Resources Loop

You’ve probably already heard of the Core Loop; it is one of the most basic methods for describing gameplay. However, this is not the only important loop out there. In games with a heavy emphasis on resources, we also need to know how these flow through the systems. In essence, we need a snapshot of the main economy. Most games want to keep players playing as much as we can, so it’s useful to think of the economy as a cycle. Players may trade one resource or currency for another, but in the end, the resources loop around, keeping them in the system*. This can be modeled into a diagram.

There are two important concepts to keep in mind when making a resource loop:

• Sinks – These are game elements and systems which take in a certain resource; e.g. upkeep costs, weapon degradation, etc…
• Sources – These are game elements and systems which provide a certain resource; e.g. daily rewards, loot drops from enemies, etc…

A system can sometimes be both a source and a sink; for example when exchanging gold for gems at a store. The goal of a resource loop is to show how all the sources and sinks of a game relate to each other. It’s important to note that resources do not just mean currency; health, time and consumable weapons are resources as well.

Resources in this case does not only refer to currencies (gold, gems, etc…). Any game element that is traded, speant or gained can be considered a resource. In the example above, health and ammunition are resources as players can gain/lose them through gameplay.

Depending on the game, these loops can become quite complex, especially if you have many resources or progression paths (here represented by smaller loops). Here’s an example made by Irq Gugis while analyzing Supercell’s Everdale.

In my view, though it is important to map out the whole economy during a GD-3, if you are doing this at the GD-2 phase, you should focus only on the main player progression path.

* This is not a hard and fast rule. There are good reasons why you might want to give players extra currency (for example in daily rewards used in mobile games), just be careful with unintended consequences such as inflation.

I found these loops first while reading the excellent Deconstructor of Fun. They make a frequent appearance in their game deconstructions and analysis.

1. Decide on the main progression path for the player (i.e. what systems gives them the fastest progression)
2. List out the main game actions and place them in separate blocks.
3. Connect the blocks based on how the progression flows.
4. Next to each block add ‘+ [resource name]’ for every resource it’s a source of and ‘- [resource name]’ for each resource it is a sink of.
5. Consider additional sources and sinks & secondary progression paths. Add those to the diagram as well.
6. Analyze the diagram and make sure that each resource has the appropriate magnitude of sinks and sources. This is not necessarily the same as the number of sources/sinks; depending on the design, you can have one very heavy sink that needs multiple smaller sources to stay balanced.
   • A classic example is soft currency (like gold) in Free-to-Play games; they might have multiple sources (quests, leveling up, etc…), but only one or two sinks (for example, they might only be used to upgrade characters.

Protip: Depending on the audience and genre, you may want to have multiple loops in your diagram. The more loops of different length, the easier time players will have jumping from one to the next and always have something to do. Of course, this comes at a cost of complexity (in terms of production and balance) and of accessibility (which can be mitigated by how you open the loops to players).

Let’s imagine we are making a farming game in the vein of Harvest Moon, Farmville or Stardew Valley.

The core of these games generally consists of clearing space/ upgrading your farm to plant crops, harvest the crops and then selling them to get new crops. Different crops have different quirks (like being seasonal), sale prices and purposes for secondary mechanics (for example, they may be required to complete an NPC quest); this allows for meaningful choices and optimization without needing to have a fail condition per se. For a more in-depth analysis of Stardew Valley, check out this piece by Shakeeb Zacky.

Our game, Shroomlight Grove, is a cozy, ‘spooky’ farming simulator where players control a helpful witch who needs to plant mushrooms and brew new potions. There are several main types of currency in the game:

• Cash (used to buy new materials and obtained by selling mushrooms & potions)
• Mana (used to create potions and obtained by fulfilling quests)
• Seeds (used to plant crops and obtained in a shop)
• Crops (an umbrella term for all the mushrooms you plant; players can sell to them at market and use them to create potions, obtained by harvesting)
• Stamina (used to take actions in the farm and refreshed each in-game day)

The main actions are planting, harvesting, selling crops, brewing potions and upgrading your farm/buying seeds; with quests being a secondary system. With this in mind, we can define the core resource loop as such:

A few notes we can gather from this loop:

• Upgrading your farm allows you to have larger harvests, in essence giving players more stamina.
• Upgrading your farm also unlocks new quests, with which players heavily gated by time, with the day/night cycle and seasons pacing progress for the players. This is not always relevant to all games but, for ours, the time it takes to harvest crops & complete quests (waiting for crops to mature) is an important aspect to consider.

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