Store In-depth Economic Information: When it comes to developing and maintaining a virtual economy, information is your best friend. Once you know you’re making an MMO, this should be your next step. When working on this, try to collect all the information you can to make identifying potential problems with the economy much easier.
Control Money Going Into the Economy: When developing your game’s economy, keep in mind that you have complete control over the “printing” of currency. It is much easier to control how currency is created as opposed to destroyed (see next bullet).
Remember, Money Going Out is Voluntary: Unlike money going in to the economy, you have very little control over if and when players will spend their money. Because of this factor, it makes little sense to manipulate your game’s economy solely by taking money out of circulation.
Create Incentives to Spend: Even though you can’t control if and when players will spend their money, you can make it REALLY tempting for them. Creating one time use items, like potions or bandages are a great way to take money out of the economy, because players who purchase these items are likely to come back for more.
Protect Your Economy: No matter how great your economy, if you don’t protect it, your players will exploit it. Defending your economy is of utmost importance, as drastic changes in the economy, such as steep inflation, could alter gameplay mechanics, driving a significant portion of your playerbase away.
Fez is an indie platformer developed by Kokoromi . What’s so special about Fez? Watch the video below and find out.
Kokoromi is a small group of game developers based in Montreal, Quebec who share the common goals of creating and promoting artistic and experimental gameplay. From the looks of the video above, they’re doing just that. Fortunately I’m not the only one person that thinks so, since Fez received the 2008 Independent Games Festival Award for Excellence in Visual Art. Congratulations to the people over at Kokoromi, I can’t wait to try out Fez!
Sony Japan’s Echochrome is an innovative puzzle game based on Jun Fujiki’s Object Location Environment Coordinate System. The interesting thing about the OLE Coordinate System is that movement constraints are not only defined by the 3D coordinates of objects but also by the position of the camera, as demonstrated in the Echochrome video.
Thank you Microsoft! Having access to powerful, not to mention expensive, tools like the ones DreamSpark provides is an immense help to aspiring designers and developers everywhere. Instead of rambling on, let me just say I can only hope that more companies follow suit and invest in college-level students.
