“It’s an exciting time to be a trader in the City. Ships arrive everyday filled with new cargo that changes from owner to the next in the blink of an eye. It’s chaos, politics and wits. All together. It’s a complete mess, but one that moves like a beautiful creature.

Becoming a trader means to stand in the spotlight. Because no matter what’s happening, those who control the money will set the path. Those who don’t understand the flow of money will always be one step behind.”

In most games you gain wealth because you want a shinier armor, a bigger house or a deadlier gun. In “A Place for the Unwilling” you’ll be doing it to influence events. Yes, connections, decisions and actions will still be the most important part of the experience. You may even choose to ignore trading, but money is an ally you’ll want to have on your side.

Creating the right trading systems for the game is quite a challenge, but we’re slowly getting there through experimentation, trial and error (as well as lots of research). The first thing you need to know is that “A Place for the Unwilling” is an adventure game where you play as a trader who just moved to the City. It ISN’T a trading game. We don’t want it to feel like a huge spreadsheet.

In most trading games you try to buy low and sell high, that’s how you make money without actually producing anything. So you go from one shop to the next checking prices and seeing where you’ll get a higher profit. That process makes you see all your transactions as mere numbers. When you have so many shops and goods everything seems more generic. Impersonal. Today’s economy is all about numbers on a screen, while early local economy had traders thinking in terms of people and numbers.

Having dozens of shops is great when you’re building a trading simulator, but we’re more interesting in the world’s narrative. In “A Place for the Unwilling” there will be only about 5-6 vendors and all of them will be part of the main cast, they’ll have a face, a routine and a life out of their shops. They’ll have motivations and your relationship with them will influence the price of the goods. It will also work the other way around! Your business will influence your relationships.

So just buying and selling stuff won’t be the best strategy. Prices will change from one day to the next based on both your actions and story events. Trading will become a mix of politics and having a good plan. Not everything is about having an instant profit, a vendor might be in need of a certain item, acquiring other goods would get you more money, but getting them the desired item can improve your relationship and make them thrive (if you want them to). We’re trying to make transactions count, be something more than stock moving from one box to the other. It needs to feel part selling goods and part social engineering.

Money is just a tool to shape the City. Every transaction and deal counts, but with more wealth you’ll have access to more choices. That’s how we blend narrative and trading together, making sure each of them influences the other. There isn’t a right way to play “A Place for the Unwilling” and, for once, there shouldn’t be a right way to lead your business. Earning more money means you have more cards under your sleeve, but sacrificing your fortune for the right reasons might get you to the same outcome.

And that’s all for today! See you in two weeks, but you know we’re always around ;-)