So I have been thinking about the economics of my most recent project. Now, many games use "gold", a standardized coin used for all transactions. That's all fine and well, but my game is to be set in a science fantasy future setting. So, I figured universal "credits" would be appropriate. So far, not a big change.
Then I thought a bit more. How much currency does the average person now carry around relative to total wealth? It seems like most "money" is actually electronically recorded in an account or tied up in posessions/property. I would guess in "the future" it would not be unthinkable that all transactions are virual. Maybe everybody has a chip that accessess financial data. So maybe they don't carry any currency at all!
But surely, there would be some sort of need for hard currency, even if it was small "cred sticks" or similar?
Gamewise, I am trying to think what the effects of a largely cashless game might be. Obviously, theft would be much different, since you couldn't just steal money. Although, with the proper tools, maybe you could hack the chip... It also means it would be almost impossible to get money merely by killing things. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. You could still trade valuable components from slain critters for creds, though.
I wanted to see if others had considered the role of currency in games or had tried games with non standard currency schemes.
ID:152541
 Jun 30 2006, 11:37 am
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In my game, I use €uros as it's a busking game set in europe. This allows stealing and banking, buying and selling. loans and overdafts etc. I wanted to reflect the real world economics of small change business. Strangely though in mt coding I use the word 'gold' as the variable as it seemed to me as the traditional word used for currency in computer games.
The problem with sticks or cards are that a lost card or stick would result in all the credits being lost. However there could be a cool twist with a stolen card. for example, if a player steals your card, there could be a preset time for the player to go to the bank and get the card blocked! and also giving the stealer the same time to spend as much as possible!!! | |
personally, maybe you could do an implant chip in someone so that when you kill him you can get it out. Or if you wanted to steal you could hack the bank directly
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I like Spuzzum's idea that he mentioned once a long while ago: The universal currency is the equivalent to a standard unit of energy. So material objects are assigned a value equal to such-n-such units of energy and so on. So if you give someone "money", you're actually giving them energy. And energy, as we know, has all sorts of great uses in space.
But then, you could also take the Star Control approach, where "money" is just a figure that determines how much material it costs to put together something, or the value of the raw materials you have onboard your ship. So, money = materials. Energy and materials are things that most people are going to be carrying around with them in space, so those would be the reasonable items to use as currency. | |
In a mostly electronic economy, when the need for "hard cash" arises (if ever), I'd think we would have small objects ("poker" chips, sticks, whatever) that are designated holders for money...
You "load" them using your personal access to your account by pressing the object between thumb and forefinger to have it activate, and read your implanted chip, then set it to whatever amount you wish to load it with...) The connection to your account is only present at the time of loading, of course... The amount is debited from your account instantaneously, and the chip stores it internally until it is used (it can't have a persistant connection to your account, as theft would then be very risky)... Basically, it's the same idea as today's Gift Card... Each one is "loaded" with a determined mmount, which can be drawn from, and reloaded... The difference is simply that these will be universal... Now that I've made the Gift Card comparison, I guess I should revise the idea to even more closely correspond to it... Rather than store the value on the object itself, perhaps it should be stored in a central database, and looked up remotely when used... Each method has some security risks to consider, though... If stored on the chip, one could theoretically "hack" the chip to change the amount it has been set to be worth (security measures would have to be used, like high-level encryption and perhaps even a "delete entirely if tampered with" protocol) If stored remotely, that system could be broken into, and all kinds of havoc could ensue (the entire system would need to be univeral, which means that all transactions would need to go though it, meaning anyone able to get into it could get into everything)... Of course, there are obvious security measures to be taken here... We're basically on the verge of this technology as we speak... All that's left is to upgrade the entire infrastructure to accept these "cred sticks/chips" where cash/coins would have been used, and we're off! (and in some forms, even this is already beginning to occur; like vending machines that accept debit cards, and recently those little scanners for that MasterCard key fob... just a matter of time before they spread and choke out the old cash-using devices) Anyways, Gold is the standard in games only because it has been considered a material of value by humans for most of history... And that's only because it is pretty, basically...lol We could have just as easily settled on using gravel or pinecones as the main form of currency (and perhaps some cultures have)... In a world such as Dune, perhaps, vials of water could serve the form of money (larger vials are the equivalent of larger bills/chunks of gold)... Of course, the above rambling doesn't really address your game design related issues (or maybe it does?) | |
to finish the subject:
An extra-terrestial goes into an irish bar and asks the barman "whats that?" "beer" he replies. et: "I'll take a beer,... what's that?" barman: "whiskey" et: "I'll take a whiskey too....it's nice here, get a beer and a whiskey for everyone! it's my round!!!" barman: "no problem,... is that all? sir." et: " yes, thankyou, how much is that? barman "78.50 euros" et: "you got change for a Zog?" | |
Jmurph wrote:
But surely, there would be some sort of need for hard currency, even if it was small "cred sticks" or similar? its called a credit card. | |
Credit cards aren't hard currency. They're just a convenient way to provide access to electronic accounts. All the transactions you perform with it are still purely virtual; you never actually handle the money.
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Sounds a bit like real world economics that are happening now :P.
Anyway, the reason most use "Gold" as the standardized coin is because Gold backs all currency to a degree.
The credit system that is big in the US is all virtual, all the needed data is in the card magnetic strip (or in the chip on the card), In the future it can very well become an implant and be tied to the SSN numbers or the European equivalent.
It is also believed that paper money will disappear one day in favor of credit in the US (Europe is not big on credit). I don't think at this point there will be any "cred sticks", the world will keep around cheap paper money or move completely to credit.