earticle

영어

Board games are steadily growing, re-evaluating the value of analog communication in the digital age. This market growth has heightened players' expectations for quality, leading to a growing demand for well-crafted, or "well-balanced" games. Game balance is a key element in providing players with a fair and engaging experience. However, to date, balancing efforts have relied primarily on designers' intuition and small-scale testing, which is time-consuming, costly, and carries the risk of bias. Therefore, this study aimed to empirically analyze the core factors of balance perceived by players. Based on prior research, we identified four balance factors (Parity: fairness, Rich: diversity, Innovative: scalability, and Mitigate: mitigating randomness) and three play experiences (Flow: immersion, Aesthetics: aesthetics, and Interaction: interaction). A survey was conducted with 78 college students who played eight board games over an eight-week period. The collected data were analyzed for correlation and multiple regression using SPSS 26.0. The analysis results revealed that fairness (Parity) and variety (Rich) were key predictors of players' "immersion" experiences. Variety (Rich), randomness mitigation (Mitigate), and scalability (Innovation) significantly influenced the "aesthetic" experience, while scalability (Innovation) and variety (Rich) were found to have the greatest impact on the "interaction" experience. This study is significant in that it leads the discussion on board game balance to a data-driven empirical analysis and provides objective balancing guidelines for game designers.