Signposted #20

Currently playing Balatro

Hey Designer,

Welcome back to issue #20 of Signposted!

Starting with this issue I’m going to try something a little different, smaller more frequent issues!

So look forward to a more focused issue each week (on Monday!) for the foreseeable future as I try out this new format.

In this issue I’m breaking down my Crash Course into Game Economies Micro Talk from GDC 2025.

You an watch it for free here (my part starts at 36 min in):

The slides for the presentation can be found here as well in case you want to follow along.

Spark Notes of A Crash Course into Game Economies (& how to fix some common problems)

• Why is your economy important

  • It controls player progression, if it’s too fast or too slow players get bored and churn

  • It heavily influences player retention

  • It touches every aspect of your game (ability systems, crafting systems, power, etc)

• What are 3 parts of a basic game economy?

  • Drops

    • Hard Currency

    • Soft Currency

    • XP

    • Items

    • Resources

  • Faucets

    • Any system which adds drops to the game’s economy

      • Enemy loot drops

      • In world loot spawns

      • Loot Boxes

  • Sinks

    • Any system which removes drops from the game’s economy

      • Leveling Up - removes XP

      • Crafting - Removes Resources

        • Also adds a different item to the economy so it is a faucet for that item as well

      • In Game Shops - Removes Currency

        • Also adds a different item to the economy so it is a faucet for that item as well

  • What is my economy exactly?

    • Your economy is the flow of resources/items from faucets into the sinks to progress your game or increase power

• 3 Common Economy Pitfalls (and how to fix them)

  • Fountaining

    • When you have too much of a drop in the game’s economy

      • for example enemies are dropping too much experience points on death

      • This causes players to have increased progression, they’re overpowered, and they oftentimes churn (quit) from boredom

    • When you try to fix fountaining, what are the goals you want to focus on?

      • Control the spawn rate for the specific drop

      • Drain excess drops from the player’s inventory

    • How do you fix it?

      • Lower the faucet Flow

        • if you have a tree which is spawning too much wood when mined, reduce the amount

      • Create a soft sink

        • Create a sink players who have too much of the drop in their inventory can engage with, typically this would be a terrible deal

          • Like a 1000 wood box which converts into 1 gold

          • Most players won’t engage with this, but the players who have excess wood with nothing to do with it, will

  • Loot Desert

    • This is when not enough of a drop is spawning

      • This inhibits player progression, frustrates players, and can lock them out from progressing in the game entirely

    • When trying to fix a loot desert what are the goals you want to focus on?

      • Control the spawn rate for a specific drop

      • Add missing drop into the player’s inventory

    • How do we fix it?

      • Increase the faucet flow

        • If you have a tree which is awarding 5 wood when it is being cut down, and wood is the loot desert resource, increase it to 10

        • Alternatively decrease the sink rate

          • If a pickaxe costs 6 wood to craft and player progression is blocked because they can’t craft it, half the cost to 3 wood

        • Gift missing items

          • Based on the player’s play time you can guesstimate how far along the progression they should be, thus you can award them the resource amount needed to hit that goal

  • Resource Hoarding

    • When the player holds on to a resource because they might need it later and never use it

      • The goal of fixing resource hoarding sounds straightforward, stop them from hoarding

      • but resource hoarding is actually based on the player’s worry that they might waste the resource

      • So the goal is to make them feel like they are wasting the resource if they don’t use it

    • How do we fix it

      • Cap the resource

        • The player is going to horde no matter what, but if the resource is capped they can only horde up to (let’s say) 5 times.

        • when they go to pick up the 6th resource, they can’t add it to their inventory, now they have to leave it behind, they are wasting it by not taking it with them so the player needs to make more space for it by using the resource they already have

If you want to keep the conversation going or have thoughts on the new format, let me know in the Signposted Discord.

And that’s it for Issue 20!

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!

-Scott

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Andreas Lopez

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