How to handle land value tax in online games and virtual worlds

Lars Doucet and Daniel Cook share a high-level guide for game designers and game economists working in large multiplayer online games and/or virtual worlds.

In one of the frustrating ways art imitates life, games with systems resembling real estate tend to create situations resembling housing crises. In this write-up, Lars Doucet and Dan Cook discuss why this happens (hint: it’s the same reasons it happens in real life) and how to fix it in your game design (hint: it’s the same way we could fix it real life).

Steambirds: Survival: Goodbye Handcrafted Levels

Steambirds: Survival , the sequel to our original steampunk airplane strategy game was just released today.   You can go play it right now ...

In this still-relevant piece from 2010, Daniel Cook of Spry Fox discusses how building a game around modes rather than levels can result in more depth, fun, and longevity. Obviously narrative games have different priorities, but there’s a lot to consider here for the design of systems-based games.