SnowballingHow it ruins a game.How to design against it.

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.

A More Interesting Game

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.