The Most Underrated Mechanic In Games 

Tell you what, I'll give you some behind the scenes in exchange of a patreon subscription... www.patreon.com/mentalcheckpoint Capitalism HO!

Whenever you're building a system in a video game, you have to take into account how the system is contextualized by other mechanics. In most video-games, buying and selling items is less about simulating a trade, and more about making items fungible. You might have a pile of swords you can't use (because you're an archer), so you sell them to get more arrows. This contextualizes killing monsters and taking their things, because you can use them to buy more arrows so you can kill even more monsters and their THEIR stuff. It can also contextualize doing boring, repetitive or undesirable tasks, because a monetary reward can allow you to reach another primary goal. For haggling, for the process of reaching a transaction, to be meaningful, it has to be contextualized by other systems, and that can't just be money - because money is fungible. Doing one big trade, or ten tiny trades, doesn't matter if your only goal is the accumulation of more money, because all coin spends the same. An interesting game that, while having a very simple haggling system, does do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to contextualizing everything else in the game, is Pathologic 2. In that game, only stores sell things for money, but you can trade with almost anyone. Everyone trades different objects. Adults want things like candles, tools, and soap, and will sell things like grindstones and thread. Children will trade with you as well, and they usually have food and medicine, sometimes have bullets, and occasionally have a CURE FOR THE PLAGUE, but they want things like hazelnuts, raisons, marbles, or chalk. People in disease ridden areas will trade extremely valuable items like watches and rings for medicine. There's even a character who will trade coin for human organs, and another that trades valuable items for trash like dirty bandages or spent vials of drugs. Every item in the game is given a contextual value based on who wants it, and who will sell it, and those contextual relationships change as the game goes on.

At the time of writing this comment, the "return youtube dislikes" extension estimates there to be 1380 likes, and 4 dislikes on this video. A ratio of 99,7% likes, which would place this in the realm of "best video in it's genre, on this day" terretory. Well done, and well deserved.

Dude you dont know how happy it makes me to see someone reference Recettear and Moonlighter and games like these! I hope Muracha knows how many people, though small, really love their game!

Haggling can be a more important mechanic in some rise to the top mafia game in which the negotiations you do have impact on how the other party treats you, your goods and your party. Basically what cyberpunk promised to be but for real this time. This could even utilize the superior method in which upon gaining certain info through side quests you can tackle a part of the main quest and grow stronger.

A cartoon I saw had character get a heavy fur for cheap by pointing out to the merchant that it was almost spring, and if they didn't sell the fur now, they would probably have to warehouse it all year, and managed to get half off on some other items by persuading the merchant another store was selling it for less, I feel like this would be a good mechanic to play with, gathering, using, and manipulating information to try to influence prices

Great exploration into the topic. I'm in the planning phase of a "detective"/"adventure" game where I want the main component to be interactions with the characters and building a relationship with the residents of the city moreso than solving room puzzles. This got me thinking about the idea of negotiating with NPCs with the principled approach you discuss, to get important clues or items while also improving the lives of those you interact with. Anyone done anything similar to that before?

Personally I feel like the biggest hurdle to haggling in games is player motivation. The reason people haggle in the real world just aren't reasons that players bring with them to the game.

A bit different, but one of the best multiplayer economy simulators I've played is a game called Eco. The premise is that a meteor will be hitting the world in 30 (real world) days, and you and everyone else on the server must build and advance to make a way to destroy it. However, every player must specialize, and you can't do everything. A miner can crush stones that a Mason or Engineer will need, a Stonecutter can create materials an Engineer needs to make roads, a Farmer can grow food for Cooks, and textile materials for Weavers. Hunters sell carcasses to Butchers who will make materials other players need, and it goes on and on. So, how do materials move from person to person? Most servers form an economy, with currencies based on a resource or fiat, and the game quickly becomes an economy simulator, with players buying the materials they need, so they can sell the materials and products they make. Many players get so focused on making money that they completely forget about the meteor.

Something I noticed, in the few games where haggling and negotiation are fleshed out mechanics, they all seem to be turn-based/not real time games. Instant reaction means nothing when the game is essentially paused waiting for you to act. I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but I had the idea of what is essentially a fighting game centred around debating. Instead of trying to get something from your opponent, or even convince them, you're trying to sway a crowd; and the makeup of that crowd would strongly influence which tactics work best, with different combos representing different argument styles. A crowd full of the general public might be convinced by you shouting over your opponent and calling them a loser, essentially button mashing your way to victory as fast as you can, while a crowd full of academics would be best convinced by you leading your opponent into making fallacious arguments. The part where instant reaction would matter, however, is that if you notice your opponent make an obvious mistake you could let them talk even in front of a crowd that reacts well to you shouting over them; or if your opponent starts to make a really good point that destroys your whole argument, you could talk over them and try to shut it down even if the crowd won't like the breach of conduct. Furthermore, you could mix varying amounts and varying levels of education among the people in the crowd. Shouting might convince 60%, but the rest just think you're making a fool of yourself; or a well-reasoned argument might just go over the head of 30% of the audience. I think it could be a fun concept, but I dunno might be a disaster and not fun. I certainly don't have the skill to try to make it.

My eyes went wide when I saw the book and knew that some really grounded and quality content will follow, one of the books through which we were taught negotiating in law school was getting to yes and that along with the accompanying video, changed how i look at the art and changed the way i approached negotiation competitions.

Potionomics looks so appealing, predominantly because of the artstyle. I'm definitely going to check it out

Such an eye opener. Haggling is something I've never given much thought, but this video shows just how much depth it has. Also, not sure if it was the videos intention, but I'll be picking up Potionomics when it's released! Amazing content man

In Recettear, you also have to deal with the adventurers that come in with good gear trying to by something weaker. To not override the good stuff, you have to overprice something so high it makes them walk away even when it breaks your combo.

I think this is a pretty good view on haggling in games, but there are some games I remember seeing or playing games that were centered around you as a customer knowing the base/normal price and getting your way out of paying a lot. If this wasn't in the vid, it could be worth a mention, or a comparison as to how it affects gameplay.

In games with haggling they could add an invisible scammer/altruist meter unseen by the player. The more it leans toward one side the more likely the customer is to drive the price lower or higher.

StarSector was the game that made me enjoy haggling the most, since it interacted with so many other game mechanics at the same time. I've made an entire planet starve and destroyed shipments of goods just to sell it all on the black market and earn a crazy amount

It's also interesting to further develop the currencies the player trades in. You can add a lot of gameplay and worldbuilding elements to it. You can devalue your players money if the new area they enter have the merchants no longer accept the coin they have. Maybe the currency is a gameplay commodity like ammo or healing items. What does the currency say about the area, factions and people who use certain currencies? Where does the currency derive its value from? If its paper money, what imagery is printed onto it? Why is it used somewhere and not somewhere else? Does using it have ethical/moral or even narrative complications? This can enrich the trading experience in a lot of ways, even in the more simple trading systems.

One of the earliest video game examples of haggling would be in Starflight 2, which came out all the way back in 1989. There was an art to working out just how far you could push before you angered those you were trading with. Knowing what goods each race wanted to buy/sell would allow you to essentially build up a trade route to buy and sell commodities while also exploring and completing the storyline.

When life gives you lemons...you make lemonade. The first game, that I remember, which had a heavy focus on haggling was Lemonade Tycoon 2. Sweet (or sour) memories.

With principled bargaining, the other party wants to achieve something a certain way, so you have to provide them with a new _method_ to get what they want. I think some cool ways you could use this in games could be like offering an inferior product if you're charging more for the one they want than they're willing to pay (like a professional tool vs hobbyist tool) or maybe offering the item they want for a reduced price but only in bulk or paired with another item you're trying to sell.

My favorite thing about Recettears haggling is the push pull mechanical incentives that change throughout the sales day. In Recettears sales period you have 3 major mechanical goals, Increase your shopkeeper exp through chain sale bonuses and getting the price close to exactly what the customer wanted to pay, increase the invisible wallet level of various townsfolk who will be willing to buy more expensive items from your store if they have previously spent enough total money, and earning money so you can stock better items upgrade the store and avoid losing. As an experienced player these three goals can shift in importance dramatically based on visual information of who walks into your store and outside pressures like the debt payment coming at the end of the week. For example if the scammer is in your store you need to decide if it's worth going for safe low value sales to get exp and buy her super inflated item to keep the streak going or haggle more aggressively to maximise profit and sacrifice any chain sale exp. There are a ton of interesting scenarios that you can run into in Recettear like this when trying to optimize this part of the game in normal play which is incredible considering how rare it is for there to even be mechanical depth for this element of a game.

Please list the games you've mentioned in the video. I would love to try two of them. I remember playing Recettear a long time ago, and it is rather rare to see this mechanic explored that well

I am quite fond of the haggling mechanic in TES Oblivion. The actual slider itself was simple, and the mini-game was hit or miss, but the way it was integrated into the rest of the game was surprisingly deep. You could get better prices on the spot, but you could also influence prices through normal gameplay. Your interactions with the shop keep, their faction, your choices in quests, and your skill selections all influence your ability to get better prices even when those choices are far removed from the current situation. Such a pity the mechanic didn't carry forward.

Hmm, would be nice to have some kind of game where you're not only playing as a merchant, but also the people you interact with, like Recettear. So you might have one segment where you're the merchant landing a sweet, high price for an item, and then have to play the person you upsold the item to having to deal with not having enough money for other things. Heck, maybe some people would be good at haggling and others would be bad at it and you'd feel how unfair it might be to be taken advantage of by everyone. Would definitely teach some empathy rather than "capitalism is good" mentality ;).

