Arguably, nearly every game, even if it is not specifically about money, or economics, has some element of economics embedded in it, because there is nearly always a return of ‘value’ from the play decisions that players make. This article, however, looks at in-game economies in a more literal sense, focusing on the creation and destruction of value you will commonly see in games where there is money, or other items with material value, or in gamification applications with collectable and exchangeable points, for example.

Sources and Sinks

Currency, or points, or whatever the unit of value you have created for your game or gamification design, must come from somewhere. These are your ‘Sources’, and you often see them implemented in games through quests (for which you get rewarded for completion), looting, (either by ‘finding’ in a landscape or stealing from the corpses of vanquished foes), or maybe through minigames. Although you often hear these referred to as ‘gold sources’ or ‘gold taps’, they don’t necessarily refer to currency, both usually to anything which has value within the game, and so could include things which could not necessarily be exchangeable for currency (real or in the game world), such as life points.

The places in your game or gamification application where the value created by sources is destroyed, are called ‘Sinks’. In the game, quite often this is not a literal destruction, but a transfer of value from one form to another, because the most common sink in most MMORPGs is the shop, where you can swap your hard-earned gold for a kick-ass sword, or contrarywise, trade in the leather armour you looted from a low-grade enemy for a few coppers.

The dangers of a poorly balanced economy

 It can be tricky to get right, but balancing your sources and sinks is essential if you want a compelling game experience, and even more important if you have an exchange between the ‘soft’ (in-game) currencies and ‘hard’ (real world cash) currency as part of the way you monetise the game.

If your sources are too productive, or you do not have enough sinks to destroy the value that has been created, you will get inflation.  Whatever it is, gold or other resources, that is too available, will effectively lose value. The game becomes too easy to progress through, and if you have real-world monetisation connection, you will find that demand for real world transactions will plummet.

If the opposite is true, and your sinks outstrip your sources you will end up with deflation, and in extreme cases, such as the situation found with the New World in-game economy, players have started to hoard (game) cash, and are instead bartering for items, which they would ordinarily buy with that cash, but are now unable to do so.

Interestingly, inflation can also have benefits. In games with a fixed end point, allowing players to find more and more efficient ways to farm gold as they level up, gives them a great sense of progression but can be balanced by the increasing prices of high-level items, the sinks.  Inflation also helps to tackle the ‘latecomer disadvantage’ when someone comes late to a game, maybe attracted by a new expansion, but could be discouraged by the amount of effort required to reach this point in the game. Controlled inflation makes more currency available to players early in the game, making it easier for them to progress and keeping them engaged.

There are multiple mechanisms to control the flow of value in the game including:

• Incremental mechanics – where sources and sinks increase proportionally as the game progresses
• Resets – Starting everybody back at zero from time to time will obviously combat inflation, but can be controversial – as many players will resent losing what they have worked hard for
• Gambling – If the mechanics of gambling in the game are designed as they are in casinos – the house always wins’ – then this is an effective way of removing value from the game
• Mega high cost sinks – Much like the real world, items can be made very attractive merely by their unattainability, and having a few items which have very high costs will drive players to want them and thus remove high quantities of value from the game in single transactions
• Taxation – where the game itself takes a small cut for transactions that happen in the game – for example, a ‘gaming house’ takes a small fee if two players want to wager against each other, or the mages guild charges a fee to bring a dead warrior back to life

Given the complexity of designing an in-game economy and the constant need to balance it throughout the life of a game, it is small wonder that there is an actual job, which deals with this and nothing else – The Game Economy Designer

How in-game economies foster engagement

This is not however, just a matter of making the numbers work, or in the case of a monetised game, ensuring a stable revenue.  These mechanisms are also all about creating a great play experience

Having multiple sources and sinks give variety to your game/gamification, and opens up possibilities for players to make meaningful choices

Multiple sources usually also means that you will have multiple types of ‘currency’ which can be used in many different ways, reflecting different paths to ‘progress’.  For example, you might have ‘gold’ or a similar resource representing money.  This tends (like in real life) to be the most widely transferable currency, and can be swapped for goods, services, and even other forms of ‘currency’, e.g. if you could ‘buy’ extra lives.

Another form of ‘currency’ could include lives, which you ‘spend’ in order to continue playing and whose ‘sinks’ would be strong(er) enemies, disease, poison, even extreme exhaustion or old age. Yet another is the staple of many business learning games, ‘effort’ – often implemented as actual people in worker placement games.

Ultimately, all of these things are actually ‘points’. Points in games are usually of two kinds, cumulative, non-exchangeable points – for example, experience points (XP) which allow you to level up in an RPG, or exchangeable points which you can spend to get other stuff you need to move on in the game. In Settlers of Catan, for example, you spend wood, grain, wool and brick to build roads and settlements, or you can swap two of one resource for one of another

Exchangeable points

In fact, exchangeable points are pretty much the bread and butter of games, and money is not really a special case; it’s just an example of widely-applicable exchangeable points.

