Here’s a hot take I’ve flirted with before: unbalanced games are more fun than balanced ones.

I think it has to do with gaming a system, beyond even outplaying an opponent.

I’ve run into this several times in conversation with my brother, but it’s always funny being reminded of the ways in which people aren’t looking for the same things from games (strategy or otherwise). Are you looking for a perfectly balanced, evenly matched game—something where your capabilities are roughly analogous to the other groups in the game? Or are you looking for unbalance, for specialization, and for the ability to warp the game’s circumstances to better fit your specialized strategy or tactics?

Nate is firmly in the second camp. Creating an unstoppable snowball of a weird combo, finding ways to bend the game’s rules to his benefit, that’s where he feels most rewarded. I’m paraphrasing here, so I’m probably getting some of it wrong.

For me… I think I agree? Perfectly matched games feel more boring than exciting, most of the time. I think part of that is simply because once you’ve learned one faction, you’ve learned them all (more or less). Unbalanced competing sides intrigue me more in a turn-based game, but I think that’s mostly because I’m not a fan of how real-time strategy games have grown: micro-focused high actions-per-minute isn’t my jam.

Instead, games like Dominions catch my attention. Each nation pushes you to play with different strategies, counters, etc., sometimes with totally perpendicular approaches to solving the same problems. There’s more homogeneity towards the end of a long game if both sides in a conflict have conducted similar research, but up to that point games can be pretty wild and weird.

Similarly, when I’m playing games like D&D I’m always more interested by magic that allows me to do something weird rather than simply doing damage. Damage is good, of course, if you want to kill an opponent—but finding strange edge cases or cool uses for spells feels more rewarding. There’s a puzzle solving, optimizing element to that approach which I find very satisfying. If I manage to take a situation which should have been balanced and instead make it dramatically unfair to my advantage, so much the better.

I’d meant to post this last week, but forgot to schedule it. Ooops. Maybe another time I’ll dig into that follow-on thought I mentioned up top, that unbalanced games are more fun for me because they’re as much about mastering the rules and structure I’m playing in as they are about defeating other players. If I’m playing poker, spades, etc., I’m playing the other people in the game (with conditions set by our randomly dealt hands). That can be fun. But if I’m playing an unbalanced game, I’m also tinkering with a rules system with complex internal interactions, something that I can learn and eventually master. That offers another source of satisfaction, beyond the interpersonal challenge of a more balanced game.