Gameplay balancing is a fundamental design challenge in any multiplayer game. Persistent and continuously changing multiplayer games that evolve over the course of several years are particularly challenging to keep in a balanced state -- especially when you have millions of active players.
At GDC 2017 Stefan Engblom, a game designer on Clash Royale, spoke to that challenge in an interesting presentation about how Supercell balances cards in the popular free-to-play mobile game.
Engblom explored the philosophies and principles used for balancing cards and gameplay in Clash Royale, sharing lessons learned from successes and failures that the team encountered both pre-launch and through the first year of the game being live.
It was a great presentation, one that you can now watch entirely for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!
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