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ack the star shaped goods markers go on the star shapes of the trade good price tracks and so on how will the players remember how to adjust the trade good values on each track a rules summary printed on the board right next to the tracks makes it easy to remember what about how combat is resolved unit strengths stats and abilities can be printed on the military units themselves and the remaining rules can either be summarized on the board or on a quick reference card or other player aid given to each player at the start of the game as you go about designing the ui here is a process you can follow first make a list of tasks that players need to accomplish in the game make it easy to do those tasks second pay special attention to the most common tasks the ones that players are doing over and over difficulty and complexity of a task should be in proportion to how rarely it is used iterate through playtesting use of color color is a great way to convey information to players if done well it is efficient color takes up no additional space on a game component because the component is already there all you re doing is coloring it here are a few quick and dirty tips for thinking about color use in your game the colors that normal human eyes detect most easily are red and green followed by blue these colors will tend to stand out more which can be good for drawing attention but bad for eye strain if you use fully saturated bright colors don t rely on color alone a nontrivial portion of your audience has some degree of colorblindness vary the intensity of colors as well so that if for example photographed with a black and white camera you would still see a difference and use different shapes in addition to different colors by having things differentiated in multiple ways different shape different color etc it makes it really obvious that those things are distinct from each other use color consistently if you use one color for several things in a game those things should be related some board games i ve played for example have say five different resources and each one has a color but each player also has a color and some player colors and resource colors are the same even though there is no relationship between the green player and green resources this kind of thing can confuse players who might think that a particular resource is owned by their opponent when it isn t more ui design tips in no particular order automate or eliminate tasks that don t involve interesting decisions if possible every click or keypress in a video game or die roll or card flip in a board game should involve the player doing something that is interesting to them if the player first has to do a bunch of upkeep tasks just to have the privilege of making interesting decisions later see what you can do to streamline the boring stuff use visual metaphors they make it obvious what something represents if your players control a bunch of pieces that represent people using people shaped pawns is clearer than using wooden cubes compare the pawn images below each has a very different effect on how the player views it insert picture of meeple people pawn and normal pawn likewise if you use icons in the game to represent certain abilities choose icons that look like the concept they re representing if you can be consistent with similar games in an rpg red hearts probably mean life or hit points while blue drops probably represent mana or magic power why because that s how everyone else does it and your players will assume by default that you do it that way too don t just say well this is confusing so we ll explain it in the manual remember your players may not have the manual and they may not read it try to make your ui intuitive enough that your game doesn t even need a manual lessons learned giving your game a good ui is a skill that is separate from core systems design but it is an important skill to learn keep in mind that as with most things in this course ui design is a huge field and we are only going to cover the very basics there are entire courses and even college majors devoted specifically to ui not to mention hundreds of books and i encourage you to seek out these resources after this course is over further reading there are many great books on ui design if this topic interests you i would recommend donald norman s design of everyday things which gets into the details of how the design of something as simple as a door or a stove can go horribly wrong with lessons that can be applied directly to games both digital and non also for ways to show game data to players in efficient and innovative ways i would recommend any of edward tufte s books the visual display of quantitative information envisioning information and visual explanations if you are primarily interested in video games there are so many great sources on computer ui that it would be hard to list them all here if you have any personal favorites leave as a comment on this blog post or post on twitter using gdcu homeplay the ongoing homeplay from a week ago was to arrange for a blindtest session which should be completed on or before this thursday august 27 continue working on this if you have not completed it already your other task also before this thursday is to critically analyze your game with respect to user interface think about your playtests so far and what rules your players have had trouble with what kinds of components or player aids would make it easier for them to remember come up with a user interface plan for the final version of your game this plan should involve the following a complete list of all game components that will be included in the final game for each component a detailed description of what you are planning to use if you have say one pawn to represent each player how many pawns are included what colors will they be what shapes will they be made of metal plastic wood or something else if there are cards describe a sample card what information will be displayed on each card will the card be oriented as portrait or landscape how will the information be laid out where on the card will each item go how will it be displayed what colors shapes and keywords do you plan to use if any if there are several kinds of cards do this for each if there is a board describe the layout of the board as with cards consider what information will be displayed on the board how it is laid out and how it is displayed if there are other components give similar information to that listed here this list is mainly for your own reference and the purpose is to make it as easy as possible for you to assemble your final game which you will be doing this next week the list also serves as a sanity check do you have access to all the components you need if you do not own some of them think about how and where you plan to create or purchase them post your ui plan to the forums no later than this thursday august 27 noon gmt by next monday august 31 read and respond to at least three other posts at the same level as you giving preference to those that have not had any responses by reading it may give you some ideas to use on your own project you may also be able to share some ideas you already have with others helping them to improve their projects posted in uncategorized leave a comment level 16 game balance august 20 2009 when veteran gamers or game designers are playing a game if they are doing too well or too poorly