparent hit points.
@@gregglind Right - I was just confused because a ratio of polynomials generally need not be linear. Like simplest example, x^3/x = x^2, which is not linear even though x^3 and x are both polynomial.
@@doormango yup, you are absolutely right and the guy in the presentation messed up hard on that one. He doesn't strike me as a mathematician, and a statement like that makes that all the more likely. The most natural mistake to make in my opinion would be to say that the relationship is *constant* - which it might be. If the player hp and damage scales about quadratically and the monster hp and damage does the same, then the relationship between the two is constant, not linear. And like you say, the relationship might well also be polynomial, like if monster hp = level^4 and player hp = level^2.
@@gregglind even in this example, the correct thing to say is that the relationship is constant, not linear. Linear would imply that at level 4, the monsters are for example 4 times stronger relative to the player than at level 1.
The name of this video should be "An advertisement for a course about game balance". I was expecting to see at least a summary, not a syllabus as it provides no useful data or information about "Game Balance" at all. And it somehow got 2k likes.
Despite it being just a course advertisement, it IMO contains quite a lot of useful info, albeit of quite basic kind. It's more of a summary of topics you possibly want to look into.
He tells you how he holds the course and provides you with the materials of the course. This was clearly aimed at people who want to teach this to others. Not to people who want to learn it.
It's a half hour talk, including Q&A. You're not going to learn how to design a game or an entire course in half an hour. The syllabus provides all the sourcing information for you to follow up with your own research.
15:45 The answer to where do you cross the line is very easy. Are you counting Happy players or dollars in pocket? if your focus and decision is about whats good for players enjoyment, the community around your game, and the quality of your game play then your doing good work, If your decisions are made by profit margins your crossing the line. What to do about it is a much harder question, especially if you work for someone else whos deciding the goals for your project.
Except it’s very rarely this black and white. For example, if you’re a small team of developers who only has a limited budget and you’re surviving from game to game to keep the studio afloat, even though you might be passionate about what you do, and want to please your players as well as the critics who will review the game, you still need to make sure your game is bankable enough if you want your studio to keep making games. Everything isn’t only huge greedy studios or solo developers who would go through hell to develop their games just out of sheer passion.
@@Adrimixmi True, and there's definitely value in cost benefit analysis on decisions and no reason not to try and make reasonable profit on projects. Once you start FOCUSING on making money you start making skinner boxes and other psychological traps without concern for the impact on your audience because thats what works cheep. Thats the line, if you think about how your decisions affect the quality of game play and customer experience (even if you have to make sacrifices sometimes) your fine, if you only care about moving little green pieces of paper at any cost then your going to cross that line to get them.
Well ok so with something like "when this card is fully healed" clearly this will not act like "do the action x% of the time where x= chance of it actually being fully healed." The fact that it is fully healed matters. For example if the effect is "this card can retreat for free when fully healed." That isn't all that terribly useful in most games. Likewise "if this card is fully healed you may search your deck for a card and play it after the attack step instead of attacking." is quite different since that could guarantee you'll have two of them out by the end of the turn you play it unless the opponent can counter this on your turn. Additionally, it having full health directly affects the ability to use it to overwhelm the opponent with Lanchester's laws. Point is, you also need to consider the situational usefulness of that effect given the conditions under which it's likely to arise.
Correct, and for this reason the function that derives value for a given element is specific to that element (or insanely and unnecessearily complex, resulting from all possible permutations of interplay having ro be accounted for). What remains constant is the nominal value assigned to certain functions. In your example card draw would have a defined value, and the ease of triggering it would modify that value. The base value assigned to these game elements would also be dependent on the exact nature of all the game elements in play. A card that can turn card draw into a positive feedback loop, like the one you describe will probably increase the nominal value of the mechanic, thus altering the balance of all other previously printed cards.
I still don't understand why a game need to adjust itself to the incorrect perception that players have on probabilities. This will never help them learn the correct way probability works, it just makes everyone more entrenched in their wrong beliefs. I see it very often in TCGs, where players complain about things that are not only relatively likely to happen, but are actually the MOST PROBABLE outcome.
in which context is the example at min 5 meant? in this way : have the heroes growth rate be x^5 (not just polynomial, but normed monomial) and those of the enemies x^3 (also normed monomial), then their relation is not a function of ax+b in this case that statement is wrong or this way: let F be a field (i dont think falling back to the more general commutative ring with 1 is required here), then the set of polynomials with coefficients in F are a vector space over F in this case, that statement is trivial.
