The e-sports balancing act

Whether you agree with it or not, the competitive gaming community wants to be recognized as an equally professional environment as traditional sport. However, the fundamental differences between gaming and sport are too often overshadowed by the pro gaming spectacle and the personalities of the athletes and teams taking part in it. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money, sponsorships, and stadium events could not have existed if not for the developers, design theories, and the community members that still actively shape the rules and mechanics of the games themselves.

Unlike professional sports, the spectators are primarily people who frequently play the game they participate in. With reports revealing more then 70 million people live-streaming e-sports events in the past year, this player/spectator dynamic is far from a limitation, but it nonetheless puts a unique pressure on the developers behind these multi-million dollar games when the rules within these games, and what players can and can’t do within the game frequently have to be patched up as unfair or overpowered strategies are discovered.

When thousands of dollars of winnings are on the line and the player base spans millions, players are always looking to bend and exploit the games’ mechanics to their benefit, and that’s why half the appreciation for this emerging phenomenon really comes from the ideas and theories that go into making a great, tournament-ready game.

In chess, you and your opponent have the same set of pieces, which each function exactly the same just as in soccer or basketball, where both teams are subject to the same rules. Since each opponent has the same potential and limitations, the idea is that the best player will win. These symmetrical games are inherently balanced, but competitive games differ greatly in that they almost never are designed to make balance this easy.

Imagine a game of chess where white pieces had a queen that could move to any space whenever it wants, but black pieces had three more pawns than the white pieces. This is the sort of balancing problem that arises in competitive video games. StarCraft has three different armies, Street Fighter 4 has 44 different fighters, and League of Legends has 123 champions to choose from, not accounting for the millions of ways they can be arranged into teams. This asymmetrical competitive design is found in almost every form of competitive gaming, and the assigning of different options and limitations between fighters, armies, cards, champions, guns makes these games an entirely different beast then standard sports.

The importance of balance is a no-brainer; I don’t think anyone will contest that. If you and your buddies play GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, chances are you’re playing with the house rule of “No Oddjob,” because the short bowler hat-throwing assassin is significantly shorter and harder to aim at then everyone else in the cast. If the white pieces felt that they could never stand a chance to the black army, then players will see no reason to play for thousands and thousands of dollars and invest 12 hours a week to play it.

Too often the conversation about e-sports turns to whether or not it is a legitimate form of sport, and if it is, how the spectacle of it should be more closely associated and mirroring its athletic counterpart, which grossly overlooks the questions of design and balance that goes behind these million-dollar projects. This conversation is unique for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it can take place and it has the potential to actively impact the rules. As well, balancing of these games changes frequently, and the designers count on their respective communities to keep trying to “break” their games with overpowered tactics to keep trying to give the constructive feedback necessary to keep putting out these changes and balance patches. Street Fighters’ latest iteration went through almost a year’s worth of testing at tournaments and community events, and each player was encouraged to give feedback on how they felt about the changes to their favourite characters moves and options, and it resulted in what can arguably be considered one of the most well balanced fighting games ever made.

E-sports doesn’t need to prove its legitimacy by being like sports. It is inherently different due to its asymmetrical design and the frequent changes made to its mechanics and rulesets. Its legitimacy lies in the design, balance, and theory that developers consider when designing the games themselves, and the unique and active ability for the community and player base to be a part of this conversation, and to influence the way their beloved games will play and develop in the future is a severely underrated element of this phenomenon.