they will often comment on the game s balance this word is important but i fear it is often overused like the word fun there are different kinds of balance and understanding what game balance is and why it s important is what we cover today why are we only covering this now and not earlier like say at the start of the design project as mentioned earlier balancing the game is something that is best left until after you have a good set of core mechanics balancing a game that is simply not meeting its design goals is a waste of time and when you change the core mechanics you ll just have to balance the game again so here we are with a work in progress that has survived multiple rounds of playtesting and it is time to take it to the next level about the pace of this course at this point i realize from the comments and some forum posts that many of you are falling behind as a reminder this course is going at a brisk pace and i recognize that many participants may not have the time to devote to this one hundred percent on the bright side the playtesting part of designing a game can go at a fast or slow pace for your own hobby projects time may not be of the essence so you can continue to follow along at your own pace if you can still keep on schedule that is great if you are finding that setting up playtest sessions and modifying your game is taking too much time my suggestion would be to do things as soon as you are able and then follow along through the rest of this course a little behind schedule i m not taking this content down any time soon so it will patiently wait for you the rest of the course will concentrate on the design project and there will be no other homeplays to distract you i would recommend keeping up with the readings on this blog however if you have the time this will give you an idea of what to look for in your project as you look ahead and i may make announcements here that i ll want you to see readings no additional readings for today there is plenty of material here in this blog post what is game balance in a two player game saying it is balanced usually means that one player does not have an unfair advantage over the other but we also hear the term used in relation to single player games where there is no opponent other than the game itself and any unfair advantage the game may have could just be considered a challenge and then we may talk of individual cards in a game like magic the gathering as being balanced even when all players have access to that card so it does not give an advantage to any individual what s going on here in my experience when we talk of game balance we are generally talking about one of four things context usually makes it clear which one we are talking about in single player games we use balance to describe whether the challenge level is appropriate to the audience in multi player games where there is asymmetry that is where players do not start with exactly equal positions and resources we use balance to describe whether one starting position is easier to win with than another within a game if there are multiple strategies or paths to victory that can be followed within the game we use balance to describe whether following one strategy is better or worse than following another within a system that has several similar game objects such as cards in a trading card game weapons in a role playing game and so on we use balance to describe the objects themselves specifically whether different objects have the same cost benefit ratio let us examine each of these more closely and then we will go over some practical techniques for balancing your game balance in single player games in single player games we use balance to describe whether the challenge level is appropriate to the audience note that by simply playing the game and getting experience with it your audience will eventually become more skilled at the game this is one reason why the later levels of video games are usually harder than the earlier levels recall that another reason is so that the gameplay matches the dramatic tension in the narrative the change in difficulty over time in a single game has a name we call it pacing there is one obvious problem here that we face as game designers how do we know what an appropriate challenge level is sure we can say that a logic puzzle game for adults is probably going to be harder than a similar game for young children but beyond that how are we supposed to know what is too easy or too hard the obvious answer playtest there is another problem however not all players are exactly the same even within a narrow target audience players fall along a bell curve with a few that will be highly skilled and a few that are the opposite in your playtests how do you know where your testers fall on that bell curve if you are just starting out the ideal thing to do is to use lots and lots of playtesters when you have dozens or hundreds of people giving feedback on your game you can get a pretty good idea of what the overall ranges are as you gain experience as a game designer you will get a better feel for your audience and you will need progressively fewer and fewer playtesters to give you the same good results if you re starting out but you don t have the time or resources to do lots of playtests you can sometimes fake it if you have some idea of where your own playtesters fall on the curve do they consider themselves above average or below average skill level compared to the other kinds of people you re making your game for even if you have a pretty good idea of how to modify the difficulty of your game and where your target audience falls what do you choose as your challenge level when the audience is diverse no matter what you do your game will be too hard for some people and too easy for others so this appears to be a no win situation if you must choose a single level of challenge a rule of thumb is to aim for the middle of the curve as you will get the most people the widest possible audience that way another way around this is to provide support for those at the ends of the curve using multiple difficulty levels handicaps or alternate rule sets to make things easier or harder balance in asymmetric games in multi player games where there is asymmetry that is where players do not start with exactly equal positions and resources we use balance to describe whether one starting position is easier to win with than another truly symmetric games are rare we think of classic games like chess and go as symmetric since each player starts with the same set of pieces and plays by the same rules but there is one asymmetry one player goes first if you modify chess so that both players secretly write a move on a piece of paper and then the moves are performed simultaneously it becomes fully symmetric and plays very differently this brings up an interesting question if your game is symmetric do you need to worry about game balance at all after all both players start with exactly identical resources and starting positions and so on so by definition no player can have an unfair advantage this is true but the designer must still consider other types of balance particularly whether there is a dominant strategy simply making all players equal does not get you off the hook even if your game is asymmetric why bother balancing it the simple answer is that it is a typical player expectation that a game will not give an automatic advantage or disadvantage to certain players other...