What the exchangeable points are actually called is usually a function of the theme and aesthetics of the game, as is what the sources and sinks themselves are called. The wool, wood etc of Catan (which is about building settlements) function extremely similarly to, for example, spell points for a Mage in an RPG, but only at the point of use, where they are both swapped for something else that creates ‘progress’ for the player. In Catan it is the building of a road, in the RPG it is a kick-ass Fireball which vapourises a group of enemies. The sources and sinks differ considerably, though. In Catan the resources are ‘harvested’, generating resources using a combination of the mechanisms of terrain control and random number generation. In the RPG the spell points are a function of aspects of a character (level, and stats such as ‘wisdom’ or ‘magic’). As far as the sinks go, in Catan, the sink creates a permanent (at least in the original game) terrain control, which itself helps to generate more resources in the future. In the RPG, the fireball solves an immediate problem, but does not otherwise impact the game further.

For each of the aspects of a game economy you therefore have design choices about how a particular resource is created, including what the source is called, or represents, narratively, how it functions (in terms of a single or group of connected game mechanism – with an effectively unlimited number of combinations possible), and how that source responds e.g. in its rate of production in the context of a game situation or character/player trait. You have an almost infinite number of choices of what to call the resource and what it represents in the game. Finally, in terms of the sink(s), you have the same kind of freedom you have in designing the sources.

This gives considerable scope for creating narrative and supporting a game theme, and facilitating meaningful player decisions and gameplay.

Given the almost infinite possibilities, it would be impossible to list all of them, but here are a few possibilities you could implement in your game design using exchangeable points.

Key takeaways on in-game economies

• Even games which, on the surface, do not appear to be about money or Economics, usually have some underlying system for creation, exchange and destruction of value.
• Value is created by ‘Sources’ and destroyed or exchanged by ‘Sinks’.
• Poor balanced in-game economies can cause inflation and deflation and adversely affect engagement.
• Design of in-game economies also provides opportunities to create strong narratives and themes, and foster player engagement by allowing players to exercise autonomy and make meaningful choices.
• The combination of design choices for sources, sinks and the resource created by them is effectively unlimited and gives the game designer massive scope for originality and creativity.

The post Focus on… In-game Economies first appeared on Ludogogy.

One of my current favourites, ‘Wingspan’, contains components which represent eggs, a bird box from which food can be gained, dice showing different types of bird food, and of course several hundred (if you have the expansions) beautifully drawn cards representing a dazzling diversity of bird species.

It would be difficult to imagine that one could use these components to do anything other than play the game of Wingspan as it was designed, given their specificity. Fortunately, it is unlikely one would want to, given that it is such a well-designed and enjoyable experience.

Infinite Possibilities for Play

There is however another class of ‘games’, made up of components and concepts that are much more generic, and which therefore allow an almost infinite number of possibilities in play.  These are not games in their own right, so much as games systems which have spawned many games, and which continue to do so. They often also inspire the creation of other unrelated games and games systems.  Have you noticed, for example, how many card games, even if their theme has been radically changed, still contain 52 cards, or are differentiated into ‘suits’? (Although this may partially be to do with economics, as games components manufacturers tend to offer these ‘standard’ print specifications more cheaply).

Physical components

Among the oldest and most widely used games systems are playing cards. And in that category, I also include related card-based based systems such as the Tarot, and conceptually similar components made from different materials e.g. Mah Jong tiles.

Conceptual analysis of games systems allow us to get to the underlying mechanisms which make them so versatile in play, and provides excellent inspiration for game design. We can, from this basis, not only imagine new ideas for play using these specific objects, but also imagine how the same play experiences can be realised using different objects which have the same characteristics. A few of these concepts are:

• Magnitude – cards have values which can be compared with each other (Snap), used in arithmetic (Blackjack), sequenced (Whist), matched (Go Fish), grouped (Rummy), form complex combinations, or combinations of combinations (Mah Jong)
• Suits – categories can facilitate grouping (Solitaire), Evaluation (Poker), powers (trump cards)
• Attribution – values or suits can be attributed special characteristics (wild cards), or actions (Crazy Eights)
• Narrative – more explicit in Tarot cards, but even ordinary playing cards can have meanings attached (dead man’s hand, cartomancy, ace of spades as bad luck)
• Etc.