The question about manipulating numbers to adjust for player's irrational psychology is quite interesting. It's quite annoying when players don't understand the numbers and the fact that game is balanced and the problem is their psychology. You could adjust for their psychology but you break the game balance and ruin the long run experience. It's hard man arguing with players, It's quite tempting to do secret buffs and nerfs just to get them to stop complaining.
Anyone have good resources to learning excel in the context of game design? I never learned them at school and it's kind of a pain compared to just learning sql
I am not a developer or game designer but i have been only playing games and have been using all those methods you have mentioned not to balance but to exploit lol
The fact that people would rather not keep playing Cookie Clicker is exactly why it is immoral gaming design. You should never create a situation where the player doesn't enjoy playing your game but feels compelled to do so. That can create addiction--the actual medical condition. The idea of feeling compelled to do something I hate sounds like horror to me. It doesn't make sense to treat it like this casual thing to me. I stay away from any game that starts to make me feel remotely like that. And I genuinely believe addicting people is wrong. What I described is what OCD is.
@@ruukinen So you didn't watch the video? The guy specifically says that he required his students to play the game, and there were a lot of people who hated themselves because they kept playing the game. He the argued that this sort of self-loathing is something he thinks is required for game designers. I argue he is completely mistaken, and the last thing any game designer should want to do is make a game that would induce that sort of response. They should never hate themselves for their game design.
@@ZipplyZane So you think their experience with the game is more valid than mine. You are a grade A-Ahole aren't ya? I agree that you should make games that people enjoy, but who are you to tell me I can't enjoy cookie clicker which I find is the best idle game out there?
@@ruukinen No, I was commenting *on a statement in the video.* Your experience has nothing at all to do with theirs, or the point the guy made in the video. Calling me an "a-hole" is out of line. It is a personal insult that seems to indicate you would rather have a fight than a discussion. Your original comment was already borderline, "I don't know what you're on a out" is a belittling comment, but I ignored it, because I assumed you weren't intending to be rude. Unfortunately, it appears you were attacking me, so I will now block you. I may even delete your comment after I'm sure you've read this. I am not required to put up with those who wish to go out of their way to attack others.
doing math and complex logic problem gives me a real actual splitting headache. it sucks it is incredibly ableist to just claim that there is no such thing as 'bad at math'
*hearing him go on about how important functions and spread sheets are* me, with my little pencils and notebooks on my 4th tabletop game : "i dont know if im in the green but it sure feels like it."
Yep. :) That would actually be another psychology-related class: How to implement nerfs elegantly. (E.g. adding a tradeoff vs. cuttng numbers on a fan favorite OP item)
Ever read their developer posts? They have both mathematical and game design mastery and can explain every single small change. I consumed those posts in surrender@20 for years (up until around when you made this comment) and they would go to lenghts explaining why they increased Riven's shield while decreasing her hp regeneration. You should have taken notes. Game balance is hard. Especially in a 5v5 game where most people are matched with random strangers and it's extremely easy to blame everyone and everything else whenever you fail (the psychological aspect is HARD).
Imagine the first chess players "are two knights worth more than a rook?"
"I dunno. Guess we need to wait hundreds of years for more people to play this game."
Isn't that exactly how material advantage eventually came to be?
Hundreds of years later when more people play the game: "Well? It depends on the position really..."
"it depends on the position, but usually yes"
it's situational baby, give me the board setup and i can tell.
It depends on the playstyle and boardstate.
"players being buggy."
Simply delete the player and allocate a new one.
Have you tried to shout down the player and turn them on again? Must be a hardware bug, you might have to contact the manufacturer.
Player.disable
Player.enable
Do we really need the player for this function?
write a test for the player. that way you will know whether he works before you commit him to production code.
I love what he said about math being a learnable skill. I never considered myself good at math, but when I finally found a need for it outside of high school, I learned what I had to. I think a lot of people also think being good at math means being able to calculate things on the spot in your head, but really it's just knowing what mathematical tools to use and when. Much like Excel, it can be a tool that with a bit of setup, does a lot of the work for you.
