"you don't have to play a game to be able to balance a game"
-Ghostcrawler AKA Greg Street AKA the guy with a marine biology degree who for some reason has had high positions with blizz and riot
16 Comments
Hi. I made that quote in response to one of the common responses that you see on gaming communities, which is that if you just let highly skilled players balance a game, you’ll get better results. I was trying to point out that playing a game and designing a game are different skills, just like building a car and driving a car are different skills. Does understanding one make you better at the other? Absolutely.
I was an oceanographer once, but that was over 20 years ago. Back then, there were no professional game designers who came from game design college or something similar. Even today it’s not super common. Most of the designers of the games you play probably got their start doing something else.
I was never on the balance team for League. I bring that up because I think sometimes players conflate design and balance as the same thing. In reality, balance is only one aspect of game design, and many designers go their entire careers without doing that aspect pf development. When I was lead designer on LoL, I was accountable for balance (meaning it was still my fault when something went wrong) but I didn’t sit with the team deciding when to nerf Irelia etc.
However I do agree a lot with the sentiment above that interpreting data is a big part of both science and game balance. I wish schools and colleges focused a lot more on teaching data analysis because it’s such a useful life skill. By comparison, I have found little application of say calculus in my life, and I was a legit scientist.
Finally, I’m not actively working on League much at all these days. I took on a different role at Riot focused on telling stories in the League universe in and out of games.
I thought maybe providing more of that conetext might help with your mental framework for how Riot or any game studio makes decisions.
Balancing a game is done based on observation of the player-base at large, then interpreting things based on collected data.
Which, incidentally, is kinda like marine biology. Except with humans playing a video game instead of sea creatures living in the ocean.
A shame that Telltale Games imploded before they had a chance to hire Ghostcrawler lul lul lul.
I mean, Nami is pretty balanced, so.....
I don't believe Ghostcrawler is solely responsible for the piss poor state of game balance. Certainly, this level of stupidity has to be spread across multiple people.
Considering how nepotistic this society is, you don't need to be qualified to get hired for anything.