Their design as physical objects affords several ways of using them

• Revealed or hidden information – the two-sided design of cards means that their characteristics can be at any point in the game shown to or hidden from players, and furthermore that disclosure can apply to some players and not others
• Inclusion or exclusion – certain values or suits can be excluded from play, or play can be limited to small subset of cards (one’s hand)
• Randomisation – cards and tiles can be shuffled
• Etc.

In turn, the above characteristics make it easy to create specific kinds of play experience

• Competitive (Bezique) or Cooperative (Bridge)
• Chance (Beggar my Neighbour) vs Skill (Gin Rummy)
• Gambling
• Bluffing
• Etc.

Games design challenges

• Take a standard pack of cards, and a theme (e.g. building a railroad, learning to be a wizard, ballroom dancing, whatever). For the first set of bullet points list as many ways as you can think of that those concepts could support your theme. E.g. The suits of cards could represent different schools of magic, the values could represent different levels of skill in specific dance steps.
• Randomly choose three of four of the bullet points above (or concept within, if they have more than one example) and design a game which show those characteristics but uses playing pieces other than playing cards

Dice as Games Systems

Older even than playing cards are dice, which date to a time before recorded history, and which were probably derived from the knucklebones of animals.  Often seen these days as a component in games which also contain many other types of components, especially where random number generation is required, there are nevertheless many hundreds of games which can be played with dice alone.

At first sight these are less complex systems than playing cards, and the overriding characteristic of dice is their ability to randomly generate numbers, however we could also think about them in this way (with some modern additions that sheep’s knuckles would not have had), and we then discover that many of the same characteristic and modes of play can apply to dice

• See Magnitude above – as objects which display different values, dice can be conceptually similar to cards in this sense. Additionally, polyhedral dice allow the generation of a wider range of numbers (e.g. RPG dice typically comprise the five Platonic solids and also a ten-sided die)
• Suits – plastics and other materials allow us to create dice which can be different from other dice (or similar). For example, see the used of coloured dice in ‘Waggle Dance’.
• Attribution and narrative can also work in a similar way for dice as they can for cards. For example, throwing a six in many games activates a second roll, or throwing a double even sends you to jail if you do it too often (Monopoly)

Unlike cards, dice are 3D objects and although this may not be a commonly-used attribute in play, this can facilitate

• Building structures, including balancing
• Using them to represent in-game objects or characters (Dragon Dice)
• Arranging them as a numbered playing surface
• Etc.

Games design challenges

• Take an existing card game that you know well, and then work through how it (or something very similar) could be played using dice instead of cards. What elements could remain the same, and which would need to be adapted?  How would you cope with, for example, the probability that throwing dice produces duplicate values whereas a pack of cards contains 52 unique entities? Go with the flow and see where this thought experiment takes you in creating a familiar yet brand-new game.
• Look at an existing board game you own or have played, which contains physical components. Either work out a way to use one of the components in an unusual way, within the existing game (e.g. use the number on scrabble tiles to create numeric values instead of words), or create a whole new game around your new way of using the playing pieces

Looney Pyramids

A more recent, and very successful game system is Looney Pyramids (also known as Icehouse Pyramids).  These are colourful Perspex pyramids which have a number of attributes (I’m sure you are getting used to this idea now, and can imagine the kinds of play this might allow)

• Value – indicated by size – there are large, medium and small pyramids, and relative value is also indicated by 1, 2 or 3 pips moulded into the surface of the pyramid
• Colour – a ‘suit’ of kinds
• Stackability – smaller pyramids can perch on top of larger ones and larger ones can cover smaller pyramids (or other small objects)
• Opacity or transparency – some pyramids can be seen through while others can completely obscure things underneath them.

Rather than set you a Looney Pyramids challenge, I invite you to explore the thriving Looney Pyramids community who between them have created 100s of games.  Notable examples include Zendo and Zarcana (which also uses Tarot cards as a playing surface). Visit the unaffiliated fan site to find many other player created games

Other Games Systems

Other physical game pieces you may want to play with in similar way in your game design experiments:

• Counters or tiddlywinks
• Dominoes
• Chess or draughts (chequers) pieces
• Playing surfaces, e.g. boards
• Etc.

This only scratches the surface of the physical games systems that are available, or that have inspired games designers down the years.  Consider for example, the many games that use recognisable components from existing games and create entirely new experiences. Dozens of games use an eight by eight chequerboard, and, for example, you use all the components of Chess (along with some move-busting cards) in the wonderfully bonkers experience that is Knightmare Chess.

And the above doesn’t even consider the conceptual systems such as Dungeons and Dragons (D20), GURPS, Unisystem, Advanced Fighting Fantasy (designed to help players create their own games similar to Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s books) and similar, which provide frameworks for character and narrative creation, which, combined with a gamemaker’s imagination can provide a limitless source of different story/play experiences.

