Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
enemy. Will they put their avatars at risk, or will they waste ammunition or some
sort of energy that cannot easily be regained?
Super Mario Brothers
and many other similar platform games use a simple economy
to create a reward system. In
Super Mario Brothers
, you can collect coins to gain extra
lives. Because you need to collect quite a few coins, the designer can place them
liberally throughout a level and add or remove them during play-testing without
affecting the economy significantly. In this way, coins can be used to guide a player
through a level. (Collectible objects that are used to guide players are often called
breadcrumbs
.) It is safe to assume that you are able to reach all coins, so if you spot a
coin, there must be a way to reach it. This creates the opportunity to reward skillful
players for reaching difficult places in the game. Used in this way, the internal economy
of the game can be very simple. However, even a simple economy like this already
involves a feedback loop. If players go out of their way to collect many coins, they
will gain more lives, thus allowing them to take more risks to collect more coins.
When setting up a system like this, you must be careful to balance the risks and
rewards. If you lure players into deadly traps with just a single coin, you are invit-
ing them to risk a life to gain a single coin. That simply isn't fair, and the player will
probably feel cheated. As a designer, you have a responsibility to match the risks
and rewards, especially when they are placed close to the path novice players will
take. (Creating a reward that the player can see but
never
reach is even worse—it
causes players to take risks for rewards they can never obtain.)
Power-ups, including weapons and ammunition in first-person shooters, create a
similar economy. Power-ups and ammo can be rewards in themselves, challenging
the player to try to eliminate all enemies in a level. As a game designer, you have to
make sure that the balance is right. In some games, it is perfectly all right if killing
enemies will, on average, cost more bullets than the players can loot from their
remains. However, if this leads to a situation in which the player is eventually short
on the proper ammo for the big confrontation with a boss character, you risk penal-
izing players for making an effort in the game. In survival-oriented first-person
shooters, creating a scarce economy of weapons and ammo is generally a good thing
because it adds to the tension and the drama, but it is a difficult balance to create.
If your shooter is more action-oriented, then it is probably best to make sure there
is plenty of ammo for the player, and you should make sure that taking out extra
enemies is properly rewarded.
Use an Internal economy to Influence Progression
The internal economy of a game can also be used to influence progression through
a game that involves movement. For example, power-ups and unique weapons can
play a special role in an action game's economy. They can be used to gain access
to new locations. A double-jump ability in a platform game will allow the player
to reach higher platforms that were initially unreachable. In economic terms, you
can think of these abilities as new resources to produce the abstract resource
access.
