Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition (Tim Cox's Library) by Ernest Adams

Author:Ernest Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Riders
Published: 2010-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

Dominant Strategies in Video Games

Video games seldom permit players to use strategies so strongly dominant that they absolutely guarantee victory, although some, whether PvP or PvE games, allow powerful strategies that give the player little reason to use any other. By far the best-known dominant strategy in any PvP video game is the tank rush in Westwood’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert. An experienced player playing as the Soviet side can devote all of his energies to producing a large force of tanks in the early part of the game, then use those tanks to attack the nascent enemy base en masse. Against an unprepared opponent, this almost always produces a victory; an experienced opponent can prepare for the onslaught, but the tank rush remains so effective that it takes the fun out of the game. Many players add an additional rule to the game—no tank rushes allowed—just to balance this problem.

Several editions of Madden NFL included unstoppable offensive plays that guaranteed success against an AI-controlled opponent. Fighting games, too, are especially prone to dominant strategies. In both fighting games and football games, the large numbers of possible combinations of offensive and defensive actions makes it difficult to test them all. Badly designed characters can also result in dominant strategies; in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the secret character Akuma’s unbeatable attack, the air fireball, leaves the rest of the characters with no chance. Tournament matches ban the use of Akuma to ensure fair play.

The next few sections discuss ways that dominant strategies can emerge in a video game and how to avoid them or remove them by using balancing methods.

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