But these will have to be the topic of other articles, along with other game design challenges – where we can look more closely at how these kinds of experiences might be adapted to create learning experiences.

The post Focus on… Games Systems for Games Design first appeared on Ludogogy.

It is in looking at the behaviour of the game that it really comes into its own.  In many ways, a game does not actually exist until it is being played. Although games designers often talk about designing experiences, in reality they cannot do this. They can use their domain skills and expertise to create and design system components, and characteristics, that they believe will elicit specific behaviour and experience (and of course, they should also have thoroughly tested these beliefs), but the experience of the game can only happen with the active participation of a player.

A system displays emergence when it can be seen that the system as a whole exhibits characteristics or behaviours which cannot be seen in any of its constituent parts. Life, for example, is considered to be emergent from the biological components and phenomena of plants and animals (as well as the physical and psychological).  A single celled organism is ‘alive’ but the molecules which constitute it are not.

Inextricably linked with the concept of emergence is complexity. We can use a reductionist approach to understand the structure and function of a component, but this gives us no idea of how it will behave when combined with other components at greater levels of complexity. To give another example from biology, we can look at the components and function of a single cell within a body, and understand them very thoroughly, but the emergent properties of that cell when combined with other cells in a tissue, cannot be deduced by studying that cell in isolation.  Similarly, we cannot look at the tissue and deduce how its component cells are arranged or how they function.  How much less, therefore, could we understand the whole organism, of which these are tiny parts, or the societies into which those organisms gather?

To return to games – in both designing and playing them – this presents us with some interesting problems and opportunities – which can be usefully compared as opposite sides of the same coin, as below…

It makes games design a complex activity.  When designing games, we need to iteratively and thoroughly test the experiences and behaviours that will emerge from the systems we are constructing. There is an additional burden of time and effort needed for player testing, as compared to the creation of other cultural artifacts such as written or cinematic stories, because much of the emergence derives from the active participation of a player, who is not simply consuming, but is co-creating the experience.

Conversely, this can make the creation of complex experiences much easier than it might be if one needed to fully create an experience to be consumed by another. Simple rules and characteristics can combine to create complex behaviours and narratives which do not therefore have to be themselves designed or created. An often-cited example of emergence is the behaviour of cellular automata in ‘The Game of Life’.  A grid contains ‘cells’, squares which are either ‘live’ or ‘dead’ and which interact with their eight neighbours using the following rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

An initial seed pattern is entered by a ‘player’ which then plays out, either dying completely after a few ‘generations’ or settling into a repeating pattern of entities which live and continue to reproduce until the game is stopped.

Although this is an excellent example of complex emergence from simple rules, it is effectively a zero-player game, and does not represent the kinds of experiences we wish to build for real human players.  So better examples of emergent gameplay might be the relatively simple frameworks of character formation and actions, determined by dice throw which make up RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons, or the open-ended play of ‘sandbox’ games such as Minecraft, where the only ‘win-states’ are those invented by the players themselves and which may not even have been imagined by the games’ designers.

Even under the most thorough testing protocols it is unlikely that all eventualities will emerge, and the more complex your game system, the more likely it will be that there will be unintentional emergence in play. Even if we disregard actual faults in the game (such as ‘glitches’, which could be seen as a type of unintentional emergence), there is often plenty of scope for players to change game objectives, or to use in-game objects in ways they were not intended to be used.

If you are unlucky, this can lead to the game getting a reputation for being ‘broken’.  But more positively, it can lead to entire new genres of creativity or styles of play. Notable examples of this include ‘speed running’ which has maintained the cult status of some games for decades, and Machinima, where in-game action is recorded to make ‘movies’ with narrative that was not part of the original game.

From the perspective of games-based learning, emergence is one of the characteristics of games which makes them so suitable for learning about complex systems, systemic issues, and situations in which exact prediction and determinism are not possible.  We can simulate, for example, the emergence of racial or economic neighbourhood segregation, from individual behaviour which would not necessarily be considered particularly ‘racist’ or ‘snobby’ – a simple ‘rule’ where cells in an automata game exhibit a ‘preference’ for being next to cells like themselves. In the above Excel simulation we can see the result of running nine generations of the game, where the cells began randomly spread, and each cell would be ‘satisfied’ so long as 50% of its neighbours were like itself – which also means it did not mind if the other 50% were unlike – not particularly prejudiced behaviour.

We can demonstrate the interdependency of a functioning ecosystem (and how easily that function can deteriorate into complete collapse, given human interference), using simple transfer of tokens from one element (player) to another.

Systems, simple and complex, are everywhere, and provide endless inspiration to create these simple ‘toy games’ and thought experiments as well as complex player-centred experiences

The post What Lies Beneath – Emergence in Games Systems first appeared on Ludogogy.