Final Profit: A Shop RPG is a game about making profits to fend off financial predators, and just about anything in the game world can be brought into your business if you’re savvy enough to use it.
As part of our Road to the IGF series, Game Developer caught up with Brent Arnold, the game’s sole developer, to talk about the benefits and frustrating stigmas that come from making a game in RPG Maker, the importance of opening up every element of the game to be abused for the goal of maximum profits, and the moral questions that come from the game’s capitalistic goals.
Read the interview at Game Developer.
IMO Final profit is very careful about its narrative in that rather than depicting the player as an opposing force to capitalism, it places them within that system (as we all are) and then gives them a lot of rope to hang themselves with. It's game about drawing the player in and making them willingly complicit because exploitative behaviour DOES make things easier for them, because it DOES make them a lot of of money, and then every once in a while the game pivots from that comfortable and masking satirical mode and is like "you are literally ruining these people's lives" and it hits all the harder for it
And similarly, doing things right really does cost you! making public utilities free is maybe the single biggest profit loss you can induce on yourself in the game and genuinely makes certain lategame activities feel ARDUOUS, and as well it should. It says, up-front and unhesitatingly, helping people is something you do because it's the right thing to do and not because you're going to be rewarded in some other, conveniently mechanized way.
I was really impressed with the questions. They were great prompts that were specific to the game and made me feel seen, had me spending a few days pondering my responses. Very pleased with how it came together.