I'm a big fan of teaching kids basic logic first then teaching them math so they learn WHY 1x2 equals two instead of just memorizing tables and flash-cards.
To truely become good at math, then for each math topic you approach you need to first understand the concept of it, and then train in using it until you gain intuition for how to apply it. This intuition can then be used to understand further topics in math, and so on.
Memorisations in math is what you use when you have given up on gaining actual understanding and intuition, or when you want to have an extra shortcut to a result, that would be tedious to calculate again (this is what memorizing multiplication tables should be for).
In my opinion, most people that consider themselves bad at math (and are bad at actual math, not just calculating numbers in their head), are bad because they do not have sufficient understandment and intuition of the math needed to solve some problem. For instance, if someone is struggling with isolating some variable in a formula, it might be because they have insufficient intuition (read training with using) of the math topics used in the steps to perform the isolation. If they have a lot of training with using those math topics, they will be able to recognise what type of path to a solution there could exists, and will have an easier time solving the new problem that makes use of it. If they have build their understanding of a topic on purely memorization, they will not really know when they are recalling something wrong, and can easily make competly incorrect steps, making their path to a solution instead be a path to them becoming lost in the math jungle, with loss of confidence in their math skills being lost just the same. If they just have insufficient intuition of the used math topics in the path to the solution, they will strugle a lot with finding said path, and may take a misstep here or there, and they might either luckily arrive at the end or just give up after not being able to find a path.
That said, not everyone really needs higher math, though if you expect to become a good programmer you are probably going to need it. The higher into math you want to venture, the better a good foundation in basic math will be for you, as it is a lot like building a skyskraper: For you to build the next floor, it must stand on the solid foundation of the previous, and all the previous floors have to carry the weight of all the higher floor, so the lower floors must be that much more rebust than the higher ones.
It should also be mentioned that you can get far by "just" understanding each problem, and understanding what the preceding steps are, but you might not end up being very good at manipulating math on that level if you go that path, and you will strugle a lot more.
Best thing I ever read about maths was some of the freely available MIT coursework.
It was actually about the concept of a proof, and what an axiom is, and how when you get to the actual logic and reasoning behind it, a statement like 1+2 is actually incredibly complicated, and it takes many, many steps to get from a fundamental axiom to a statement like that.
But yes, practice matters. I have a good grasp of vectors, even though I suck even at something as basic as algebra.
Why? Because I spent a lot of time coding stuff which had tons and tons of vectors in it.
Practice, having a purpose for it, and just general exposure helps a lot.
Yeah learned this the hard way as well, but they too have to understand that the learning curve for everyone is not as easy as from person A to person B, thats why being in college that requires you to learn something within a 'specific' term (3 months for example) and while learning it halfway there you're to be pressured with other stuff as well, its kinda hard .
I'm a math major and a tutor. It's absolutely true that anyone can learn math. People think about math in different ways, but they all have the ability to understand what's happening. I like the approach of teaching the basics and intuition to people first, but this doesn't work for everyone unfortunately. Sometimes, people need the applications to understand the math. Other times, the "intuition" is hardly intuitive. I took a class called model theory where we analyzed different frameworks of math, and this is essentially the basis of why 1+1 = 2. We ascribed names and symbols for those values and then using the things in our world, we modeled "2" in a symbol. If you're lost here, that's why it's not always good to start with the "fundamentals". Math classes go backwards. You get up to differential equations and then start working your way back down with analysis and discrete math because logic and fundamentals can be hard when you don't know where it's going or what the overarching theme is. As an example, I had a 7th grader who needed help with his homework because they were teaching him logic. Well, he had to do proofs (very structured thank god), but one of his proofs was "prove that the product of two even numbers is even." My first thought was, that's so cool. Having students prove this for themselves would help a lot. And then, walking through the proof, I realized you need algebraic intuition to know that 2x*y can be written like 2z, thus finishing that proof. It isn't that the proof isn't possible without algebra, you technically don't use it, but it's much harder to see the solution. This is the case for lots of fundamentals.
This video is basically the syllabus for an amazing class that I'll never get to take. 😐
Why not?
go take it!
It's OK if you don't. It's not OK that many game designers also skipped it.
since my money worth 5 times less than dollars, probably mean that I also will never take it.
Anyone manage to find his book? That is the closest thing that my money may allow me to have
@@smashgambits could you add me?
