Plenty of games out there use money. Gil, rupees, coins, rings, bottlecaps and plain old dollars get tossed around in videogames like they don't even matter. And that's the problem: they don't. Too many games out there suffer from broken economies in which the player, usually no further than midgame, is richer than God and looks better than him too because of all the sweet armor he's bought. Money might mean the difference between a better gun, sword or shield in the first few hours of the game, but by the time the player has handled a few quests the money is their pocket is reduced to free whatever-you-want vouchers.
Two recent-ish games whose economies have disappointed me sorely: Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3. Both games attempt, and largely succeed, at creating intricate, believable worlds inhabited by (somewhat) believable characters that interact in a believable way. The only glaring fault, for me, is that my interaction with them is different because I can buy and sell their assess just as fast as I can snap my fingers. In GTAIV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, the most recent GTA experience I've had, I was swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck within the first hour of my game. I could have cars delivered to me for free, I could take weapons from my enemies, buy discount weapons from my friends and every mission gave me enough money to wallpaper my apartment with. I was being given too much money, and I didn't even need to spend it to begin with. My megabucks became an empty number; I didn't feel empowered by the growth of my in-game bank account because it had no value to my character.
Similarly, in Fallout 3, I left the vault with maybe fifty caps looted from the vault guards I had downed. After an hour or two wandering the wasteland, shooting and looting raiders and prying open every metal box and locker I could find I had just enough money to get myself comfortably outfitted at Megaton's weapons shop. I was impressed. I felt like my money had been hard-fought and earned, and the classy new armor and death-deliverers it translated into were worth the time and effort I put into getting them. Looking for money wasn't easy, but it was worth it, I thought. This wasteland is tough, but I like it, and I'm going to get out there and conquer it, I thought. Jump just a few hours ahead and I had already killed for some of the better weapons in the game and received a free suit of the (almost) best armor in the game from one of the fallen brotherhood soldiers. Jump ahead a few more hours, when I no longer needed to barter for caps, when I simply started to round up what the merchant owed me in Stimpaks (of which I now no longer dipped below a reservoir of 200 in my inventory) and I'm starting to feel like I am the one-man second coming of capitalism in the wasteland. Sadly, none of the golden eggs of the game, the unique weapons and armor, we purchasable, only findable. What if one or two of them could have only been bought? Where was my motivation to accrue money and spend it wisely? Why did Fallout and GTAIV's economies drop the ball and leave me feeling like my money was only for show?It's because neither game gave me enough appropriate reasons and places to spend my money. Sure, both games technically have hundred of places to buy stuff, but they all sold the same things: just stuff, stuff I could find in the world just as easily as I could pay for it. Both games lacked imagination in offering me ways to spend cash. The options were spend money on one-off things that don't matter, like going out to eat or paying off a slave-trader (when I could have just as easily killed or persuaded him) or use it to buy items I would encounter piles of out in the game world. In this respect, AC2 really does rise above.
In AC2 there are the usual things like armor, weapons and healing to spend your money on. Where AC2 diversifies is in your ability to invest your money, and gain through spending. AC2 encourages the player to spend money to increase the value of their hub area, a small Villa in the Italian countryside. Everything the player buys, from armor to weapons to local art increases the return they get on the Villa. The Villa pays out a certain sum every twenty minutes, and this sum increases with the assets (armor, weapons, art, lots of collectibles) acquired by the player. This sum also has a cap, so the player must withdraw the money frequently in order to earn more. This isn't always possible, since the player must actually return to the Villa to get it (sometimes annoying, but I'm making a point about the intelligently controlled flow of money), so the money is your Villa is safe, but it doesn't grow infinitely. The Villa's return also increases for every full set of armor or weapons bought, and also for every building the player chooses to renovate in the Villa, so you end up buying a lot of things you might otherwise ignore, because maybe a mace isn't part of your playstyle, and giving them a try. None of this stuff comes cheap, either. Just one sword can easily wipe out what Ezio, the main character, is carrying on him and this means doing more missions or heading back to the Villa. Even paying for new clothes comes with a clever caveat: you're paying to dye your clothes, not get new ones, so you never amass a wardrobe. Every time you feel like flashing some new colors it's going to cost you, and every new city you visit has about five new dye schemes.There are other games that handle in-game economy quite well (Valkyria Chronicles comes to mind), but few games in the action genre really know what to do with it. AC2 doesn't have the developed economy of a Sid Meier game, but the economy also isn't a central feature in AC2. The game is primarily about climbing and killing. The economy is there for players that want to get everything in the game--and not just have it handed to them, but to earn it. Do you want to be a rich assassin or a poor assassin? It's just a small question in a thoroughly satisfying game.
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