On Video Game Balancing: Joining Player- and Data-Driven Analytics

Abstract: Balancing is, especially among players, a highly debated topic of video games. Whether a game is sufficiently balanced greatly influences its reception, player satisfaction, churn rates and success. Yet, conceptions about the definition of balance diverge across industry, academia and players, and different understandings of designing balance can lead to worse player experiences than actual imbalances. This work accumulates concepts of balancing video games from industry and academia and introduces a player-driven approach to optimize player experience and satisfaction. Using survey data from 680 participants and empirically recorded data of over 4 million in-game fights of Guild Wars 2, we aggregate player opinions and requirements, contrast them to the status quo and approach a democratized quantitative technique to approximate closer configurations of balance. We contribute a strategy of refining balancing notions, a methodology of tailoring balance to the actual player base and point to an exemplary artifact that realizes this process.