9:57 I thought a game that lies about probability to the player would be hard to find, but the GBA Fire Emblem games instantly came to mind.
When the game says you have "99 hit", you intuitively think that your chance to hit an attack is 99%, but the game rolls two numbers between 0 and 99, then compares their average to 99, resulting in a 99.99% chance to hit.
This discrepancy is more noticeable near the extremes, with "10 hit" being 2.1% chance to hit.
All this goes along well with the players thinking "90% never misses" and "10% never hits", which sounds like a fallacy when I write it like that, but that's really how we video gamers think.
@@DagarCoH its also why a lot of people have the opposite thought in their minds, many people think that the hardest difficulty cheats against you simply because of this. When the opposite its true
Depends on FE. As far as I know enemies have LOWER chance to hit you because they take worse roll out of 2 while you get best one. So you can vitness miracle on your side while AI plays with handicap.
In Final Fantasy Tactics, there are two axioms:
1) Nothing is more unreliable than having a 97% hit rate
2) Nothing causes more anxiety than an enemy with a 3% hit rate.
In Pokemon there is a move called Focus Blast which in theory has 70% hit chance, but in reality it misses 100% of the time
XCOM 2 does a similar thing where the RNG hit chances favour the player compared to what is shown. It's pretty interesting, most players seem to think that it is the other way around if anything.
Omg love how fast he talks, Like the exact speed to never stop paying atention
Haha so true.. Wasn't planning on it, but somehow I ended up watching the whole video!
I've started changing video playback speed so other people talk at this speed, too. It's perfect.
TheEcoolarg I agree, he has a great vocal cadence
Dude LOVE your project, anybody who is reading this, please cheek it out, truthly a work of pasion for pokefans.
TheEcoolarg Thanks dood! I appreciate that :). Good and explosive (hehe.. in-game foreshadowing) things coming this year :D
I've now been in the industry for 8 years, and your blog Game Design Concepts has been decisive in building my skill Mr Schreiber.
I'm happy to find you here now that I understand how much I lack a thinking in Game Balance. Thank you 🙌
16:20 "In reality the data is always trying to trick you, they're very mean"
Respect Ian, been following you for a while now, and a lot from my teachings is based on your wonderful, free, courses.
I wish my college had this course. This is the kind of stuff as i child went through my head and now as an adult i try to piece together. Amazing talk thank you so much for this.
This guy talks as if he's constantly consuming Mario stars, great stuff!
@@EstevanValladares haha I definitely turned him from 1.5 to 1.25 unlike most speakers where I listen to them at 2.
That's the funniest image in my head of Mario.
Now this is a class that would be worth buying on udemy. The ones that are out there are awful and usually just cover how to use Unity
99% of all balance oriented classes on TH-cam also suck though... I mean, there are literally almost none that even mention the rock-paper-scissors mechanic, not to mention explain how to use spreadsheet balancing to get a mathematically sound balance in your game. In reality game balance is NOT an arbitrary thing based on huge nerfs on whatever meta-game is popular and 'needs' a change. It's a bit sad there isn't more proper info out there on this.
noxabellus You obviously don’t understand what game development and what game design is.
@@floatingchimney what do you mean
@@wontcreep Because he's comparing apples and oranges.
He says game development courses on Udemy are "bad" (for some reason), and this one (a game design course) is "good".
Game development is one thing - game design is a totally different thing.
@@floatingchimney No, the courses he is talking about call themselves "Game Design"-courses, but what these courses are are Game Development courses. There is very little material on practical Game Design. The same is true for books. So many use Jesse Schell's book as a great book on Design, but its just vague. Earnest Adams on the other hand is far more concrete.
This class is masterfully crafted. I look forward to seeing what Ian creates in the future. So happy he is making a textbook so more students can benefit. Brilliant!
His voice and mannerisms remind me so much of Dan from the classic Extra Credits show. I love it!
I love his point about "good" and "bad" at math being cultural. Along with so many other things in our society
I want this person to whisper sweet game-balance-design-nothings in my ear every night before I go to sleep. Amazing.
A tech tree for course material! This is genius :)
is it me or does je sneak in a lot of "YO!" s
YO, SCIENCE BITCH! :D
I think it's a very short "You know" but I keep hearing "yo" too :D
i love it
"yo" - "what you say?" - "you know?"
