Chris Crawford on Game Design

The Economic System

The economic system used in Guns & Butter was another major innovation. In most military-economic games, the only product of a country's economy is weaponry. The more sophisticated games have technological scales; the player expends resources to climb the technological scale, which in turn grants access to more modern and more powerful weapons. Sid Meier's Civilization, for example, used a system in which the player expended resources on scientific research, which in turn produced a variety of discoveries which in turn enabled more powerful weapons or more efficient economic facilities (and some other things as well). Civilization wasn't on sale when I designed Guns & Butter, so it didn't affect my design, but it employed ...