The algorithm has brought me here a year late! Damn! I have always wanted a merchant / pawn shop game based around haggling with people. Some game have gotten some elements much closer than others. Oblivion has a whole emotion wheel system which, while clunky, does make haggling with merchants a puzzle rather than slowly lowering a bar slider and pressing Enter multiple times. There are also games like Recetear (I'm sure I spelt that wrong) where your a merchant who has to find the maximum price people are willing to pay for your goods; but most often once you find the magic number you can just forget about it until you find a new item to sell

I remember there was some haggling elements in Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland for the Nintendo DS. I don't remember how it worked exactly - it probably wasn't very sophisticated or nuanced, but it was one of the only times I saw this kind of mechanic in a game myself. Rosy Rupeeland is interesting because it's a game where you literally have only one stat: your money. You make progress in the story by dumping enough money into a fountain, and you can hire more expensive bodygaurds to increase your attack power (since Tingle is not much of a fighter himself). And when your money reaches zero, you die, meaning it's also your HP. ...Weird but interesting game. Not sure how relevant it is to this discussion though, but it does have some .kind of haggling system in place.

I bet it has something to do with potion craft

Yo man, you've gone and made a video on a game mechanic and blown it up to an incredible level and I love it! Not only are you going to improve an entire little genre, these kinda games some of my guiltiest pleasures, but I hope you're gonna go on and improve alot of people's general mindset and well-being. You seem incredibly intelligent and have briefly touched on topics that people have issues with and the world would benefit from us all getting better at, like talking together as adults rather than it immediately turning into a shit flinging contest, or the principals of bargaining and how a slight perspective shift can turn what could've been an argument into a well resolved and amicable situation. Wishing you all the best and more mate, keep it up! :D

I love the editing ;)) it’s looks professional and good

any kind of bargaining or haggling can be implemented with a set of rules based on personal values, market economy and much more. you may want at least two things affecting the rules or the game get boring fast. this video got some of the answers in it.

Well, you can tie different mechanics into one system, that will decide character's opinion in you, and from there you can have good basis for haggling, negotiating, and so on.

Something that would be really cool to add to a haggling game would be the concept of returning customers. It would change the dynamic of letting cheaper deals slide by in hopes of establishing kinship to get better deals later on. Or maybe what happens on the other hand is because of the supply and demand mechanic mentioned you are forced to decide between using a harder choice vs a softer because you really need to make back your money on this merchandise but you also don't want to ruin your relationship with a good customer. In essence in could bring in that social aspect found in trading mechanics between players in games like MMOs. In short make a Sims like stat sheet for customers where some are dynamic through how you interact with them while others are static (such as community influence to get others into your shop). Bargaining is inherently social so one should try to incorporate social mechanics within these games.

As someone who loves that game: DwarfFortress has also a very interesting Haggling system. It's only a part of thr game and you can play without it but using it is in some maps "needed" (i.e. wood). It is, like everything in that game, very entangled into other mechanics, but that is what i love about the haggeling in that game - you can't really powerplay it. Mechanics that are supposed to be there (some are hard to prove for me): - There is no money. There is an economy and value but you have to trade with objects of completely different values. - values are not fixed. There are stats for every dwarf(can be 200 or more) that determines the value of objects, if s/he is the broker. - willingness to trade is different. There are stats that lets you see how willing the trader is and not every trader is equally willing. - you can ask for goods for next year (priority->price up) and the trader has items for which he's willing to pay more. - there is a social system, i don't understand - there are mandates on goods from your nobel (i.e. mayor) - you have to run an entire fortress - every traders is seasonally - different traders, different items I'm not good at that game and there is plenty of stuff I don't know, but this is what came to my mind. It's really not a Haggeling-game and you are not supposed to be a merchant.

I think one of the most important things to manage in a haggling situation is the power dynamic created by what the buyer knows or doesnt know about the seller their product and its supply chain. Regardless of individual reasons for the purchase, the seller has something the buyer wants and the option to bargain leaves the buyer with sets of confounds that only the seller knows the specific values to (wholesale purchase price, required margins to break even, overall market availablity, present stock, desire to clear storage space, etc). As a buyer the first challenge is determining the specific confound values and employing that knowledge as leverage, and the second is implying to the seller that you can see through their pitch enough for them to capitulate without turning them off of the transaction entirely and having them dig in their heels with a price higher than your desired one. As a zero-sum seller the goal is to remain as opaque as possible regarding those confounds while coming across as helpful, informative, inspiring, and most of all transparent. It is largely the play of this power dynamic that brings up the ethical questions around haggling in the first place, and what makes the whole concept of haggling a compelling one (as well as the sweet sweet cash lol), and the underrepresentation of it being why haggling in games feels mechanical and lacking. Power balance is the x-factor which lets either side feel like they came out on top and swell with pride at fleecing someone

Don’t worry I’m working on this type of game.

A childhood memory of popped up of the game Street Rod, from 1989. You had to look up cars and parts in the newspaper, call the owner, and negotiate a price, but if you went too low, they'd be insulted and you'd miss out on that deal. The same mechanic was also used the other way around, where you'd sell your old stuff in a similar manner.

haggling should have a happiness (?) meter, wich s increased when their given good deals / free products, making them willing to spend more, however, making them unlikely to immediately offer loads

And this is why traders of Genoa is one of the most underrated board games of all time. Every component that you have in the game can be traded. The contract negotiations in games such as Championship Manger and Out of the Park are key elements of the long term gameplay. As well as the pure cash elements there is the element of how key is that player to your team and how much will they get played. Also elements such as, buying a player from a rival team is more difficult than attracting a player that is out of contract. I always go hunting for players that are nearing the end of their contracts and have have not renewed their contract with their current team, it creates an interesting search for hidden 'gold' in the game.

Great video. The whole time I was thinking about a game in the context of the first episode (episode 0) of an anime called Kado: The Right Answer. Rather than negotiating himself, he is an in-between that attempts to turn all negotiations into principal bargaining. D&D came to mind as well, where it's much easier to complicate negotiations with creative solutions and relationships that will matter in the long term, as there are always two humans there. I wonder how a game built around playing as an in-between could go, where you balance relationships and many variables among a community to create as many win-win scenarios as possible.

In Endless Space 2, the diplomatic encounters follow a kind of haggling to either gain the favour of another empire or put pressure on them. The interesting part is that, instead of fighting for a single item's value, it is instead an exchange of different offers and resources. For example, you could offer money, some kind of luxury resources, antimatter, troops, and an open borders offer in exchange for other luxury resources, visibility of the part of the map they discovered, and so on. Depending on the personality of the other empire and their current situation, they will be more or less appealed by each of the offers in the mix. This brings multiple dimensions to the haggle, bringing it closer to "Principled Haggling", but the actual implementation in ES2 is not the best that could be done with it.

The thing is, I've created the basic design for a game with this core mechanic. I even got as far as starting on a paper prototype. It was only when I was making a list of all the options that would need to be available - all the sliders, check-boxes, and interlocking systems of values unique to different NPCs depending on their goals - that I realized the real challenge. The hard part isn't creating the interlocking systems. The hard part is communicating them to the player in a way that is easy to read but also doesn't make the optimal solution obvious. There's a very narrow window to aim for, where the experience of negotiating isn't frustrating but also isn't trivially easy. Trivially easy isn't a problem when it's a secondary or tertiary mechanic, but as the core driving force of the game there needs to be some more challenge to it. What I landed on was that it would need to be a game of balancing multiple demands. Similar to how Papers Please makes to decide between your own safety and the safety of others, there would need to be multiple characters who all want different things out of the negotiations. Effectively, this means you can't have a single "currency." You need to have multiple tokens circling around, and more people trying to get those tokens than there are things to go around. Optimization is still possible, trading and calling in favors in order to introduce more tokens into the system, but I think the game becomes too trivial if it becomes a question of pure optimization. There needs to be a degree of decision on the player's part, choosing what they consider to be valuable and helping out the characters who they think need or deserve the assistance the most.

Liking the video before it even premieres! Booyah! Game designer algomoment!

The two mechanics I want to see done well are actually secrecy and haggling so the fact that this is a whole video about haggling is amazing. Also bringing up Griftlands... Love that game.

agreed, 100%. Trade is always a feature I love in games, be it strategy or adventure, as it adds an interesting dynamic which allows players to be really good at what they do and be rewarded for it in a non XP way. It's like a small aspect of Economics represented in a fictional world, which I'd love to see more of. I've always found being the Merchant or Trader more fun than the Knight or Rambo.

I’ve been working on a text-based game and I hadn’t considered adding a haggling system and after this video I realized that it would fit in sooo much. I still need to code and test a few more basic systems like inventories and relationships but this got me excited to get them done so I can start figuring out the haggling system.

Principaled negotiation is also referred to as "win-win" negotiation. When having disputes, there's a method called "non-violent communication" which also uses this type of negotiation. It talks about finding out the person's needs rather than listening to what they're upset about. Eventually, you can solve a dispute in the same way you showed with the window.

one way i think to end a haggling game is giving a motivation behind why are you selling stuff, like if for example you are selling stuff for paying a loan then the end should be having enough money for paying that loan comfortably, basically put a goal to the game, and to make it no so linear the game you could add random negative and positive effects, like people robbing you or winning a lotery

Glad you mentioned No Umbrellas Allowed! I loved the depth of the price negotiation mechanic.