Yeah Mr. thereisnospace! Yeah science!
The disconnect between actual probability and intuitive probability is well known in X-Com....any shot with a hit chance of less than 90% only hit 10% of the time.
99% and u still miss lol
@@dantechan5312 you can miss 100% shots (altough thats possible its from a mod...), because the game rounds up 99.7% to 100%
XCOM uses real probability: a good chance to hit has a good chance to hit, but you still miss a 90% shot 1 out of 10 times.
Fire Emblem uses an altered probability where the hit chance lies to you, but feels much more "accurate" to your experience.
A very good example of how game balance is both math and player experience problem, with both cruel honesty and gentle lying having their advantages.
@@racercowan you are wrong about this actually. XCOM, on the normal difficulty setting, deliberately lies about probabilities - it has an invisible boost to hit chance, exactly because people hate missing those 80% shots and feel like the game is unfair. This is then removed on higher difficulty levels.
XCOM is great at teaching people than low probability events happen all the time as long as there are enough things happening. If your entire strategy relies on hitting that 95% shot, then after twenty missions you will on average have messed everything up once. Very thought provoking.
@@racercowan Xcom buffs your next shot after you missed to make you feel you got a dramatic comeback and you have + chance to hit on top of that on lower difficulties aka most of them.
I love the idea that someone's mind could be so entrenched in low level programming that they would start programming tools that could be achieved with a simple spreadsheet.
I mean, I see where you're coming from, but also I made a non-real time flight sim using a spreadsheet that uses jerk instead of acceleration for variable timestep.
He's right - I'm the living proof that math can be learned.
For more than 30 years I could only do basic operations in my head and would literally have headaches when looking at a spreadsheet, but then I've caught myself in a situation where balancing a game demanded I knew more than my intuition allowed.
I took an online course and changed my life. Not only I learned lots of things I deemed impossible, I even got somewhat addicted to math and sheets! As I work with game formulae, it often feels I'm cracking a puzzle or something, to the extent I now have more fun tweaking the sheets to find out solutions than going into the game to test them.
Do not fear math. If you have a real purpose to it, you will come understand all those abstractions; the problem with math is not that it doesn't make sense (because it obviously do), but that we often don't make sense of it. When facing a game problem, all those numbers and letters will feel as natural as any other game mechanic for you.
What was the course about ? can you share ?
For those too lazy to type:
gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/
we understand so much about how to make the games that have already been made.
I'll be heading for your website and snaffling up your materials before you change your mind about making them available! I already know a reasonable amount of probability and statistics, but have been looking for good information on balance. Thanks! Will keep an eye out for your book as well.
I wish my classes had a tech tree.
the would be a hell of a motivator
Starting back at grade 1
Lots of proper math courses and math textbooks do.
As soon as I heard "most of the focus in this course is on learning mathematical tools to do this modeling" I knew it was going to be good. Love gdc thank you thank you thank you
Brilliant! Courses like this make me want to go back to school. Excellent work and phenomenal presentation, Ian!
Not even 2 minutes in and… how did I ever live without course tech trees!?
Some math books actually have them for their chapters. It's great :)
Excellent introductory lecture for those who want to get in the subject. Definitely going to read the cited works!
I usually get bored halfway through these math/programming/science talks, but i stayed engaged through this one!
Yeah cuz it was an index, no math.
The Q&A part confirms me to never allow Questions after a speech
This talk is useful, but honestly, it’s going to be a rare scenario that a designer can actually apply this, unless they’re basically making simulated board games or card games.
I suppose my main gripe is that this thinking is primarily useful within the existing multiplayer genres and paradigms (MOBAs, brawlers, etc), but realistically, there are very few but dominating successes within these genres, and the road to success is going to involve _defining new systems_ rather than rehashing existing ones that players are tired of (inventory systems, crafting, skill trees, etc). I’d prefer if the scope of the course included _how to structure interesting systems_, as its closely related and arguably more important. Will Wright gives a really interesting GDC talk on this, if you’re interested.
Another way of looking at it: how applicable would this lecture be to an existing game, like Zelda OoT? Not very... you determine shrub/rock drops, and that’s it. Much more important is the game’s employment of items, its Z-targeting, and combat depth, all of which could be analyzed at a macroscopic, interaction-between-systems level. The framework structuring itself is more important than the analysis of few kinds of overly specific frameworks.
