Learning Economy Design

Short Introduction

Dan Man the Can Man is a low poly 3D tycoon where you collect and recycle cans. My inspiration was a simple idea of wanting to crush a soda can, so I rode on that hill to produce a game about breaking and recycling them. I wanted to test my hand in economy design so I prioritized establishing what the player would experience.

First Steps

My first priority was to identify a rough idea of a progression line for my players. Two key factors were very important to consider. What was the time to collect a can and how much was a can worth? The player had to crush a can and return it to a recycle bin. Crushing cans was super quick and easy so it was more so figuring out how long it would take to return a crushed can back to the bin.

Price

I knew that I was doing an upgrade system, which I figured that I was going to do at least 3 tiers. So that means I would have up to 4 prices of what cans could sell for. A base price, tier 1 price, tier 2 price, and tier 3 price. In these games, selling prices increase slowly and incrementally.

Making an interactive data model was the easiest way to approach this. I knew manually entering numbers over and over again would slow down my process. I created milestones of cans sold and worked off these numbers to roughly guesstimate how the player would take to achieve these moments.

After making the very broad milestones of how much money the player would earn with these different cans sold. I worked on specifically identifying the phases of the game. So, phase 1 included the player buying and collecting the tier 1 upgrades. They would have to buy an upgrade to unlock the next phase so tier 2 upgrades.

When working on this stage, I was hit with an interesting problem. Accounting for player behavior in my game. What if the player never bought the tier 1 price increase so they were working towards buying the tier 2 unlock on ONLY price base? Or what if the player bought the tier 1 price upgrade as soon as possible to work towards the tier 2 unlock.

This is a very drastic price range of figuring out how I wanted to pace how long I would account for a player staying in their phases of the game. When I talked to my professor about it, he told me that neither option was necessarily wrong, but it was the designer’s choice. Which meant I was the one to say “yes I like this” or “No I don’t want the game to go in this direction”

This opened up my eyes to the idea of a vision behind your work. I wanted a casual, relaxing, but not too crazy easy game for my players. I wanted them to enjoy goofy moments with dumb physics and have fun with the upgrades.

My approach

I ended up with an alternative interesting solution that I was very happy with.

I used the milestones with the base price and fully upgraded price to find the minimums and the maximums. I averaged out the minimum and maximum to find the middle range. My goal was to find the 50–70% of the milestone then base the player experience around these numbers. I don’t want to make the game super short, easy, and boring by using the minimum standard. While also avoiding the maximum number to avoid an overly grindy and unfun experience.

The 50–70% range I found to be the great middle ground. I believe 10–40% lies closer to the easier/lower difficulty idea which can work, but just not in my game. 100% can lead to a more grindy experience.

All of these numbers just depend heavily on what the designer wants their game to achieve. In my casual, not overly difficult or easy game, it is perfect.

Phase Upgrade Breakdowns

After establishing how much was in these milestones, I would give my phase different allowed “budgets.” I knew each phase would have a total of 9 upgrades. Which meant I was allowed to allocate the allowed total between these upgrades. I wanted to push the player to buy certain upgrades earlier which meant I just could make it cheaper to say “Hey maybe this is a good idea to buy.” I also knew I wanted the unlock tiers to be bought later or at least not first or second, so I purposely made them more expensive. I could have simply made it so you can’t buy the unlock next tier until you buy the other 8 upgrades, but as a player I felt this was lame to do. If they really want to go the extra mile and rush the next tier, then I’ll let them, I’ll just make it more annoying for them.

I allocated the largest percentage of the budget to the next tier unlock and the price upgrade the tied cheapest. I then would give the rest of the % budge to the other 7 upgrades to how I see fit. I made the magnet and auto-sell more expensive than the price upgrade but still cheap in general so the player would consider them as good early purchases.

The Takeaway

The numbers can only tell you so much. I experimented with my interactive data model to find numbers that sounded good in theory but did not hold up for a fun experience.

At the end of the day, player feedback is one of the most important things you can be given. To me, my numbers make sense. To others, they may disagree with my approach. The correct answer is always does the player have fun. Making sure to find a balance between what they perceive as correct and my vision is how to ensure I can make the best game possible.