How The Witcher 3’s economy was saved by polynomial least squares

For a game as complex and as huge as The Witcher 3, it's hard to imagine that one of its core gameplay elements—one that ties the entire game together—didn't actually exist until just months before its release. And yet, according to senior gameplay designer Matthew Steinke, speaking at GDC Europe, that's exactly what happened with The Witcher 3's economy, crafting, and inventory systems. These three core elements of the game were "fragmented and incomplete" to the point that "there was no time left in the project to accomplish everything by the deadline."

But as is so often the case, a complex task and a rapidly looming deadline can often lead to some great innovations. For Steinke and The Witcher 3, that meant coming up with a entirely new way to create and maintain an in-game economy; one that was reactive to the player and the world around it. Steinke started with the basics, noting that The Witcher 3's economy is based around money, or rather the concept that money is simply anything in the game that can be traded for something else.

"I had specific goals for the economy," said Steinke. "I wanted players to need money for purchasing food, ingredients, and upgrades, to explore the world around them for new items, earning money from combat, and collecting loot along the way. I wanted them to buy better items to improve their stats. Additionally, I wanted these items to cost more, so that players felt like they were earning lots of money by the end of the game. To visualise these goals, I sketched out a higher-level state diagram to illustrate the system interactions. Defining system interactions in this way, it's easy to see what kind of relationships created between the player and the economy."

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments