Different kinds of resources

Playing games every now and then, resources is one of the key element in game design.

What do I meant by resources? Well, for example, in-game gold or game currency. You want your players to earn the game currency. Thus, giving players the power to acquire new items by purchasing. How should the game should let players earn the game currency? I will touch on it in coming posting.

Talking about purchasing items, items can be obtained by the means of crafting. With the mechanic of crafting items, this contributes to a wider range of resources.

Take a medieval genre game for example, a knight wield sword and shield, wore armor and helm. The armors and weapons could be crafted in game. Maybe some wood, stone and wheat-grass to begin with. The next tier can be iron, coal, cloth and leather.

How to obtain wood? Maybe by chopping trees.
How to obtain stone? Maybe by quarrying from large rocks or a quarry mine.
How to obtain wheat-grass? Maybe by farming.

Another example could come from constructing buildings. To start building a village, you need to gather people. By having people, you could think about the necessity to sustain a person. Food, water, housing, clothing depends how complex the game design is.

How to obtain food? Maybe by farming or hunting animals.
How to obtain water? Maybe by building wells or fetching from rivers.
How to obtain house? Maybe by gathering resources to build it.
How to obtain clothing? Maybe by herding sheep for wools.

Ultimately, there might be different kinds of resources to build up a game design. If you want players to obtain items by purchasing, game currency is a must to have. With game currency, items can be purchased instead of crafting for a more simple game design; buildings can be purchased instead of constructing with resources for a easier game play.