Perfectly Unbalanced

During the development of every competitive multiplayer game there comes a time where the game's balance needs to be assessed. That is, what is the probability of winning provided by the different strategies/choices available to the player and are there any moves that will simply guarantee a win? I mentioned recently how chess slightly favours the white player when both players make few mistakes, while other games such as checkers will always result in a draw when played perfectly. Tic-tac-toe also always results in a draw when played correctly, however with so few moves available to the player the correct play is always obvious, making the game rather pointless. The game Anti-Monopoly claims that is has been perfectly balanced by a computer to ensure that being a monopolist or a competitor poses no disadvantage, all I know was that after six hours of playing we were nowhere near having either side win and 1/3 of the player had fallen asleep.

So how do you ensure that a game is fun, fair, and doesn't just result in endless draws. One way is to introduce a luck element, this way two people who play equally well will still obtain a result, and ideally the luck element will be small enough so that a better player will usually defeat a weaker one. You could introduce certain counter move/strategies to your game, plays that would usually be weak except in certain situations. Or you could just not worry about it and  let the players sort it out through metagaming.

Metagaming is the use of outside of game knowledge to increase your chances of winning. One simple example is that in a game involving temporary alliances player X always lies, after playing a few times people realise this and no one will ally with them, negatively affecting their chance to win. However the type of metagame I want to discuss involves game where players must decide on a strategy or move at the start of the game and stick with it. The simplest example of this type of game is rock-paper-scissors where you must decide on what hand gesture you will make and then you are stuck with the consequences, this example seems trivial as if picked randomly against a truly random opponent each choice has an equal chance of winning. But image if I told you that 60% of people choose scissors as their first move, using this extra knowledge you can greatly in crease your chance of winning by playing rock. However, what happens when you are paired against another player who also knows about this, should you switch to paper to defeat their rock? Or what if the information becomes so well known that rock starts to become the dominant starting move, suddenly the choice is much less obvious as the metagame has changed.

In games which are less balanced than rock-paper-scissors, such as a CCG or video fighting game your ability to do well in a tournament often depends on the deck/character choice made relative to the average deck/character choice. Image four different deck types A, B, C, and D. A defeats B 70% of the time, C 55% of the time, and D only 35% of the time; B defeats C 55% of the time and D 60% of the time; and C defeats D 70% of the time. The question is what deck should you play in the up coming tournament? Deck A seems to be the strongest as it has a favourable matchup against all decks except for D, which by contrast is only good against A. What your choice comes down to is what deck do you think most people will be playing, if most people own or want to play A then you should play D even though this is it's only good mathup. If however the metagame has got to the point where everyone is playing either A or D, then maybe C is the best choice as it isn't far off being even against A and usually defeats D. These choices mean that the unbalance between the individual decks is resolved by players making choices based on their analysis of the metagame.

Even with metagaming problems do still arise, the character Meta Knight was recently banned from competitive Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournaments because he has no bad matchup, meaning that even using metagaming the best decision is to simply play as Meta Knight. However, this also shows that as long is there is an active governing body with the power to take such actions mistakes such as this can be rectified.