Analyzing Game Mechanics: Resources, Feedback, and Deadlocks

This homework assignment delves into the core concepts of game design, focusing on resources, economic functions, and various game mechanics. The assignment begins by defining tangible and intangible resources within the context of video games, using examples like lumber in Warcraft and health points in shooter games. It then explores economic functions, which involve mechanisms for creating new resources, such as sources that generate resources at a specific rate. The assignment requires analysis of specific game mechanics, including negative feedback with periodic equilibrium, downward spirals, short-term versus long-term investment trade-offs, feedback based on players’ relative scores, and rubber-banding. Mario Kart is used as an example of rubber-banding. The assignment also examines deadlocks in games, with BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DEADLOCK used as an example, and discusses how such deadlocks can be resolved within the game. The assignment provides references to academic papers that support the concepts discussed, offering a comprehensive understanding of game design principles.

Running Head: Question and Answers 1
Question and Answers
Name
Institution

Question and Answers 2
Exercises
1. Show the resources and economic functions in a published game.
Resources
The following is an example of a resource in games;
Intangible resources
These lack physical properties in the world of games. They don't exist or occupy any space. For
instance, when tree harvesting in Warcraft has been done, they are converted to lumber, that
cannot be touched. Lumber just represents a number and thus has no existence in any place. An
individual player does not need to carry the lumber to a certain site to construct a fresh structure
(Minzoni, Mounoud & Zaharei, 2014). Just possessing the correct lumber amount is enough to
begin construction even though the construction is being built far from the point where the
lumber was being harvested. This is a good example of intangible resources. Also, health points
too are intangible resources in shooter games.
Economic function
Under economic function, we have sources which are mechanisms for creating new resources
from nowhere. At some point when certain conditions take place, a source is capable of
generating a new source and then places it in a new entity (Wei, Fan, Song, Fan, & Yang, 2018).
A certain event in the game might trigger sources in a game, or they might function
continuously, as they produce resources in a specific rate of production. In games of simulation,
generation of money by a source occurs at the specific break with the money being formed

Question and Answers 3
proportionally to the population. Some of the games that are made of combat automatically
regenerate health over time.
2. Find an example of a game (not referred to in this chapter) that exhibits one of these
properties: negative feedback with periodic equilibrium, a downward spiral, a short-term versus
long-term investment trade-off, feedback based on players’ relative scores, or rubber-banding.
Explain which resources are involved, and show how the game’s mechanics produce the effect
you discovered.
Mario Kart is known as one of the biggest examples of rubber-banding. Rubber-banding is an
instance where the lead player gets slowed down, and then the player who is following the lead
player gets all the great items. When we go back to the history of the series, this was more
original in Mario Kart 64 and the Super Mario Kart, where there were changes in the distribution
of your items and still a good driver triumphed over this effect and won. By the time Mario Kart
Wii rolled back, this effect had been pushed so far such that the good driving habit had little to
do with winner because the game punished the winner (Scarbrough, Panourgias, &
Nandhakumar, 2015). Why would I desire to play a game that punishes me for playing well? The
lead player is slowed down, and other players can overtake him, and thus you get things that are
useless in the back of the pack. Players that use CPU seem not to suffer this problem which
makes me think that the game is unfair.
3. Find an example of a game (other than a Zelda game) in which a deadlock may occur. Does
the game provide a means of breaking the deadlock? Explain.
We have BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DEADLOCK, which is a game where there is a
probability of deadlock taking place (Spring, 2015). This occurs when all the Cylon’s offensive
has been encountered by the colonials which make the situation look like there is no victory that

Question and Answers 4
can be achieved. Nevertheless, the game provides means of breaking the deadlock from the
Cylons sudden attack and the Colonial Fleet High command annihilation on Picon, and the
mankind's fate remains upon the Rear-Admiral Lucinda Cain shoulders.

Question and Answers 5
References
Minzoni, A., Mounoud, E., & Zaharei, M. F. (2014). Using Ahp To Design A Living System
Like Balanced Operating Model For Intagible Services. International Journal of the
Analytic Hierarchy Process, 7(2), 148-170.
Scarbrough, H., Panourgias, N. S., & Nandhakumar, J. (2015). Developing a relational view of
the organizing role of objects: A study of the innovation process in computer
games. Organization Studies, 36(2), 197-220.
Spring, D. (2015). Gaming history: Computer and video games as historical
scholarship. Rethinking History, 19(2), 207-221.
Wei, W., Fan, X., Song, H., Fan, X., & Yang, J. (2018). Imperfect information dynamic
stackelberg game based resource allocation using hidden Markov for cloud
computing. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 11(1), 78-89.