Soren Johnson Discusses Economic Systems for Games

[Ginger_Ale]

Soren Johnson, former lead designer for Civilization IV, has written an article that address the nature of in-game economic models. Available on Gamasutra, his piece covers a wide range of strategy games and their economic systems, addressing what works and what doesn't. The overall theme is about balancing realism and gameplay, something that applies to concepts beyond a game's economy, as well as deciding what level of depth and detail is appropriate.

Considering that Civ4: Colonization revived a system of resource management and trade that is quite different from that of regular Civ4, Soren's writing is very applicable to the Civilization franchise and gives a good insight into the existing game economies. If you would like to discuss the potential for future Civ games, feel free to drop by the Ideas & Suggestions forum.

Ultimately, designers should remember that achieving perfect balance is a dubious goal. Players are not looking for another game like rock/paper/scissors, in which every choice is guaranteed to be valid, essentially encouraging random strategies.

Players are motivated by reasons beyond purely economic ones when playing games. Raising the cost of a player's favorite weapon is simply going to feel like a penalty and should only be done if the imbalance is actually ruining the core game.

>> Read Soren Johnson's article

 

[cephalo]

I loved the free wheeling days of the early UO economy. The best time I had in any MMO was running my blacksmith shop there. I sold my stuff at a good price, and I had a crowd of PvPer's giving me steady business as in those days when you died your attacker could loot all your stuff. It would crack me up every day to see some naked guy run in, stand in front of my vendor, then on go the chain legs, tunic, hat, cape, then run out.

The UO economy always had some major problem or another, but it was always way funner than World of Warcraft, where you can only make money selling raw materials or maybe one or two crafted items per profession in heavy demand. You can also buy low and sell high I guess if you find that fun.

A couple of things happened that really damaged the UO economy. The most serious being teleportation. Similar to what cheap gas did in creating large super Wal-Marts on the edge of every small city in the 90's, teleporting to any location encouraged the creation of gigantic malls where all business transactions took place. This made it very difficult to run a small shop as suddenly there was zero traffic. The whole above ground world went totally unused as people teleported to the places they knew best.

Later on they destroyed my blacksmithing fun with what was called the 'Bulk order deed' system. Basically to make the best weapons you had to engage in this ticket trading game with other players. Mining and smithing, or even playing UO, were no longer part of running a blacksmith shop, as you had to spend most of your time on third party web sites bartering for the tickets you needed. Not only that, but you also needed a great deal of luck in drawing valueable tickets to trade. It was a ridiculous, non-fictional, nonsensical, mini game. Probably one of the worst game design blunders I have ever seen outside of the famous Star Wars Galaxies incident.