Exploiting Game Rules

We all dream of a video game that is going to be fair, balanced and equally fun for everyone to play whether it's an online adventure with slaying dragons and rescuing princesses or a sport game with your favorite club trying to get to the finals, one thing always needs to be present in order for you to enjoy the game: it needs to be fair. And by fair, I mean the rules of the game need to be either taken straight from our world (gravity, law) or clearly defined for the made up world you are encountering.. One of the main things discussed in this particular chapter is game balancing and how that can totally make or break any game.

It's easy to notice when the game isn't balanced in a single player adventure when you are paired up to fight monsters and after dying for 213823 times you finally notice that you simply aren't capable of facing those opponents but how to notice things when it's a multiplayer experience? How to tell whether the unfairness is due to the game mechanics or other players simply exploiting the engine? Or maybe because their items/characters were made overpowered to start with?

Either way, no game can be enjoyable without it being balanced as you need to win some in order to enjoy losing some - otherwise it's just an upsetting experience that nobody wants to go through - which in turn ties with the idea of Death in video games that we discussed not so long ago..