Orthogonal analysis of StarCraft II for game balance

Orthogonal differentiation is a suggested approach to game balance, but has never been formally tested. Using the game StarCraft II, a popular real time strategy game, we test whether game units are orthogonally differentiated. Units are considered vectors within an attribute space, thus calculating the rank shows whether orthogonal differentiation is consistent with the game. As we consider StarCraft II to be a balanced game, this will demonstrate whether orthogonal unit differentiation is necessary for game balance. This is not the case, with the StarCraft II units falling below the expected rank. We perform single value decomposition to better understand where the linear dependencies exist. While the result of the orthogonal differentiation test is negative, the orthogonal analysis poses useful insight into the game attributes.