The first in-game negotiations I recall was in the original Theme Park (1994). You had to negotiate staff pay rises and stock purchases, animated via a bar with a hand on each side - one being yours. You could extend your reach to meet the demands of the other party, or retract to avoid. They'd be able to move just the same. Both hands had to meet to create a decision. And if you didn't reach agreement within about 30 seconds, then the negotiation fails and you've got more consequences like staff strikes or supply shortages.

A game where you, the merchant, gamble with your customers and abuse the principal of "the house always wins" to make a net profit.

Frankly, when it comes to Haggling, my preference is that it's NOT in the game to begin with. And if it has to be inside, make it a simple as possible.

I am gonna have a hard time explaining this since English is not my first language but I'll try I think the main reason why principled bargaining is hard to implement in games is due to the way we interact with the game and how the game interact with us here's an example let's say we play as weapon merchant in a fantasy middle ages (I know it's generic) and we want to start trading on land ruled by a noble but the noble imposes a heavy tax on trading merchants here the game would have to provide all the available options in this scenario like making a contract with the noble to not sell weapons to other rival nobles in exchange for not having to pay the tax or committing tax aviation through bribery or threat or selling the weapons through an illegal black market or you can just not sell weapons in this noble's land but the problem is due to high trading taxes in this noble's land there's virtually no competition and it's easier to start while in other lands are filled with aspiring merchants with heavy competition that makes becoming successful incredibly hard as you have to worry about your relationships with other merchants especially those with deep pockets which will force you to not be able so sell the merchandise that they are selling limiting your options and you also have to worry about sabotage form other merchants and these are only the options i can think in top of my head god knows how many options are there that I haven't thought of a game developer would have to account for all these options and variables while taking into account every action that the player can take in order to include principled bargaining in their game and that's just scratching the surface.

Was not expecting a scrambled egg to pop off at 7:29 when I started this video but I’m happy it happened.

oh, this is fascinating! i don't remember what i was trying to find when i found this video -- moral choice, agency, and unspoken designer-player promises in video games, i think? i'm glad the thumbnail caught my eye because i love it, thank you for the crash course on this bargaining triumvirate, and for exposing me to potionomics' system in particular! very, very cool stuff. instant subscribe :)

I always find video premieres kinda crappy. It's cool that you get a live event out of it, but the FOMO is real. All too frequently a premiere is out of my availability schedule and I feel like I'm missing out. When normally, a video goes up while I'm not looking and I simply see and watch it whenever I next check RU-vid, considerably less anticipation and anxiety.

you can add reputation or "multiple ending choice" to certain NPC. (regular NPC and unique NPC) a little kid stealing/scamming for food? people ask you to buy useless item high price? its not always about money or profit, you should make the NPC become more important! if you only go for profit it will become bored fast, but if you make unique NPC and the profit is secondary, you can make it interesting! i played lemonade tycoon long long ago, and after you got that money to the end game you didn feel anything. but if you make randomized event, tragedy, npc, crisis, or something. even it randomized player can feels entertained.

the one minute of your video dedicated to principled bargaining made me spend 90 minutes writing about the ideas that spun off of that original one minute in this video Great job. Not many people can make me write and make 90 minutes go by in what feels like 15.

I'm listening to this, and it sounds like, with regards to the shopkeeper-style games, all the transactions are for non-perishable items. Imagine how much more stimulating a game could be with a mix of perishable and non-perishable wares.

so glad you got a developer of potionomics on this video I loved every second of that game

As someone with a business degree and a masters in economics id love to play more of these especially potionomics would definitely be fun to play things or see how real world tactics work in the game

The animations in Potionomics are so good they are out of this world.

I feel like you should have included that one starving artist game where one French dude tries to sell art and when he gets an offer he can haggle to make it higher so he gets more proffit or the customer just leaves if its too high.

