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[eerr]

"Thus, why would one have the Player pay any Cost whatsoever?"
Because its no fun if you can't make a cost-analysis curve in your head! duh.
Just pick up the best item without a thought. None of the other items matter.
Theres no reason why anyone would not use the item so its standard anyway.

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My economics class defines utility in terms of how much money each "unit" is worth to a customer compared to having less of a "unit"

if a customer would not buy any units, but you lower the price to 100$ and the customer buys one, you know it's worth at least 100$ of utility.

if the customer buys two units instead of one, after you drop the price to 80$, the customer is paying 60$ of utility for the extra unit.

Well, thats how Slaven measures it in my microeconomics book.


I think economy turns out nice in runescape based on an altered english system. Except for the dam chinese gold farmers who are also true to real life.

[bjlong]

If you thinking about puzzle adventure games, I can definitely see how there isn't much of a cost element to gameplay, and it's really about figuring out what tools are appropriate to the situation. A game like Grim Fandango doesn't have much of an internal economy, even in the broader sense -- just a series of obstacles to be surmounted with the right tools.

On the other hand, I think Dwarf Fortress is much more about comparing alternate strategies or investments to weigh the cost and benefit of these, and not just figuring out which tool is the correct one. For example, should I build by the river, or against the mountain? Should I burn my wood to make charcoal, or use it for beds? Should I just use green glass, or go for clear glass? I personally prefer games where there are many ways to overcome the next challenge, and it's about trying to pick the best one for the situation rather than finding the correct one.

I suppose I was breaking the SP experience down to microgoals and obstacles. For example, you need wood, so you go cut down more trees. If you're getting low on trees, instead you trade for wood and do without as best you can. Both of these are sort of microgoals, where as your examples involve more than one step--build beds, create a power plant, etc. I usually think of traditional SP games as an experience where you know where you're going and more or less how you're getting there, but the trick is in doing it. (For example, defend the fortress--attackers are going to try to get close, knock down walls, maybe put up some ladders or something, etc.)

This is versus the MP experience, where you have a goal, but you're up against someone who's going to change their strategy to something you've never seen before, so your "how" becomes much more uncertain. Since you can't know for sure the how, you're going to try to get things with the most utility, as that would help you more in every situation. (For example, defend the fortress--the attackers might seem to be putting up ladders over here, but they're actually stockpiling gunpowder at the base of the wall, to be lit as you start repelling them.)

[Jonathan S. Fox]

What I'm describing is primarily a way to look at choices presented to the player. If the player isn't making a meaningful choice between several options, it doesn't apply. So you're right that once we have decided to collect more wood already, and that goal is set, the decision to designate some trees to be cut instead of designating some stone to be mined isn't a matter of cost and utility -- it's just using the right tool for the job. But this isn't really a choice, it's just communicating your intent to the game accurately.

Even on this low level however, if we look at the question of which trees and how many to designate, you start to move back toward where it's possible to do this analysis again. If I designate the entire map at once, I have to micro less, but the woodcutter will be pathing all over the place to chop down trees from the far corners of the map, and might get killed by the river carp. If I designate only near my front gates, I'll have to micro more when the designation clears, but it's much safer for the woodcutter and the hauling jobs on the wood will be shorter.

Designating stone to dig out instead of designating trees to chop might be useful in other contexts, but we don't treat it as having utility here because it has no bearing on the issue at hand. We still do analysis using cost and utility, it's just only done on the subset of the possibility space that is relevant to the issue at hand. You might say that we first assess what tools (strategies, items, choices) are capable of dealing with the obstacle, and then, upon determining that we need a screwdriver, we analyze whether to use the electric screwdriver or the manual one based on the relative merits of each.

To take this out of the strategy game genre, in a shooter, you might know you want to get from point A to point B, but the gameplay is about all the little decisions you make about where to aim, when to strafe, how to prioritize targets, where to take cover, what weapons to use, and so on. At this low of a level, many decisions won't even involve unconsciously "shopping" between your choices, but happen on instinct. You don't consider throwing a grenade at that Nazi, you just shoot him because he's there and you have your Thompson out. But if you die under enemy machine gun fire, it's likely you'll mentally back up and do some analysis of what happened, quickly identifying the problem (an enemy machine gun nest) and considering a couple solutions (charge it guns blazing, lob a grenade, snipe the machine gunner?) then deciding on an approach to take in your next life. The resulting decision to swap out for the sniper rifle and take out the machine gunner from afar was the best choice you had, but it comes despite some costs -- it slows you down, and more dangerously, you won't notice grenades or flanking enemies for a few seconds. This kind of decision isn't consciously economic, but the same basic principles are still relevant in an abstract form.

[bjlong]

I guess it's important for me to say now that merely using the right tool for the job isn't a bad thing--in fact, it's often completely satisfying. For example, the Mario 64 game was all about figuring out and the using the correct jumping technique for the situation, and that was fun. Same thing for, say, Shadows of the Colossus. There are decisions there, certainly, but there is one "correct" decision, and all the rest are just using MOE to get to that decision.

Taking the shooter example, when you've made a meaningful decision (say, snipe the MGer), you should feel satisfied when it's done--ie, sniping the guy should be some work, with a bit more payoff. If it's too painful for the player, then it should be considered an effectively "wrong" technique for the player. What I'm saying, I guess, is that the game should never feel like work, even with all of these meaningful choices.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

That's a well-made point. I think there are at least three distinct types of gameplay we're looking at here. One is puzzle solving -- what is the correct action to take to resolve the current challenge? One is skill based -- can I move quickly enough to avoid the giant's axe? And the one I'm looking at is more strategic -- given these choices, which one should I select?

I think you're absolutely right that some aspects of Mario 64 and Shadow of the Colossus are not really strategic choices of the sort I'm looking at. You make decisions, but they're mostly about figuring the right answer. Not all though -- the decision of whether to avoid the colossus by running around it or between its legs is a calculated risk and in the strategic sphere, while how you deal with a group of enemies might have multiple right answers in Mario. But in the way you are describing them, I would agree they are puzzles that require skill to execute the result, rather than choices that are like those I'm describing. By comparison, the sniping example is a strategic choice that also requires skill to execute the result. For strategy games, we might say the same thing, but "skill" is usually just a large hierarchy of smaller and smaller strategic choices that eventually add up to the outcome, which is a bit different from the sort of skill you use to maneuver in Mario 64 or Shadow of the Colossus, or to accurately snipe in our WWII shooter game example.

[bjlong]

I suppose we can boil this down to three shorter questions: "Is it valid?", "Can I do it?", and "Should I do it?" (Valid here means more or less foreward-moving.) All three stages can be fun on their own, but it's probably best to try to make two or all of these things fun in the game.

Aaaaaaand I've got nothing more to say on the matter, save that there should be some way to analyze the puzzle solving approach like the cost/utility and tool/obstacle approaches. Unless tool/obstacle is the analysis for puzzle solving? I don't know.