Open source balancing

Eve online was well represented by Kjartan Emilsson from Island last night. The game strives to let the gamers organise and run and game, and the plans for the next step is to also let them balance the game. This woke me up (not that it was hard to get me to forget the extremely non-descript dinner): it will be a very interesting development. Balancing the game is one of those really complex issues developers and programmers suffer over, and where players always have opinions - rarely congruent ones.