Gameplay - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 275

other games in which the top-level challenge is to accumulate more money, pluto-
nium, or widgets than other players. The game challenges the player to understand
the mechanisms of wealth creation and to use them to his own advantage. In the
case of Monopoly , the player learns to mortgage low-rent properties and use the
cash to purchase high-rent ones because high-rent properties produce more in the
long run.
ACHIEVING BALANCE
Requiring your players to achieve balance in an economy gives them a more inter-
esting challenge than simply accumulating points, especially if you give them many
different kinds of resources to manage. Players in The Settlers games juggle quantities
of raw materials and goods that obey complex rules of interaction: Wheat goes to the
mill to become flour, which goes to the bakery to become bread; bread feeds miners
who dig coal and iron ore, which goes to the smelter to become iron bars, which
then go to the blacksmith to become weapons; and so on. Produce too little of a vital
item and the whole economy grinds to a halt; produce too much and it piles up, taking
up space and wasting time and resources that could be better used elsewhere.
CARING FOR LIVING THINGS
A peculiar sort of economic challenge involves looking after a person or creature,
or a small number of them, as in The Sims and Spore . ( Spore expands to whole popu-
lations in its later stages.) The game challenges the player to meet the needs of each
individual and possibly improve its development. Because the game measures and
tracks these needs via numeric terms, and the player must meet them from limited
resources, these qualify as economic challenges.
Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Conceptual reasoning puzzles and lateral thinking puzzles are in the same section
because they both require extrinsic knowledge , that is, knowledge from outside the
domain of the challenge itself. This sets them apart from formal logic puzzles in
which all the knowledge required to solve the puzzle must be contained within its
definition. Lateral thinking puzzles and conceptual reasoning puzzles may still
require the use of logical thinking, however.
CONCEPTUAL REASONING
Conceptual reasoning puzzles require the player to use his reasoning power and
knowledge of the puzzle's subject matter to arrive at a solution to a problem. In one
round of the online multiplayer game Strike a Match , a number of words or phrases
appear, and as they do, the player must find conceptually related pairs: if Kong
appears, should the player watch out for a match with King (a movie) or Hong (a
place) or Donkey (a video game)?