Designing a Crafting-based Economy for The Witcher 3 GDC Video

The GDC YouTube channel has published a GDC Europe 2015 talk given by CD Projekt RED’s Matthew Steinke, who talked about his work designing the game’s economy and crafting systems. Much of the talk focuses on Steinke’s “scientific” approach to economy balance and the tricks he used when designing an economy that resisted exploits, and his subsequent work on the crafting systems, which forced him to rebalance the entire economy.

There are some points that I believe are worthy of critique, like Steinke’s idea that making crafting components weightless would make the inventory system more confusing, but overall it’s an interesting talk, if nothing else because of the insight it gives into the game’s production: