Every now and again, I manage to play games, sometimes even play new ones, sometimes even good ones! And when I do, there’s often one mechanism that just sticks with me, a mechanism that I think about in the shower, in the car, in front of the fridge… This is what the SISIGIP series is about: Stuff I’d Steal in Games I Play.

A lot of games have dynamic markets, where an asset’s cost changes over the course of play: many games feature a card river, where a card’s cost decreases the longer it stays in the market; in Rococo, the cost is based on how many choices are available; in Jorvik, a card costs 1$ per player in line to buy it.

These mechanisms take the decision of “do I buy X?” and make it into the much more interesting “do I buy X now, at this price?” That comes with a certain amount of push-your-luck, and the variable amounts helps balance each asset to a group’s particular meta, keeping things fresh and pushing players to vary their paths from game to game. Whether the game is entirely built around that dynamic market, like Jorvik or Spyrium, or if it’s a secondary mechanism, dynamic markets are great.

Rival Networks goes in a different direction: its market is static, but the money itself is dynamic.

Rival Networks is a 2p game about running a TV station. The game is centered around building TV shows in each of three timeslots, scoring them for majority at the end of a round. Instead of money tokens, Rival Networks gives you Ad cards, which have two values: a basic value, and a higher one if you, when you use it, hold the majority in its stated timeslot.

What it does well (and less well)

The Ad mechanism offers a similar core decision as a dynamic cost would: it adds a timing, push-your-luck element to buying cards. Instead of “maybe the price will go down…”, you think “oh, maybe I can take the morning majority this turn and buy it the next”. The main difference is that it gives agency over the change in value, rather than something that just happens to you.

The Ad mechanism also gives you a first level strategy, which in and of itself is valuable (LINK). That pulls double duty in a majority game, where early turns can feel meaningless as you are more likely to get passed before scoring happens. The Ad mechanism makes you focus on one specific timeslot and gives you a reason to go for it early.

The one thing where it falls short of a card river is the balancing. Some groups who play Yokohama repeatedly will develop their own meta, and if they decide that University is an overpowered technology, they’ll pay the big bucks and get it as soon as it shows up. Similarly, the river might push players to take a card they wouldn’t usually go for, just because it’s dirt cheap. Rival Networks doesn’t have that: if you and your opponent play the game repeatedly and decide that Auditions is an OP card and Spinoffs is worthless, you won’t get nudged away from that.

How I would use it

Despite that weakness, I think that the dynamic currency is an interesting twist on a card river. I can think of three uses:

The first idea is focused on minimizing that weakness by limiting the variety of assets you can buy with those. Rivals Networks uses it to buy special ability cards, which usually are high-variety assets that you want your players to explore. You could instead make the market a scoring system. Rather than scoring a majority after each round, a player can determine when they score by, say, spending a turn to buy point tokens for 10$ each. For an added twist, the point values go down, incentivizing you to snatch them early. Basically, we’re taking the first-level strategy perk of this mechanism and making it into the central scoring system. It also means you can avoid a round-based gameplay.

If you really want to do an upgrade market, something where you want players to dig into new territory over repeated plays, you can combine this mechanism with a little bit of a dynamic market: you don’t want to have both variable money and variable costs, which would be much too swingy and frustrating, but you can go the Puerto Rico way and add a small bonus to every unchosen card. Eventually, those bonuses pile up, the forgotten upgrade will get snatched up, and that player will feel good about getting 6 points with their upgrade, even if they missed out on their favourite card.

My third idea goes in a different direction. Rather than focus on what you buy, I’m thinking about changing how you buy those assets: specifically, I’m thinking of an auction. Let’s imagine a tile-laying game a la Carcassonne, where players take turns building out a landscape and claiming parts of it, with the cards in their hands giving them objectives to fulfill (for example, 1$, or 4$ if there are at least 3 lakes). You go around like that until a player calls an auction. Maybe we’re auctioning off a special ability, an extra placement, or a unique tile, it doesn’t matter. Suddenly, the question “do I buy X now?” takes a new meaning: will you spend a card at less than its full value to take the opportunity? When do you give up on the increased value? That, to me, feels like a different decision space worth exploring.

Conclusion

I hope my appreciation for this mechanism came through in this post. While not perfect, it is an interesting twist to all of the dynamic market mechanisms we see in many games, and one I hope we’ll see more often in the future.

Have you played another game with a similar mechanism? If you’re a game designer, how would you use it?