Soren Johnson, the creator of Civilization IV who was snapped up by Electronic Arts to work on Spore, has an intriguing article on videogame economies oringially published in Game Developer magazine, but now reprinted on his blog.

If you're a strategy geek (guilty!), it's a fascinating read. But even if you're not, consider this instance of demand-side economics applied to a shooter.

In 2006, Valve conducted an interesting economic experiment within Counter-Strike: Source, implementing a "Dynamic Weapon Pricing" algorithm. According to the developers, "the prices of weapons and equipment will be updated each week based on the global market demand for each item. As more people purchase a certain weapon, the price for that weapon will rise and other weapons will become less expensive." Unfortunately, the overwhelming popularity of certain weapons trumped the ability of the algorithm to balance the game. For example, while the very effective Desert Eagle skyrocketed to $16,000, the less useful Glock flatlined at $1.

Johnson's ultimate point is something many of us old-school gamers have feared all along: game design peaked back in 1983 when Dani Bunten made M.U.L.E.