This chapter will offer an explanation of what Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) is and iterate on the advantages it brings for planning economic systems and showcasing them in understandable manners.
5.1. Introduction to Machinations (Dormans, n.d.)
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) is a tool for creating a visual language that utilizes diagrams to communicate its information. This tool has its focus on game systems and the internal economic structure of these systems and allows to model functional economies that can be tested and balanced. This is done by iterating on economy prototypes that showcase how entities interact with the system or how the system interacts within itself in real time.
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) offers a graphical extension to spreadsheets and can be utilized to explain the results more easily to a broader audience. In addition to that, allows Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) for a more understandable workflow and with that for faster iterations and evaluations of the created and tested systems.
5.2. Reasons for this work to utilize Machinations (Dormans, n.d.)
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) allows this work to create multiple approaches for adjustments to already existing economic systems in games and iterate on them based on the problems that come apparent while evaluating the real-time simulations of the approach prototypes.
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) allows exporting the data for marked variables. The data is saved for every time step of the real-time simulation and can easily be transferred to spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel (Microsoft). This allows to quickly collect, save and work with the prototype data.
This tool is capable of running multiple samples of a specific approach in a short period of time. This enables this work to work on a decently sized sample size that gives the results an acceptable level of credibility.
Because of the way Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) is structured, the created systems can quickly be altered, which allows this work to go multiple iterations deep into the functionalities of specific approaches.
As an additional advantage, this software eases the explanation of how these prototypes work since it offers an understandable visual representation of a system that can be viewed step-by-step.
5.3. Reasons for game development teams in general to utilize Machinations (Dormans, n.d.)
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) adds many possibilities to the game creation process. Most of them are not new, but this tool allows to realize them faster and more visually, which makes it simpler to explain these ideas to the team or publisher while also reducing the probability of human error. This comes through the fact that the visual representation allows one to understand problems in a logical way compared to the sole mathematical way most spreadsheet programs offer and through the possibility for other members of a team to spot problems easier.
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) enables the designer to test the created economic system in wide sample sizes before large-scale playtesting is possible. This makes it possible to spot problems a game could have before the main development process has started.
This tool works well with many already utilized tools and can therefore often extend the game development process, without having a negative effect on established pipelines.
5.4. More about how Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) works and how to use it
Machinations (Dormans, n.d.) is a well-documented tool. The book “Game Mechanics Advanced Game Design” (Adams & Dormans, Game Mechanics Advanced Game Design, 2012) showcases how to utilize it from a basic to an advanced level. “Machinations: A New Way to Design Game Mechanics” (Adams & Dormans, Machinations: A New Way to Design Game Mechanics, 2012) is a GDC talk of both authors that covers a basic introduction of how the tool is used and what it can be used for. The documentation for the tool can be found at https://docs.machinations.io/ (Dana & Gheza, n.d.).
