ABSTRACT
Most games have an anchor, and it’s usually the very stat that is the win or loss condition. Once the anchor is found, designers set the value of the anchor manually and craft all other numbers in relation to that number, typically with a mix of procedural and custom-crafted numbers. In games where the progression is based on the player’s skill, anchors are still necessary, even if the items have no particular financial value in the game. A comparative anchor is a number or collection of features which allows us to make one choice more or less equivalent to the other, all things considered. Such is often the case when creating different starting characters that players can choose from. Rocket jumping, now considered to be standard fare for the FPS genre, was actually the unintended result of two systems coming together.
