Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design

Chapter 9. Building Economies

So far, we have been treating the internal economies of games as static structures that do not change as the game is played. The economy itself can be dynamic, but its basic structure—the relationships among its elements—never changes. This is true of many games such as Monopoly, which we’ve used extensively as an example. But some games allow players to actually build the structure of the economy themselves, by adding new sources and drains, for example. In this chapter, we explore economy-building games and how you can use the Machinations framework to design them.

Economy-Building Games

Most, but not all, economy-building games belong to either the construction and management simulation genre or the strategy genre. ...