Part 2 of IncGamers.com interview with David Sirlin

And let's say you discovered that Chun-Li is too good. Can you imagine using an equation to tell you how to fix it? Her walk speed? Her throw range? Maybe a new arc on spinning bird kick would help? It's so complicated that you need a deep understanding of the problem combined with intuition, but I think a lot of people think there is some math involved here. I have a math degree from MIT and I like math, so if it were useful to me, I would use it - but it's mostly not. That said, in an RPG where you have lots of stats and levelling curves, math comes into play more. Blizzard games use a lot more math than a fighting game for example, but even then, their real balancing solutions come from human analysis. Blizzard's Rob Pardo, in a lecture at a previous GDC, mentioned that he tells his designers not to "math the fun out of the game" or something.