Internal Economy - Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design - page 62

n Drains are the opposite of sources: They take resources out of the game, reduc-
ing the amount stored in an entity and removing them permanently. In simulation
games in which it is necessary to feed a population, the food is drained at a rate pro-
portional to the population. It does not go anywhere or turn into anything else; it
simply disappears. In shooter games, ammunition is drained by firing weapons.
n Converters turn resources of one kind into another. As we mentioned, in
Warcraft , trees (a tangible resource) turn into lumber (an intangible one) when the
trees are harvested. The act of harvesting is a converter mechanic that converts trees
into lumber at a specific rate: A given number of trees will produce a given amount
of lumber. Many simulation games include technology upgrades that enable players
to improve the efficiency of the converter mechanics in the game, causing them to
produce more of the new resource from the old one.
n Traders are mechanics that move a resource from one entity to another, and
another resource back in the opposite direction, according to an exchange rule. If
a player buys a shield from a blacksmith for three gold pieces, the trader mechanic
transfers the gold from the player's cash entity to the blacksmith's and transfers the
shield from the blacksmith's inventory to the player's. Traders are not the same as
converters. Nothing is created or destroyed; things are just exchanged.
Economic Structure
It is not particularly difficult to identify the entities and the resources that comprise
an economy, but it is harder to get a good perspective on the system as a whole. If
you were to make graphs of the elements in your economy, what shapes would the
graphs reveal? Is the amount of a given resource increasing over time? How does the
distribution of resources change? Do resources tend to accumulate in the hands of
a particular player, or does the system tend to spread them out? Understanding the
structure of your economy will help you find the answers.
economic Shapes
In the real world, people represent features of an economy with charts and figures
( Figure 4.1 ). These graphs have a few interesting properties. At the small scale, their
lines move chaotically, but at larger scales, patterns become visible. It is easy to see
whether a line is going up or down in the long run and to identify good and bad
periods. In other words, we can recognize and identify distinctive shapes and pat-
terns from these types of charts.