Career Paths: Game Balancer

        I chose to go through an research a Game balancer. The reason I chose this is because it sounds interesting to me being able to go through the game and balancing the different aspects of it to make it fit just right the way the vision of the game is meant to be played. Especially since I have played games in the past where there are some aspects that didn't seem very balanced from my point of view.

        The skillset for this specific position include knowing how to work with numbers and being familiar to analysis and AB tests, AB tests being user experience research where there are two variants being tested at a time. Being able to challenge game features from the perspective of the player. Have strong communication skills to communicate your design concepts. Be able to be open minded and a team player that is able to exchange knowledge with a team and be confident to work in a international, multicultural environment. The main idea for the skills is to be able to test the game and make changes based on the perspective of the player, changing your mindset from developer to player while balancing.

        Alex Felton is a game balancer from Goodgame Studios in Hamburg, Germany and states how they got their role as well as what it takes. Felton states to get the role you will have to have a strong interest in game mechanics and systems to be a good game balancer. They also say that it helps to be able to deconstruct the rules of all kinds of games that you can work on and not just digital. This all allows someone to understand benefits to mechanics and how they all fit to form the play space in the game. A large portion of game design he states is "maths" so understanding the numbers and how to use them when balancing is a big step in the process. 

        The balancer goes into detail how someone could qualify for this job and what background that they would need in order to be qualified. They say that there is no set path to becoming a game balancer and that people come from many different backgrounds to get started, some included in what they listed was mathematics, physics, psychology, programming, and game design. But, generally you should be familiar to the game development process and a way to do that Felton states is to create your own game concepts and pursuing them to a testable state. The idea to get to a good place in this career is to just become familiar to the game development process as the balancer stated while being able to use numbers to test and balance games. The ability to work with people was a big step that was noted in the development of the game you could be working on either digital or not. 

        Some tasks that are noted in the job description are be able to balance the game and to shape a great game experience for users which is easy to "iterate, enhance, and maintain" which is to expected from a game balancer. To analyze by iterating, evaluating, and improve new game content that can drive engagement, retention and monetization. Be able to implement innovation by being up to date on new practices in the game industry. Lastly being able to collaborate with a team. One of the main things that are looked for Felton states for someone to join the team is for people to have the right mindset and that their company looks for is to see how you approach the problem and to display creative, critical, and logical thinking to reach a solution. 

        I can prepare myself for this career path by familiarizing myself with the game development process and understanding the benefits to game mechanics by doing so in order to create the best game play environment for a user. I can do this by creating my own concepts and getting them to a state that can be tested and balanced to a playable state so these games can be played and retained instead of dropped quickly. I would look more into what specifically would be balanced in certain types of games, examples could be health of an enemy or damage output of something in a game. I could also become familiar with physical prototyping to get familiar with balancing a game, so making board games as a cheap way to get familiar to game balancing and finding a way to make a game fun to play and balanced. I would in the end like to work on my own virtual game so I can see what balancing is like from my own experience.

Sources:

https://www.mcvuk.com/development-news/get-that-job-how-to-be-a-game-balancer/

https://jobs.gamasutra.com/job/senior-game-balancer-game-designer-new-mobile-game-unannounced-hamburg-35717