The vast majority of game design courses in reality focus on card/board games because they can be feasibly constructed in a fairly short amount of time for an assessment, and the skills that go into their creation are still relevant at a concept-design level for games of any type.
Where was this class when I was in school? I would have loved to take this class.
A lot of the questions asked were... pretty bad lol. But I love how his go to word is "yo" lol
Did his book ever come out? I'd like to buy it if it exists.
One simple trick to make enemy AI seem fair: make their first shot always miss (unless it could not). Nothing is more annoying than the player suddenly getting shot in the back.
Clicker games were what finally broke the code for me. The only difference between Cookie Clicker and wow is people, scale, and illusion.
Make number go big is not the core design principle of all games, and I d wager as much that all games that have make number go big as their core principle are quiet unimaginative.
"Ive got 10 hours to teach this class"
Sounds like an instructor from the Art Institute of Phoenix
"If player is getting stronger in an rpg through polynomial growth, and monsters are also scaling polynomially, then the relationship between the player power and the monster power will be linear, not polynomial"
What?
Relative power stays similar.
Suppose at level 1 you have 1 hp, and deal (on average) 1 hp damage. Monsters are the same.
You level up to at level 2 to 4, hp, but deal 4 damage.
Level 3: 16 hp, average 16 hp of damage. Monsters scale similarly.
In this system, you are still one hitting monsters, even with a exponential growth in apparent hit points.
@@gregglind Right - I was just confused because a ratio of polynomials generally need not be linear. Like simplest example, x^3/x = x^2, which is not linear even though x^3 and x are both polynomial.
@@doormango yup, you are absolutely right and the guy in the presentation messed up hard on that one. He doesn't strike me as a mathematician, and a statement like that makes that all the more likely.
The most natural mistake to make in my opinion would be to say that the relationship is *constant* - which it might be. If the player hp and damage scales about quadratically and the monster hp and damage does the same, then the relationship between the two is constant, not linear. And like you say, the relationship might well also be polynomial, like if monster hp = level^4 and player hp = level^2.
@@gregglind even in this example, the correct thing to say is that the relationship is constant, not linear. Linear would imply that at level 4, the monsters are for example 4 times stronger relative to the player than at level 1.
The name of this video should be "An advertisement for a course about game balance". I was expecting to see at least a summary, not a syllabus as it provides no useful data or information about "Game Balance" at all. And it somehow got 2k likes.
The presenter is extremely naive, and he seems to enjoy being that way.
Despite it being just a course advertisement, it IMO contains quite a lot of useful info, albeit of quite basic kind. It's more of a summary of topics you possibly want to look into.
He tells you how he holds the course and provides you with the materials of the course. This was clearly aimed at people who want to teach this to others. Not to people who want to learn it.
It's a half hour talk, including Q&A. You're not going to learn how to design a game or an entire course in half an hour. The syllabus provides all the sourcing information for you to follow up with your own research.
I tried searching and was unable to find but did this book ever get published?
One of the only talks I can't listen to on 2x speed lmao. amazing.
15:45 The answer to where do you cross the line is very easy. Are you counting Happy players or dollars in pocket? if your focus and decision is about whats good for players enjoyment, the community around your game, and the quality of your game play then your doing good work, If your decisions are made by profit margins your crossing the line. What to do about it is a much harder question, especially if you work for someone else whos deciding the goals for your project.
Except it’s very rarely this black and white.
For example, if you’re a small team of developers who only has a limited budget and you’re surviving from game to game to keep the studio afloat, even though you might be passionate about what you do, and want to please your players as well as the critics who will review the game, you still need to make sure your game is bankable enough if you want your studio to keep making games.
Everything isn’t only huge greedy studios or solo developers who would go through hell to develop their games just out of sheer passion.
@@Adrimixmi True, and there's definitely value in cost benefit analysis on decisions and no reason not to try and make reasonable profit on projects. Once you start FOCUSING on making money you start making skinner boxes and other psychological traps without concern for the impact on your audience because thats what works cheep. Thats the line, if you think about how your decisions affect the quality of game play and customer experience (even if you have to make sacrifices sometimes) your fine, if you only care about moving little green pieces of paper at any cost then your going to cross that line to get them.
