Pattern

Economy

An internal economy is a system in which resources are produced, exchanged and consumed. Its feedback can create growth, scarcity, equilibrium or other shapes; it is not inherently reinforcing.

What it does
Turns resource flows into strategic choices about scarcity, investment, exchange and spending.
Ask
Which resources exchange or convert into value?

Sources

  1. Michael Sellers, Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, ch. 7, p. 240In 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.
  2. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, pp. 59–77we introduced the essential elements of an internal economy: resources, entities, and some of the mechanics that manipulate them
  3. Daniel Cook, Value chains – A method for creating and balancing faucet-and-drain game economies, “Internal Economy”; “Faucet-and-Drain” economy; “Balancing value chains”Value chains are one way of structuring your game’s internal economy
  4. Daniel Cook, Resource Economies, “The resource web”; “Combined actions”; “Paths to victory”In Race for the Galaxy, there are some interesting paths through the web. However, it’s sometimes best to just produce goods, then sell them for points, then produce again etc. This loop is too small, and nothing really causes the player to want to leave the loop.
  5. Ian Schreiber, Level 10: Final Boss, “Economic Systems”; “Inflation”; “Trading”Some games use trading and bartering mechanics extensively within their economies.

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