 If any game can claim to be balanced, surely it must be chess. Two sides, identical pieces, beautiful symmetry. Except we know that an aggregate of all game shows that white has a very slight advantage. White chooses the opening, Italian, Queens gambit, black responds. Of course, black can play an opening that works in most situations regardless, but the initiative is always in white's favor. Not that this matters to all of us who are average at best, a GM will beat us regardless. But because the game isn't simultaneous, it creates a slight imbalance. But that imbalance creates interesting outcomes, though, in the form of opening lines, strategic counterattacks, and theory. Also, in a series of games, players have to switch between being black and white too, balancing the supposed imbalance. Let's switch gears to fighting games. Some of the first had two identical characters, but the genre didn't become popular until Street Fighter II, where multiple characters were introduced. See, balance was sacrificed at the altar of depth, asymmetry, and fun. Balance isn't an ideal in itself if it doesn't create interesting gameplay. It is a tool. However, once asymmetry is introduced, it too must be balanced. But a kind of dynamic, asymmetrical balance, not a static formulation. Balance in games is something like riding a bike then. You have to keep moving to maintain equilibrium. Our bodies are similarly balanced, dynamic harmony. Games are similar, but they are not static systems. They are like an economy. Game balance is an intangible art with moving components trapped in a cybernetic circuit with players, all of which can be disrupted by the slightest of adjustments, like ruining a dish with a little too much salt. Game balance, an 800-page tome on the nature of balance in games, is where I would direct those who want a comprehensive account of the subject, the practicalities of balancing and game design. The authors outline many types of balance, mathematical balance, where the numbers in a game system are coordinated, difficulty balance, a smoothly escalating curve like that of flow, balance progression in terms of the abilities and tools you acquire through a game, and then more intangible things like balance between strategies as this move too strong compared to another, and initial conditions, same objects positioning and simultaneous start times. And of course, there's a divide between PvP and PvE, which have different objectives to balance. As we saw with chess and fighting games, balance must be balanced with another, perhaps more integral thing to games, depth. Let's take a recent discussion permeating the fighting game community, the idea of emergent fighting games. The argument goes like this, older fighting games, although more imbalanced, had more emergence, and hence more depth. More recent games, however, are more tightly defined, where the obsession with balance is overriding depth, interesting decisions, and, you know, fun. The problem here is that there are three distinct terms, emergence, depth, and balance, three overlapping but distinct things. Emergent mechanics are when things combine in interesting ways, like the genesis of the combo, or cancelling moves into special moves. However, this does not necessarily create depth, in fact, a completely broken mechanic that functions as a dominant solution undermines depth. Similarly, just because a game is balanced does not mean it can't be deep, and that this can't be intentionally devised. I will take this opportunity now to gush about virtual fighting, which is both very balanced and deep. The game is balanced by a core system around rock, paper, scissors. Hit beats throw, beats block, beats hit. No dominant solutions. All characters have different moves, creating a symmetry, but central moves like jabs, elbows, low punches, and throws have very similar frame data. There are universals at play, a mathematical balance. There is also balance between moves, as stronger moves tend to be riskier on block or whiff, and the initial conditions of the match are such that players are in the center of the ring with equal amounts of health. This makes the game more about its system, which inherently balances the game. But where does the depth come from then? If you can read the opponent's next move, you can win. Read a strike, block, or evade or reversal or sabaki. Read a throw, attack. You ride minus 9 and are put into a forced gas between mid and throw. Well, evade and buffer in a throw escape too, or read the throw and just launch them. Option selects an emergent mechanic's work in tandem with the core RPS to create more depth and balance. Other well-designed fighting games work similarly too. The King of Fighters does something similar with hops, low attacks, and normals, but also gives players incredible mobility options to be able to make reads and have options almost anywhere on the screen. Options, both on offense and defense, is what creates depth, and balance in the core system facilitates this expression. To use the terminology of an academic book to legitimize these claims, RPS is a deterministic non-nash equilibrium system. The outcome always follows from certain inputs and prevents a dominant strategy, balancing itself. Pac-Man has deterministic AI, which creates predictable strategies, but Miss Pac-Man has non-deterministic AI and objects, making it test different skills like the ability to adapt and improvise. The shmup has very predictable patterns and creates depth through mastery of pattern recognition and reactions, whereas Roguelike can alter aspects of its world to ask players to adapt dynamically every run. Balancing these games means something very different, because you are doing so in accordance with different objectives, different skills. In Hades, having the chance of overpowered runs is a part of the aesthetic of the game. Momentary imbalance and shifting variables servicing a power fantasy, adaptive play and longer-term engagement. Recent article in Eurogamer brought up an interesting point about balance, in that sometimes it doesn't matter. Elden Ring has unbalanced builds, spells and moves, which might make the game trivially easy, like the infamous Mimic, which allows you to summon yourself, except Elden Ring is a game designed around enabling player expression, creativity and problem-solving. Should this be patched? From software thought so. The thing to consider with Elden Ring is that the single player items inform the PvP, so balance has to happen across modes of play. We see the different conflicting forms of balance now. Difficulty progression balance is different from PvP balance, which is different from mathematical balance. Elden Ring wants to balance its progression, but obviously tuned to be a more difficult-than-average game. That's its aesthetic, but it also wants player discovery and expression. Thus, balance can also transcend simple numerical quantification. To get more specific, Elden Ring has difficult bosses like its predecessors, but because it's an open world, you can venture elsewhere to level up, instead of resorting to grinding the same area. However, doing so might overlevel you. It's almost a player-directed balance. Similarly, the fact that you can teleport to any site of grace on the map makes navigating the world much easier. That's the experience in that venturing into new territories never feels as harrowing, as you might simply warp away, barring a few exceptions. Balance exists with regards to the emotional experience of a game as well. In any case, there is no right answer. It's the designer's prerogative. Imbalance can be fun. Being absurdly overpowered before you leave the tutorial in Final Fantasy VIII breaks the game short, but many find pleasure in this. The junction system here allows you to attach magic to stats to effectively boost your levels, and everything can be turned into magic. Items, cards, other magic, it can even be drawn from enemies. It's an utterly fascinating dynamic system that's woefully imbalanced, chiefly because it trivializes the combat, well, more so than the summons in the game already do. Mapped technically the difficulty is no longer smooth, the math is all awry, certain strategies are way too dominant, and not all of this is likely intentional. Depth has been sacrificed entirely for customizability, well a certain kind of depth. The strategic depth, sure, but there is a systems depth here that is fun to navigate on its own. Some love it, some hate it, others like me look at it with fascination and confusion. But why? Why does this matter? I can go on about calibrating variables and linear and exponential curves and payoffs, graphing, statistics, probability, uncertainty, but you are better served reading the book for the minutia of those aspects of balance. A video essay is never going to do it justice. Why is balance something we care about in the first place? Why were there incensed fans when Leroy was released in Tekken 7? A character that was so powerful that dominated the meta for months, hurting the reputation of the game. We could talk about why he was imbalanced, a tracking house sweeper, a 12 frame counter hit mid launcher, huge damage, moves that were better than any other character and fulfilled every gameplay niche and options simultaneously, undermining the interplay between offense and defense and choices we recognized earlier as integral to depth. Or we can talk about why we care about balance as a virtue at all. The indignation of fans is not random. Balance is ultimately about justice, about morality. When a PvP game is unbalanced, it undermines the implicit covenant all games have about equalizing the playing field, about a meritocratic system that renders no judgment other than the evaluation of skill. An unbalanced game is as if we have designed an unjust economic system that makes a few people rich at the expensive menu. Games are supposed to be our escape from this, an abstracted system that actually idealizes the evolutionary struggle but with fairness. An unbalanced game no longer selects for the right attributes and often cheap ones, trivializes, undermines the strategy, skill and depth. Balance might reveal something deeper about games, more so than they have in highlighting things like probability theory and game theory. If games are about learning, balance ensures there is a smooth epistemological curve. If games are about meritocracy, balance ensures that justice prevails. If games are about creating arbitrary systems of infinite depth, balance facilitates its construction. Maybe balance is an aesthetic that transcends games and we simply impose it on creations of systems of play. In this way, PvP and PvE games might be balanced in different ways with different goals, but they are ultimately pursuing the same ideal.