All of these topics are extremely important
this Is one part rocket maths, one part black magic........ love it
Is the book out yet...? :)
Where can I follow this absolute champion's class? What an amazing person!
"like settlers of catan or modern art" feel like this joke didn't get enough love, that was funny.
I would like to know how to balance path of exile like this, not a game designer by any stretch but it find this very interesting
I would love to take this class and learn the spreadsheet part of the things~~~ it would help me in all different area in my life.
Well ok so with something like "when this card is fully healed" clearly this will not act like "do the action x% of the time where x= chance of it actually being fully healed." The fact that it is fully healed matters. For example if the effect is "this card can retreat for free when fully healed." That isn't all that terribly useful in most games. Likewise "if this card is fully healed you may search your deck for a card and play it after the attack step instead of attacking." is quite different since that could guarantee you'll have two of them out by the end of the turn you play it unless the opponent can counter this on your turn. Additionally, it having full health directly affects the ability to use it to overwhelm the opponent with Lanchester's laws.
Point is, you also need to consider the situational usefulness of that effect given the conditions under which it's likely to arise.
Correct, and for this reason the function that derives value for a given element is specific to that element (or insanely and unnecessearily complex, resulting from all possible permutations of interplay having ro be accounted for).
What remains constant is the nominal value assigned to certain functions.
In your example card draw would have a defined value, and the ease of triggering it would modify that value.
The base value assigned to these game elements would also be dependent on the exact nature of all the game elements in play.
A card that can turn card draw into a positive feedback loop, like the one you describe will probably increase the nominal value of the mechanic, thus altering the balance of all other previously printed cards.
Thank you
I still don't understand why a game need to adjust itself to the incorrect perception that players have on probabilities. This will never help them learn the correct way probability works, it just makes everyone more entrenched in their wrong beliefs.
I see it very often in TCGs, where players complain about things that are not only relatively likely to happen, but are actually the MOST PROBABLE outcome.
Still waiting for that book, Ian. Amazon says January 2021, but who knows?
The book is out! I have it! I've only just started reading it, but so far it's good!
I would have killed to have such a class at uni
Great talk that gets a lot of concepts across clearly.
This guy is great.
Wait, I've seen this video already 4 years ago and I don't remember? Great!
Does this book now exist??? Eternal friendship to whoever can point me to it!
in which context is the example at min 5 meant?
in this way :
have the heroes growth rate be x^5 (not just polynomial, but normed monomial) and those of the enemies x^3 (also normed monomial), then their relation is not a function of ax+b
in this case that statement is wrong
or this way:
let F be a field (i dont think falling back to the more general commutative ring with 1 is required here), then the set of polynomials with coefficients in F are a vector space over F
in this case, that statement is trivial.
Ok bro, you're the best
The question about manipulating numbers to adjust for player's irrational psychology is quite interesting. It's quite annoying when players don't understand the numbers and the fact that game is balanced and the problem is their psychology. You could adjust for their psychology but you break the game balance and ruin the long run experience. It's hard man arguing with players, It's quite tempting to do secret buffs and nerfs just to get them to stop complaining.
Great Video man thanks.
The Book sounds great.
I'd love to be one of his student wow, pretty sure I also have some topics he didn't think of - too bad I don't have this in france
Awesome resources, including your blog! Thank you so much!
Anyone have good resources to learning excel in the context of game design? I never learned them at school and it's kind of a pain compared to just learning sql
I am not a developer or game designer but i have been only playing games and have been using all those methods you have mentioned not to balance but to exploit lol
Proof depends min [3/4] times check no variation but=0 [flatting], check if there any 1 there?
At 19:37 he uses the word 'grok'.
James Magenst Glad I wasnt the only one who noticed. Pretty smooth reference
Drink deep my brother.
It's in every programmer's vocabulary.
his class must be amazing
The fact that people would rather not keep playing Cookie Clicker is exactly why it is immoral gaming design. You should never create a situation where the player doesn't enjoy playing your game but feels compelled to do so. That can create addiction--the actual medical condition.
The idea of feeling compelled to do something I hate sounds like horror to me. It doesn't make sense to treat it like this casual thing to me. I stay away from any game that starts to make me feel remotely like that.
And I genuinely believe addicting people is wrong. What I described is what OCD is.
