Economies

Another idea that dominated my thinking at this time was the notion of economies. In my thinking, an economy was any system of related quantities whose values could change in response to character actions. The most obvious economy is an object economy, consisting of various items that can be found, taken, carried, transferred to other characters, or used to carry out tasks. But there is also an economy of relationships: affection, trust, fear, and so forth.

There is also an economy of information: Facts known to some players that can be shared with other players under the right conditions. I was certain that a single-economy game would be boring; what I wanted was a game with at least three economies. The relationships among those economies would permit a broad and rich array of relationships among the characters. This thinking was fruitful in my efforts; explaining exactly how it worked its way into the final design must wait until I describe some other matters.



Chris Crawford on Game Design
Chris Crawford on Game Design
ISBN: 0131460994
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 248

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