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Thoughts from a Relic Balancer: Competitive Gaming vs. Game Balance

Written by Tae Yeon (David) Kim ("dayvie")

Competitive gaming and game balance are related, but are not the same things. To be a successful professional/competitive gamer, one must have the talent for understanding RTS games, dedication to improve, as well as the desire to win. Talent is needed to succeed as a competitive gamer, but is definitely not the most important factor. The reason I say this is because when a game is first released, there are many players that "play at the top level," and then disappear from the competitive gaming scene shortly after. Personally, I wouldn't consider these players to be true professional gamers. The reason is simple; playing a game at the professional level is not about learning to play a game to a certain skill level faster, but about mastering the game. On the other hand, practice alone is sometimes not enough. This can easily be seen by the many gamers that spend so much time playing and practicing a certain RTS game day after day, but just can't compete at the top level. In other words, mastering a game cannot be done by talent alone, but must be supported by the gamer's dedication and effort to practice.

Professional gaming sounds exciting, but it's not always about the fun, and in fact playing games will be extremely frustrating at times. Imagine having to practice Dark Crusade game after game, day after day for months only to lose a match, be eliminated from the preliminary rounds of a major tournament, and having to repeat this process over and over. This is not a fun experience and it is unavoidable by any professional gamer. There is never a true winner in the professional gaming scene, and the competition is extremely fierce. Due to this, a professional gamer must always struggle to win, not let the losses get in the way, and use past mistakes to improve in the future. This is what drives professional gamers, and the successes that come after so much time and effort is put in, is the most satisfying experience for any gamer in any genre.

So, how does all of this relate to game balance? Game balance requires a consideration of all levels of game play, all game types, race vs. race match-ups, and different maps which makes the process very difficult to master. Just as there is never a perfect professional gamer that wins every single tournament, it is difficult to achieve perfect balance in every single game type in every different map. In addition, similar to the competitive gamer's struggle to perfect his game, a game balancer does the same to achieve the goal of perfect balance. Perfect balance refers to every unit in the game being useful in some situation or another, and all the different match ups in the game being fair at every skill level.

There are obvious benefits of the competitive gamer going into game balance. A casual gamer that has never experienced the very top level of game play can never truly understand the game play at the competitive level. On the other hand, because a competitive gamer is not good at every single game out there, it's very easy for one to experience different games at different levels of game play. For instance, when a professional Dark Crusade player plays Company of Heroes casually, say, 1 hour per week, he or she would easily understand how a casual player feels about the game. Therefore, competitive gamers have the best potential to truly understand the mechanics of games, and therefore balance them well.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides to only playing games at the professional level. From my personal experience, I can say for certain that not every competitive gamer is suitable for game balance. The actual playing at the very top level could potentially get in the way of game balance, especially when the player specializes in a specific race. For example, a top Eldar player in the world that is playing to win every match could easily be biased when it comes to balancing that race vs. the 6 others in Dark Crusade. There could be a variety of reasons for this, one being the player is constantly competing in tournaments, and must make sure the Eldar are one of the stronger races in the game.

To sum, it's the overall understanding of the games at every skill level that is important for game balance, not just knowing one specific skill level. Because it is easier for a competitive gamer to view the game at every skill level, competitive gamers are usually preferred for game balance, but this does not mean the better player will always be better for game balance. My personal goal as a game balancer is to use my competitive gaming background, and constructive feedback from competitive gamers supported by reasonable arguments is always welcome and taken very seriously.