Civilization is based upon a compelling but not fun design. There is no intrinsically "immoral" design: depends how you use them and for what aim.
I happen to love playing cookie clicker and dunno what you are on about.
@@ruukinen So you didn't watch the video? The guy specifically says that he required his students to play the game, and there were a lot of people who hated themselves because they kept playing the game. He the argued that this sort of self-loathing is something he thinks is required for game designers.
I argue he is completely mistaken, and the last thing any game designer should want to do is make a game that would induce that sort of response. They should never hate themselves for their game design.
@@ZipplyZane So you think their experience with the game is more valid than mine. You are a grade A-Ahole aren't ya? I agree that you should make games that people enjoy, but who are you to tell me I can't enjoy cookie clicker which I find is the best idle game out there?
@@ruukinen No, I was commenting *on a statement in the video.* Your experience has nothing at all to do with theirs, or the point the guy made in the video.
Calling me an "a-hole" is out of line. It is a personal insult that seems to indicate you would rather have a fight than a discussion.
Your original comment was already borderline, "I don't know what you're on a out" is a belittling comment, but I ignored it, because I assumed you weren't intending to be rude.
Unfortunately, it appears you were attacking me, so I will now block you. I may even delete your comment after I'm sure you've read this. I am not required to put up with those who wish to go out of their way to attack others.
doing math and complex logic problem gives me a real actual splitting headache. it sucks
it is incredibly ableist to just claim that there is no such thing as 'bad at math'
I can’t wait to know exactly what to complain about in smash bros when I lose, because clearly my lack of skill is not the issue.
Start getting those excells ready then
I got this same look going with the glasses and long hair. I guess I fit in with the game dev crowd.
Strange, this video played at 1.25 speed but when I checked the speed in youtube was set at 1.0. Must be a bug.
Try Scepter of Zavandor as a multi-player example of numeric relationships.
omg this talk is amazing i love it thank you
Wow, I would love to take this course. It sounds fantastic.
Please please add subtitles
Yo
I want to take this class!
I feel this was more about the course than the info in the course
funny how I literally have a Cookie Clicker Tab open while watching this
What a great talk.
Balance according to Maplestory: Next class we release must be stronger than all the other classes!
That is how you get people to try the new stuff. In every multipler they release OP things at the start of the season then nerf later down the road.
When I took business statistics, the whole course was on black jack.
Is this the only available game design paradigm ?
Wow, amazing intro! Is the course available anywhere online?
I feel we would all benefit if he used more pictures.
Or at the very least least, just us peasants would.
Lovely talk. Thank you!
fantastic talk
i'm gonna make a skill tree for my major now
*hearing him go on about how important functions and spread sheets are*
me, with my little pencils and notebooks on my 4th tabletop game : "i dont know if im in the green but it sure feels like it."
Wish he talked about power creep.
holy mother the guy really has a slide of FLIPPIN DESKTOP DEFENSE OMG XD!!!!!!!! LIKE!
Single player save scumming is fine, unless you want to explicitly challenge yourself. Change my mind.
Depends on what experience you want out of your game.
Have a look at Into The Breach for an interesting implementation of undo and 'iron-manning'.
27:27 literally tell them something like "Think like a scientist, question everything" or "You have to be kinda OCD about this"
Aloha and mahalo for the info!
How does one get the opportunity to learn from him???????
Couldn't even focus on the talk. I was introduced to Cookie Clicker this evening.
Is this a real job? Sounds great.
Sign me up. Also I guess I'll learn math for this.
Expect death threats each time you make a 0.1% damage change to any weapon of the game you're working on ;)
That is going to happen always and for anything xD
Yep. :)
That would actually be another psychology-related class: How to implement nerfs elegantly.
(E.g. adding a tradeoff vs. cuttng numbers on a fan favorite OP item)
I wish I could take this class
Riot take notes
you read my mind
Even though Valve is (also) a scummy company, at least they balance better than Riot.
Ever read their developer posts? They have both mathematical and game design mastery and can explain every single small change. I consumed those posts in surrender@20 for years (up until around when you made this comment) and they would go to lenghts explaining why they increased Riven's shield while decreasing her hp regeneration.
You should have taken notes. Game balance is hard. Especially in a 5v5 game where most people are matched with random strangers and it's extremely easy to blame everyone and everything else whenever you fail (the psychological aspect is HARD).