The Hidden Economics of Game Design
When you think of a sprawling fantasy city, you might picture bustling markets, towering spires, and a maze of streets that feel alive. In reality, the cost of creating that sense of depth can dwarf the expense of a single dungeon level. Josh Sawyer, a veteran designer at Obsidian Entertainment, has put a concrete figure to this intuition: “Compared to a dungeon, generally speaking, a town is 4 × the expense per square foot.” The implication is simple yet profound—building a town is a far more demanding endeavor than crafting a dungeon.
What Makes a Town Costlier?
At first glance, a dungeon seems like a more complex environment: multiple rooms, traps, enemies, and a need for tight pacing. However, a town introduces a different set of variables. Each square of a city must host not only architecture but also a host of interactive elements—shops, residences, guild halls, fountains, and the NPCs that inhabit them. Every building requires its own set of textures, models, and animations, and the surrounding streets must accommodate traffic, pedestrians, and environmental storytelling. This multiplicity of assets inflates the workload far beyond the relatively uniform corridors of a dungeon.
Zoning Laws: The Design Constraint That Drives Cost
When Sawyer muses, “It’s these freaking zoning laws, man,” he’s pointing to the internal rules that game designers impose to keep a level coherent. In RPGs, zoning laws dictate how buildings can be placed relative to one another, how space is allocated for different functions, and how the city’s layout supports navigation and narrative. These constraints mean that a designer can’t simply scatter structures haphazardly; each block must fit within a grid that balances visual variety with functional flow. The more rules a city has to obey, the more iterations a team must run to achieve a polished result.
From Concept to Code: The Asset Pipeline
Beyond the conceptual stage, the practical side of city building amplifies the cost. A dungeon can often be designed around a single set of modular assets—walls, floors, and a handful of enemy types. A town, however, demands a diverse palette: unique storefronts, varied NPC models, distinct environmental props, and a wide range of lighting setups to simulate day‑to‑night cycles. Each asset must be optimized for performance, which adds another layer of testing and refinement. In short, the asset pipeline for a city is a far more complex web than that of a dungeon.
Balancing Detail and Playability
Game designers constantly negotiate between visual fidelity and gameplay flow. In a dungeon, the focus is on combat pacing and puzzle design; in a town, the emphasis shifts to exploration, social interaction, and world immersion. Achieving this balance requires more extensive playtesting and iteration. For example, ensuring that NPCs populate streets in a believable rhythm, that shops appear in logical locations, and that the city’s layout encourages players to wander naturally—all these factors demand meticulous planning and additional resources.
Implications for Indie and AAA Studios
The cost differential highlighted by Sawyer has real-world implications for studios of all sizes. For indie developers, the expense of building a detailed city can be prohibitive, often leading to smaller, more focused towns or the use of procedural generation techniques. AAA studios, with larger budgets and more extensive art teams, can afford the depth that a sprawling city demands, but even they must manage the increased workload through careful project planning and efficient asset reuse.
Designing for Future Expansion
Many modern RPGs allow players to revisit towns after significant story progress, sometimes even expanding them. This means that designers must plan for future growth, adding new districts, updating existing structures, and integrating new quests. The upfront cost of creating a flexible, modular city framework can pay dividends later, but it also adds to the initial expense—a factor that designers like Sawyer recognize as a core part of the city‑building equation.
Final Thoughts
Josh Sawyer’s observation underscores a fundamental truth in RPG development: the complexity of a world’s design directly influences its cost. While dungeons can be crafted with a relatively small set of assets and
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