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!

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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