Part
Economy
You might say: resources exchanged or converted
This game's economy generates, destroys, trades or converts resources into value or capability.
- What it does
- Shapes resource flow and trade-offs through sources, drains, converters and traders.
- Ask
- Which resource is created, spent, traded or converted, and for what gain?
What to look for
- Resources generated, spent or traded
- One resource converted into another
Parts
- Resource generation and conversion: The economy specifies how resources enter play, leave play and change into other resources or capabilities.
Pattern
Sources
- Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 240
In the sense used here for game design, an economy is any system dominated by a reinforcing loop (or set of loops) where the increase in resources or value comes not from internal investment of a resource (as with boosting engines) but from exchanging one resource for another or converting one resource to another with a nonlinear gain in value.
- Ernest Adams, Fundamentals of Game Design, introduction, p. xiii
These govern the flow of resources (money, points, ammunition…
- Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 5, p. 93
including special nodes for the four economic functions (sources, drains, converters, and traders) discussed in the previous chapter.
- Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 6, pp. 113–117: economy feedback structures
The structure of a game’s internal economy plays an important role in a game’s dynamic behavior and gameplay.
- Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, pp. 59–77
Many games also include an economy
- Daniel Cook, Value chains – A method for creating and balancing faucet-and-drain game economies, “Basic structure of a value chain”; “Internal economy”; “Balancing value chains”
Tokens : Resource tokens that flow between various nodes in the network of player or system operations. Sources : A node that creates new tokens
- Ian Schreiber, Level 10: Final Boss, “Economic Systems”; “Supply and Demand”; “Trading”
Resource generation, where players craft or receive resources over time
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Economy" (economy-instance) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal