Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Part 1

Let's recap from the intro:

Part 1: What is the role of money in a single player game for the player?

1. It provides a resource to replenish consumable resources.
2. It provides a resource to upgrade his character's power.
3. It provides a way to affect the game environment.
4. It can serve as part of the reward mechanism.

From the point of view of the player, money essentially does these four things for him. It is imperative that none of them are made impossible by the economics of the game itself.


1. It provides a resource to replenish consumable resources.

Here, consumable resources are things like potions, durability on fragile equipment, uses of spells or even extra lives. All these things are essentially power-ups that serve to extend the player's ability on a semi-permanent basis.

These are semi-permanent because often times, a player counts on being able to "refresh" his stores of consumable resources when there is a pause in the action. For example, in most RPGs, players often go back to town to repurchase the health recovery items that they need to survive long dungeon trips. For simulation games, like Civilization, money often provides a method to temporarily speed up the production of a unit or offset the temporary shift in focus from commerce to research.

It is interesting to note that the role of score is often like money in arcade games. Mario essentially always spends his 100 coins on an extra life, while many other games like Galaga, Space Invaders or Pac Man treat score as a running balance to purchase extra lives with.


2. It provides a resource to upgrade his character's power.

These are permanent bonuses a player can purchase. Things like weapons or equipment are typically more permanent. They also provide some degree of character customization where money (a reward) is used to buy clothes or items that uniquely express the player's sense of individuality or choice.

In simulation games, money can provide a pure power by purchasing whole building very quickly or the wholesale purchase of properties to expand growth. In Civilization "rushing" a fleet of tanks with a large money reserve would often prove fatal to an opponent, but you could also "rush" a fleet of defensive infantry men very quickly if you had the resources to spare.


3. It provides a way to interact with the environment.

There are many ways in which money provides a new novel way to interact with the environment: In many classic story telling games, the usage of money could serve to bribe a judge or a guard. You could donate to a beggar to improve your character's reputation. Above all, perhaps some scripted encounters could be bypassed with a significant portion of money. In more diplomatic games like strategy games, money can often be a resource in influencing decisions.

However, the promise of money also makes the player interact differently with the environment. Consider arcade or platforming games which subtly alter the ideal path for the player by the promise of shiny coins. Many "paths" in Mario were laid out in gold coins for the player to scoop up along the way. In Pac-Man, the presence of fruit at the center of the board might change your priorities on how to move.


And remember those Pots in Zelda? Once you knew you could find rupees in pots, you became a pot breaking maniac.


4. It can serve as part of the reward mechanism.



A key part of why we play games is we receive some tangible pyschological reward out of them. Money in many times is the ubiquitous reward for completing some portion of the game's tasks. If you are doing well, money tends to flow toward the player. It tends to be the smallest reward unit that players can easily understand. 'Yay! I did something good. I get shinies!'

Money is important for a player because it gives him a sense of accomplishment that is can expressly be quantified. It is, after all, a numeric representation of wealth.

Afterthought: There are very interesting parallels between Money and Score in games for players. They serve very similar purposes for most games across the board. However, they differ in the design pitfalls that may overwhelm them, as we will see later.