| rdfs:comment
| - A small species of spider.
- Real world economics: money is a rare and desired commodity (or a stand-in for such a commodity). There is generally a semi-fixed amount of it, and if it is not "in circulation", it is at least somewhere that something intelligent and actively interested in that value put it, lost it, or abandoned it. Named for the spiders in the family Lynyphiidae, called "money spiders" in the UK from the superstition that they are associated with wealth. Ironically, these spiders are supposed to be left unharmed in order to become richer. Examples of Money Spider include:
|
| abstract
| - A small species of spider.
- Real world economics: money is a rare and desired commodity (or a stand-in for such a commodity). There is generally a semi-fixed amount of it, and if it is not "in circulation", it is at least somewhere that something intelligent and actively interested in that value put it, lost it, or abandoned it. Not so in videogames. For many game economies, wealth is apparently associated with dangerous creatures. To wit: if you can attack it and it is alive (in some sense) and/or able to theoretically attack in return, it probably has some actual currency which will become available upon its death. This will be true almost without regard for the creature's ability to carry money, its interest in money, or any connection with the existence of the money. On occasion, this is true regardless of whether it had money the first time. Occasionally, there will be an in-game Hand Wave saying that there's a bounty on the monsters you're fighting. However, unless there's a specific sub-quest requiring you to, say, slay twenty bears and bring back their asses, you will never be required to talk to a specific person or prove that you've killed the monsters in order to get the money. Vendor Trash is sometimes used as more realistic version - killing the monsters doesn't get you immediate money, but you can easily sell their teeth, hides, or feathers back in town. However, this eats up precious seconds of a player's time, in which time you might get bored and switch to another game. And we can't have that, now can we? Named for the spiders in the family Lynyphiidae, called "money spiders" in the UK from the superstition that they are associated with wealth. Ironically, these spiders are supposed to be left unharmed in order to become richer. While having a danger-based currency is rather plausible (for certain values of plausible) -- after all, currency stands for commodities (goods or services) or labor, and killing a dangerous creature is not only a useful service, especially in a monster-filled world, but can indeed be quite a bit of labor -- this has largely become a Discredited Trope, to the point that reviewers occasionally bash game developers for making monsters drop money. Parodied in a great number of video-game-based webcomics and other satire. Not to be confused with this. Nor this. For a specific enemy that you seek out because it carries a lot of money (or other reward), see Pinata Enemy, with tougher variants being Metal Slimes. For the general case of monsters dropping implausible items, see Impossible Item Drop. Note that even if a game uses this type of system, it may not mean that the monsters are actually dropping money. It could be that the monsters are dropping stuff like pelts, fangs, claws, whatever you'd expect, and the amount of "money" you claim is actually just what the drops are worth. In this case, purchasing items is less paying money for them, and more bartering your monster drops for them. It's just streamlined to you getting the money directly instead of having to sell the items either because the programmers don't think the players could handle it, or because the necessary level of micromanagement would detract from the fun for most players. Examples of Money Spider include:
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)