I'm not a great programmer, but I am a business student. AND, actually, not that hard to program negotiations with NPCs. Everything can be settled with a couple parameters and some basic functions. The most important thing is just establishing a general offer-demand function for each tradable object or type of good (FOR EXAMPLE: you don't even need a personalised curve if you have a system to establish rarity; you then can cross that with a new category like "desirable", to create new more specific ones, and establish the same curve for each category. At that point you can create more sub-categories, like based on the average volume traded to better adjust the price-quantity relation, while still not having to be overly specific and making one for each product, since in game items tend to be in the hundreds). After having a "market" offer-demand curve attached to each product, which is the only big hassle, everything is just intuitive. You don't need go make it overly complicated to be a solid negotiation system, you don't even need a curve for each npc, for their relationship with each product. With the curve for each product, you can simply make that curve automatically change. The good thing about making it a offer or demand curve is that they are very very simple. All variables are translated in simply how much the quantities are valued. If it's rare, needed, good quality... can all be established as: I'll pay x for y quantity or I'll buy x quantity for y price. And changes on the external variables don't even change the curve itself. Only slides it to the right or to the left. So if suddenly it's winter and everyone wants sunflower seeds, but the stock is running low, I don't need to change the curve, I can just slide it to the left (I am willing to pay more for lower quantities). I don't need to tweak anything. So apply that principle to everything. Establish a rate to wich the market curve moves to the left and to the right, rising and lowering prices for the same quantities, for each NPC based on their Preferences Need for the product Quality Shortage of stock ... Each NPC having different rates at which each of those parameters affect their curves of desire and, so, curve of demand. Do the same for the curve of their offers: Shortage of stock Need to get rid of stock Costs of production Even how much they like you (when there are such in-game mechanics) ... Now you have a curve for each product, that adapts to each NPC, so everything is almost automatic: If you offer under the personal curve of demand, you always sell. If you offer above, they will ask you for more quantity or to lower the price. Then they can haggle with you (since you can't see their personal curves and know only the market value, that is probably always constant, it will always be a challenge to pin point the perfect quantity and price that will leave both the most satisfied). Then, to make it more realistic, you make the curve more or less elastic, meaning the vendor or buyer is more or less flexible with the price and at what point they just refuse your trade altogether since it is not advantageous for them. See? It's not that hard. - Give a curve to each product - Make it adapt to each NPC (so you have some who buy under market prices, others who sometimes are willing to buy above) - Make the curve more or less elastic - Let the games begin

For reference, the video at 15:04 with the physics based coin bag that coins can fall out of when it gets full is Kingdom, I *think,* it's been a long time. The coins fall down into the water at the bottom of the screen and make a splash, which is a very imaginative way of blending the UI and the world it's nominally superimposed over. Kingdom's now called Kingdom Classic, there's a more recent game Kingdom: Two Crowns, but I've not played it, so don't know whether that's still a thing.

The thing about haggling games that I would like to see are negotiations that may not end with 1 interaction, the opportunity of further negotiations be opened depending on how you talk and interact with them Maybe you're unsure how to convince the customer but the customer is not decisive so if you make some good decisions you can have them come later with additional info when you have additional info on the subject too, to negotiate further, showcasing the importance of negotiations.

maybe for the alternate system it could be treated like investigation in other contexts. Have a dialogue system where you can point out things they're wearing or comments they make to ask them about it and/or make suggestions that get to the root of what they're looking for. Like maybe a character wearing a school uniform is asking for writing supplies, and you can recommend products that are especially useful to students

17:31 This part just made me want to watch an entire video of players attacking shop keepers. For some reason I find this so much fun in games.

Kenshi can be a game about being a wandering trader. It is a hidden gem, so try it if you're curious.

Im personally not a big fan of haggling in general, and find its role in video games to be rather niche. The best example of it that comes to my mind is a now old MMORPG where you could befriend NPCs, and If that NPC was a merchant, you could get discount on their wares and services If they liked you. Befriending them could be done by offering them gifts they like, completing personal quests they'd give you or saying nice things to them when talking. What I liked about it wasn't the "haggling" but simply interacting with the NPCs on a deeper level, being rewarded for getting to know them better

i feel like one of the most underrated mechanics withing games is music, mainly music you come across, my two favorites being mine craft and harvest moon AWL. there's something special about coming across a tune, whether accidentally or on purpose, it makes listening to the music more rewarding

There is so much potential in here. I mostly work on board games and my few games with trading mechanics are entirely dependent on the players but I am still interested in trading in video games. Way back in the days of Starflight 2, I got introduced to ideas of haggling based on lots of factors. I also remember playing Taloon in Dragon Quest IV a few years later; though his haggling mechanics were much simpler. I would be interested in seeing more complex haggling in narrative games. In Starflight 2, you had to consider not only the rarity of an object but the rarity in the local star system. Trading partners had objects they were especially interested in and classes of objects they preferred. You could take Friendly, Hostile, or Obsequious posture in communications and different groups would respond differently based on your negotiating posture. If you pushed too far on an object, the merchant might reject buying or selling it and, if you pushed too hard on multiple items, they might cut off trade completely. If not for an impending crisis, you could spend an indefinite amount of time in that game just setting up and optimizing trade routes. Building off some of those ideas, I would be interested in having characters attitudes evolve with your trading history. Unscrupulous characters might push to take advantage of you if you give them a good deal. Other characters might give you better deals if you trade kindly with them but it could have diminishing returns. Some characters may start ignorant of pricing and change their opinion of you later if they realize you previously cheated them. I like the idea of giving the player lots of information. Give them a base price and let them pull up their history with the various NPCs. Tell them the last price they traded for a given good with a comparison to the baseline price. You could include regional variances on pricing and then have players run into an NPCs they previously traded with in other areas. Then players could be faced with the question of charging them what the player would normally charge where that NPC is from of negotiate based on the local baseline. You could let players learn about various NPCs from conversations with other people. Players could choose to go in blind or gather intel before trading. Players could also use details they learned to unlock dialog options with traders that might influence price or even the availability of stock. They could convince a merchant they are ready for high-end goods or unlock contraband. For me, I would prefer to never fully lock out an NPC trader due to bad negotiating. It might take a while and some big gestures to win them over but I would hate to have a game become unplayable due to a series of rookie mistakes or a cat jumping on a keyboard. Losing access to something due to story events is a different issue. Also, unless the game is really about trading and haggling, I would hope that players could mostly get by with just buying and selling at or near base values.

At my school (DigiPen) there is an entire class on this subject, although it applies to economies outside the standard monetary form- more like treating everything as a currency and economy, and it goes really deep into this issue. It’s a cool topic with a lot of unexpected twists and turns.

I'm in the conceptualization phase of a future project, and Negotiation was a factor that i didn't thought about and will fit perfectly in the game core aspects. Thank you very much!

An idea just came to my mind for connecting haggling and quests. You know how quests in RPGs just give you an item as a reward or lets you choose from a set of items. Why not flip the order? I have these things on me but I don't want money for them: I give you this shield if you bring me a certain potion (you can buy, craft, or loot it), or I give you this helmet if you hunt the werewolf that's killing my cattle.

Haggeling is one of many merchant mechanic I often think about when playing games, so I really enjoyed this. My entrance to the topic began with three games; that being Fable: The Lost Chapter, Oblivion and Fallout. In Fable: The Lost Chapter there wasn't haggling, but there was a stat that affected your trading and it introduced me to the economic theory of supply and demand. In the original game if a merchant was short on stock (deficit) for an item then they were willing to pay more for the item than it's value. Similarly, if a merchant had too much of an item (surplus) they'd sell it for less than it's value. If you're following then you know how to cheese the system by over selling to create a surplus to buy back at then sell the surplus at a deficit price and repeat for infinite money. This got me thinking about ways to fix this exploit. The two solutions I theorized were either to come up with a way to alter the value overtime, or create a break in the trading process that would only exchange the for the difference in the deficit amount for the deficit price then the rest at the surplus price. These are the variables I'd likely use for calculating such a system. X = Amount being traded Y = Vender's current inventory V = Value I = Vender's inventory capacity D = Deficit rate S = Surplus rate The second game, that actually introduced me to haggeling, was Oblivion. It was crued and they same tug of war slider system you discussed, but it has a disposition variable that I enjoyed, but not so much the minigame it came with. I later went of to look for both disposition, and supply and demand mechanics for trading mods in Skyrim. Quick note about one of the few good merchant mechanics in Skyrim is that you can't just trade anything to everyone. Merchants will only deal wth items they normally trade in unless you are a skilled enough merchant with the ability to trade anything to any merchant. Merchants also had a limited amount of money, which is immportant to consider when trading. Finally, there was Fallout. A game featuring bartering, where you could trade items of relative value with or without money. This is something that I wish more fantasy games would implement becuase bartering was historically more common than mercantilism. So for a foundation of a trading system based on these principles I'd say that a merchant system would need traders with individual dispositions towards the player that can change with interaction and influence price, specific types of items they deal in (maybe even losing disposition if having to deal outside of these types of items), and a simulation of economic pressures (such as surplus and deficit). Something like this would use the same variables as above but add the new variable for Disposition (let's say R) and would affect the the Value (V). With selling under this maximum buying price yeilding better disposition. I'd also give the merchants a limited amount of money to force the player to consider what they're trading. Unfortunately, I can't seem to formulate the formula off the top of my head. Probable something similar to this though: NPC Maximum Buying Price = ((I - Y) * (V * R) * D) + ((X - I) * (V * R) * S) The two blatant problems are that X isn't accounted for on the Deficit rate side of the formula, and the (X - I) part of the surplus side needs to equal 0 if X is negative. So (I - Y) and (X - I) are incomplete. Then you need three more formulas for these trading interactions. 1) NPC Minimum Selling Price. 2} Disposition from under selling. 3) Disposition for over paying.

Very interesting subject to think about. Unforunately I think it'll be hard to implement it in a fun way for games. I remember playing Recette a long time ago but never did 'finish' it, but I remember recognizing the upper limit of what different customers are willing to pay. Then I'll just straight up sell the item they want at +% market price of what they want, which essentially means I'm not negotiating for price anymore since I already know their limits. To make it work, I feel this limit has to change as the game progress as well, with information you can obtain through different activities, e.g. disease in the town, people are willing to pay higher price for medicines. Basically variables to shake things up, but in a way that's fun.

I'm scratching together a game based on establishing trade routes from scratch, and this is so good! It's somewhat based on a casual collection game I once played, but this address a narrative mechanic that would do really well 😊💚👌 I think the "opening a window in the other room" example really did it for me. Reminds me a lot of zen mini stories of unexpected solutions. Recontextualization examples like that are gold, I would love to hear more !

this video inspired me to see ow chat GPT could handle haggling, as the results were interesting. I think haggling is another game mechanic that chatGPT could really improve. The prompt i used was "i want you to choose a random product. keep the cost of that product to yourself. tell me what the product is and describe it to me. try to sell it to me for as much profit as possible. i will try to haggle"

"Moody weirdo" is the perfect description of Quinn. Made me chuckle. Especially as it relates to the thematic aspect of how a person you interact with affects the way you interact with others. After hanging with Quinn, you get to be more of a moody weirdo to people. There's something really amusing to me about that.

i think the best haggling mechanic was in Kingdome come deliverance, as the action is often influenced by what you're wearing if you're dirty or are you covered in liters of blood

Learning that you write for extra credits made just how good your videos are WAY more understandable. I kept thinking that you've been around for like years already despite making your first video on this channel 6 months ago. Turns out I was kind of correct on that one.

Oh, Potionomics looks great, I love the style of art and animation and I do appreciate a soft haggling system

Great video, ingame economy always intrigue me and this is one of the mechanic I never pay too much attention to

I remember haggling being a big part of trading in the old Oregon Trail 4th edition game and if you tried to haggle too much, they would get frustrated after a certain point and start to raise their prices.

It is interesting that procedural quest can be develop from Principled Bargaining to solve clients problem.

Damn, the character design on that Potionomics game is so cool

This is an amazing video! I have never before thought about haggling in video games, but after watching your video I really hope that some of the suggestions you made get implemented in future video games, plus I got pretty interested in the games you showed, might as well try some of them out. I can only imagine all the work that went into making this video, you did an amazing job!

I think if a simple Practical Bargaining System were to be implemented, it could have some basic repeatable tasks or a quest depending on the person or their personality. For an example, say in Oblivion, let’s say you want a really expensive piece of equipment, but don’t have the nearly enough coin, using Speechcraft you can figure out the merchant has their supplies being harassed by bandits or is running low on certain supplies, thus you can offer to assist their problems (or effectively do a radiant quest) and then they will give you a heavy discount for the item.

If you want to haggle there was a mobile game called Alchemica: Crafting rpg.. You collect and make stuff and then sell them at your store and you have to negotiate with the customers for higher prices. You can also haggle to get cheaper prices for items. You fight monsters, collect herbs and recipes, talk to ppl and try to find someone (spoiler). It's a pixel game and the battle mechanic feels like pokemon.. Never completed it though.

There was a game for the Nintendo DS called "Die Gilde", I think just "Guild" in english. There, you could haggle down the price by playing a minigame with scales. I remember it being really enjoyable

The haggling system could be even more interesting if your have to bargain with magical entity so that you can use magic. It's not the value of numbers go high or low, it's that you have to make a deal with those entities, and the contract's wording will effect how the certain entity will act and how the enemy will respond. Then haggling will at least be more dynamic than just tell a number as result of haggling.

I once wrote a paper about trading/haggling in PvP game where there can only be one winner. Like settlers of catan. In short: Never trade in such a game.

Has anyone here ever heard about a GBA game called "Sea Trader:Rise of Taipan? It's all about buying and selling a seafaring merchant. There's fights against pirate ships trading cannon blows, but it's mostly buying and selling.

I've actually been trying to come up with a set of social mechanics for a Tabletop RPG so this was extremely interesting. It also validates the approach that I'm taking, having the difficulty of any given task be based on things like your reputation with the NPC, what the NPC's goals are, and whether they're an emotional or analytical thinker (as defined by their stats.) Having the system not be a binary pass/fail and allowing each side to wear the other down (similar to how combat normally works) is also a goal. Though I admit, I hadn't taken into account the idea of someone just losing patience and ending the discussion. Back to the drawing board I guess!

Honestly these videos are great. Game design and mechanics are so interesting.

Funeral Quest! Best old game about selling the most expensive coffin to deceased relatives.

I'm surprised Dwarf Fortress wasn't mentioned. Because DF is systematic, it can go even more open ended than other games, implementing trade barter without even involving money at all. ie nothing has a hard-coded value to play with, it's all procedural based on the hidden stats for each civilization. Since the world was simulated as it was created, nearby civilizations have their own wants and needs, which are only surfaced if you train the right skills in your dwarves. But you can trade even knowing nothing about your neighbors, because traders still know what they value. *And* if they're happy with a trade, they'll let you know what their people will be in need of next season, so you can prepare for them and get better deals. I think it's the only game involving barter that successfully gives you that real-world feeling of "Oh, I know this person values something more than another thing, but I don't really know what those are or how much of those things makes sense as a fair trade for what *I* want..."

For me the rare game mechanic is strapping a guy or anyone character in game with a bomb and force them to run 800 meters forward while getting suppressed at the same time, and hoping that it blows up on the enemy side.

This channel costs me so much money because he just keeps introducing really cool games I want to play