I just liked the idea that in videogames, if you worked hard, you could have something to show for it.
Experience, gold, or loot. Here, you grind at a job for hours a day for a month, and you end up with just enough to do it again next month
This is 100% my theory as to why Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley games are so popular. People don’t mind doing the same stuff when it means you can live a life of basic means, contribute to a community, actually be rewarded for your efforts, and have autonomy and control over your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8d6-yWn1oE check out this series
That’s why it always annoys me when gamers think that “realistic economies” (in games outside of the 4X/political sim genres) are a great idea. They don’t understand that only way that the player character can meaningfully progress in a game economy is if it’s built specifically to allow them to do that. Bolting on an imitation of supply and demand to shops doesn’t actually make the game more realistic and it usually doesn’t add anything interesting to the game.
Then you get to “player-driven economies” in MMOs, which require constant developer intervention to avoid devolving to the point where most people don’t have any economic power. You’d think that gamers would learn something about capitalism from that, but no such luck.
Bolting on an imitation of supply and demand to shops doesn’t actually make the game more realistic and it usually doesn’t add anything interesting to the game.
I have had quite a bit of enjoyment with trading sims where you essentially function as importer/exporter, travelling from country to country with goods to trade and trying to maximise profit. This is the primary method of wealth building in games like Mount and Blade or Starsector and it’s definitely enjoyable where it’s implemented properly. In particular in Starsector where drugs play a role in supply and demand based on other factors.
Maybe it’s not for everyone but there’s definitely a crowd that genuinely enjoys this loop of travel from location to location trying to buy the right goods while coming up with the right routes and avoiding trouble or bandits or pirates along the way.
Fair enough. I was thinking about the feature where Minecraft villagers up their prices if you make the same trade a bunch of times. It just seems like a hassle given that the need to restock already works to limit how often you can make a certain trade.
