snowballing
TRANSCRIPT
But What Is Snowballing?• When a player, (often in multiplayer) gathers momentum.• Increasingly good position makes it easier to keep winning.• Winner wins more. Losers fall behind.• Makes for an uninteresting match.
Civilization 5• Textbook case of snowballing.• You often find yourself in a game with one snowballing
leader.• No fun for losing players, who can’t get back into the game.
A Typical Civ V Snowball Game
There’s nothing the losers can do to turn the game around. They’re stuck in their positions, waiting for the winner to win.
How Do You Avoid Snowballing?
Mario Kart• Losing players get better power-ups than winning ones.• The result is a constantly shifting game. Very exciting.• But a little frustrating.
Surges: Periodic Gameplay
Company of Heroes 2• It takes a while to coordinate an attack.• Players tend to push all at once, rather than at a constant rate.• Focus is a resource. If you can apply it in the right place, you can turn the
game around.
League of Legends• Long respawn times make for surges.• Ploughing through minions also shapes the game’s tide.• Again, assembling a team push takes time and focus.
I’ve found that both of these games have a lower tendency towards snowballing.
Exercises
• Paper-prototype a typical turn-based, grid-based strategy board game. The game should have:
- Resource gathering- Progressively more powerful units
The aim is to destroy the other player’s base.
Snowballing is probably quite inherent here (I hope). Try and design against it.
• Alternatively, discuss games that you think have poor strategy.