The Economy Boardgame

Playtest of The Economy Boardgame

The Economy Boardgame is a boardgame that was made to help the development of Star Citizen by helping to draw valid conclusions.

History

Early 2014, Chris Roberts and Eric Peterson asked David Ladyman to put together a boardgame that mirrors the computer game closely enough that the team could draw valid conclusions about the Star Citizen economy in broad strokes from playing the boardgame before putting in all the hours of programming each individual element.

In spring and summer the team played five sessions spread over several weeks. While David Ladyman thinks the goal was accomplished to a certain extent, it’s pretty obvious that a boardgame can’t have all of the detail that a computer game can have. This means that the boardgame has some very basic mechanisms, for example, roll a 6 > get a hit, that are obviously much less sophisticated than Star Citizen mechanics.

The boardgame was designed and played in 2014, and the nature of how the economy in the game works has changed a lot since then, especially since Tony Zurovec arrived to drive the PU design. That means that when a comment says something like “this is designed to match the way the computer game will play,” there’s a pretty good chance that the comment is way out of date, and that it didn’t do a great job of matching the computer game in the first place.

While the specific mechanics aren’t very accurate, there are times that the gameplay and the comments do give interesting food for thought regarding how the economy in Star Citizen might work.

Gallery

Gallery

References

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