Introduction to Game Systems Design

Chapter 16

Macrosystems and Player Engagement

You can use several different styles of difficulty adjustment to make a game harder or easier as a whole or to adjust it to a player’s particular needs. You will often find, especially in larger games, that you can use multiple methods at the same time to get a better balance. This chapter discusses balancing the game at a very high level, across all the integrated systems.

Macrosystem Difficulty Adjustment

Difficulty adjustment is quite easy to implement in games, and it is often used for encouraging high levels of competition. The following sections discuss these broad categories of difficulty adjustment:

• Flat balancing

• Positive feedback loop

• Negative feedback loop

• Dynamic difficulty adjustment ...