Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
ChAptEr 4
In Chapter 1, we listed five types of mechanics that you might find in a game:
physics, internal economy, progression mechanisms, tactical maneuvering, and
social interaction. In this chapter, we'll focus on the internal economy.
In real life, an
economy
is a system in which resources are produced, consumed, and
exchanged in quantifiable amounts. Many games also include an economy, con-
sisting of the resources the game manipulates and the rules about how they are
produced and consumed. However, in games, the internal economy can include all
sorts of resources that are not part of a real-life economy. In games, things like health,
experience, and skill can be part of the economy just as easily as money, goods, and
services. You might not have money in
Doom,
but you do have weapons, ammunition,
health, and armor points. In the board game
Risk
,
your armies are a vital resource that
you must use and risk in a gambit to conquer countries. In
Mario Galaxy
, you collect
stars and power-ups to gain extra lives and to get ahead in the game. Almost all genres
of games have an internal economy (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1 for some more exam-
ples), even if it does not resemble a real-world economy.
NOTE
We use a
very broad definition
of the word
economy.
it's not just about
money! in an informa-
tion economy, there are
data producers, data
processors, and data
consumers. Political
economy studies the
way that political forces
influence government
policies. economies
about money are called
market economies.
But we use the term
in a more abstract way
to refer to any kind
of system in which
resources—of any
type—can be pro-
duced, exchanged,
and consumed.
To understand a game's gameplay, it is essential to understand its economy. The
economies of some games are small and simple, but no matter how big or small
the economy is, creating it is an important design task. It is also one of the few
tasks that belongs exclusively to the designer and no one else. To get game phys-
ics right, you need to work closely with the programmers; to get a level right, you
need to work closely with the story writers and level designers; but you must design
the economy on your own. This is the core of the game designer's trade: You craft
mechanics to create a game system that is fun and challenging to interact with.
In
Fundamentals of Game Design
, Ernest Adams discussed the internal economy of
games. The discussion in this topic repeats some of those points and expands the
notion of internal economy.
In this section, we briefly introduce the basic elements of game economies:
resources,
entities,
and the four mechanics that allow the resources to be produced, exchanged,
and consumed. This is only a summary; if you need a more in-depth introduction,
please see Chapter 10, “Core Mechanics,” in
Fundamentals of Game Design
.
59
