History Main / AdamSmithHatesYourGuts

* ''VideoGame/{{SaGa}}'' series:

[[caption-width-right:299: [[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 "It costs $400,000]] to fire [[ICallItVera Sasha]] for [[Memes/TeamFortress2 twelve seconds?]] That's $200 per bullet! [[VideoGame/{{Recettear}} Where have you been buying your ammo?"]]]]

In short, Adam Smith Hates Your Guts.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'', Young Link needs to buy some beans, which you can plant in various places to create levitating plants in the future. When you buy the first one, the seller tells you that he's not moving any stock, so he sells it to you for 10 rupees. When you buy the tenth and final one, he tells you that his beans are selling like mad, and he'll let you have it for 100 rupees, yet Link is his only customer.
*** Specifically, you can only buy one bean at a time, and each sequential purchase sends the price up by 10 Rupees, starting at 10 for the first purchase. You end up paying, in total, 550 Rupees, so even with the biggest wallet in the game full of cash, you still won't have enough to buy them all in one visit. Each purchase results in a new comment from him about how they're more popular than the previous purchase.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' has it in the opposite direction. When freeing the town and thus getting access to its stores, one store is very obviously meant for the wealthy (it doesn't even let you in without cleaning your shoes first). The few things it sells are so ridiculously overpriced that it is impossible to buy them with even the biggest rupee bag. It is an option though to kick that shop out and replace it by the discounter that a child from your hometown founded, leading to ''much'' lower prices.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Wind Waker]]'' has a similar example to the above. Initially, the Bomb Shop owner on Windfall Island charges such ridiculous prices for his wares that it is impossible for Link to buy any even with the biggest wallet available (even then, the upgrades are impossible to get at this point in the game anyway). These prices do not sit well with Tetra and her pirates, who simply tie him up and steal the bombs from him, after which he lowers his prices to reasonable amounts that Link can afford.
** Beedle in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]'' is the only seller of the valuable Adventurer's Poach, which holds your bombs, bottles, medals, etc. He sells three out of the four available Adventurer's Poach, but will only sell them one at a time and the price of them increases from 300, to 600, and finally to 1200 rupees. [[LampshadeHanging He completely denies]] about the increasingly high prices of the Poaches.

** Beedle returns in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'' recurring at stables, bazaars, and other rest stops Link passes through. He always stocks arrows and a selection of critters just right for combating the area's natural hazards. He also overcharges for the arrows compared to any other merchant and the critters can be gotten for free in the right places, but that's the price of convenience. Also, activating the Great Fairies requires increasingly larger donations the longer you go in the game, with the final Fairy charging a whopping 10,000 rupees to talk to you.

* The WebGame ''VideoGame/NewStarSoccer'' has 'NRG' Drinks. Every time you sign a new contract, the prices increase. Near the end of the game, an energy drink can cost more than your '''HOUSE''' .

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** {{Averted|Trope}}: Everything costs the same amount wherever you go (though it does strike one as a little strange that a small shop in tiny little Mahogany Town would stock Ultra Balls when Goldenrod City's massive department store doesn't), and Pokémon Centers are always free.
** The fourth generation even averts the odd stock issues -- the stock in all stores is dependent on how many badges you have -- they just won't sell Ultra Balls to greenhorn trainers. The only city-dependent items are specialty balls that generally have explanations as to why they're only sold there (like selling balls that are better at catching Water-types in a fishing village).
** Also in Goldenrod City (both in the original Gold & Silver and their fourth generation remakes) there is a "bargain shop" that sells you expensive items with no use other than being sold, at 90% of their selling price. However, you cannot get rich from it; the salesman is only there on Monday mornings, and only sells you one of each item each time. It's more of a steady income than anything.
** The fancy store in the center of Black City. $10,000 for a Poke Ball?

*** However, any discounts you get also affect the price you get for selling. So yes, that shopkeeper who loves you will give you cheaper stuff but also pays you less for your VendorTrash.

** ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' seems to avert this trope for most of the game, as you ''start'' in an insignificant little village, and the price of lodging naturally increases as you approach the big city of Fourside (which also happens to be dominated by a CorruptCorporateExecutive) and the resort towns of Summers and Scaraba. Additionally, shop prices never seem to change; the cup of coffee that costs $6 in Onett will be valued the same wherever you go. But then, near the end, you reach the Tenda Village and Adam Smith slaps you in the face: items of all sorts are hideously expensive (costing not money but a certain high-valued item that must be bought elsewhere), and the "ATM" people you find charge 100% handling fees.

*** For an In-Universe or story-justified example, before Nero can get his hand on his new cybernetic arm, Nico tells him to pay up first. Obviously, her Devil Breaker project costs a lot of money to develop. The game then brings this trope to its head with Nico's shop, who runs under the motto of "In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Full Price." Sure enough, you're gonna be paying out of pocket in order to get the Devil Breakers you need, and depending on the type of playstyle you might have, you're gonna be doing this a lot. There's an option to buy Devil Breakers in bulk, but don't expect some kind of bundle discount, as the price for bulk buying is just the totaled amount of the current Devil Breakers purchasable. Once you start throwing in the extra Devil Breakers unlocked through the story and DLC, the price for bulk buying begins to shoot up.

** There are two types of currency in ''''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'': the series-standard Red Orbs, which pop out of enemies and destroyed environmental objects, and the new Proud Souls, which are awarded at the end of missions based on your ranking. Red Orbs are only used to buy items, while Proud Souls are used to buy new abilities. Adam Smith's hatred makes the price go up every time you buy an item. And every time you buy a new ability, the price of ''everything afterwards'' goes up... though you can also freely refund spent Proud Souls and unlearn abilities if you want to try something else, which lowers the prices again.

* In ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'', every time one buys a Vital Star, the price goes up, sometimes several-fold.
** ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry5'' brings this to its head with Nico's shop, who runs under the motto of "In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Full Price." Sure enough, you're gonna be paying out of pocket in order to get the Devil Breakers you need, and depending on the type of playstyle you might have, you're gonna be doing this a lot. There is an option to buy Devil Breakers in bulk, but don't expect some kind of bundle discount, as the price for bulk buying is the totaled amount of the current Devil Breakers purchasable. Once you start throwing in the extra Devil Breakers unlocked through story mode and DLC, the price for bulk buying begins to shoot up.

** Beedle in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]'' is the only seller of the valuable Adventurer's Poach, which holds your bombs, bottles, medals, etc. He sells three out of the four available Adventurer's Poach, but will only sell them one at a time and the price of them increases from 300, to 600, and finally to 1200 rupees. [[LampshadeHanging He completely denies]] about raising the price of the Poaches.

Ren is frustrated to find that his prestige point shop charges high for products he needs like body armor. The only skills that are available are low-tier and grievously overpriced for what they provide. To make matters worse, he can only sell them back for a fraction of the prestige points he paid to buy them. He has little choice when it comes to getting equipment, as he has neither the money nor the means to obtain it otherwise, especially for highly-advanced and otherwise ruinously expensive items like a SurveillanceDrone.

** The first edition of AD&D included rules for training costs in order to advance a level once you had earned the necessary experience points. The time required varied depending on how well you had played your class, as rated by your [[GameMaster Dungeon Master]]. Training time was 1-4 weeks at a rate of 1,500gp times your level per week, plus the cost of paying your tutor, until you reached 9th or "Name" level, then it was a different base rate tmes your level per week based on your class [[note]]Fighters actually got a break in costs, with only 1,000gp per level per week, whereas Magic Users had to spend the most at 4,000gp per level per week[[/note]] and you no longer needed to hire a trainer. This was a pretty steep expense at lower levels. Higher levels were even more expensive [[note]]A 13th level Magic-user needed 1,500,001 experience points to advance to 14th level, and had to pay around 50,000gp for the training[[/note]], but high-level characters also had so much wealth that they could afford the training costs fairly easily. Most groups at the time just ignored the training rules completely, and later editions of the game have made their version of the training rules optional and much less expensive, if they included them at all.

** The Firaxis remake makes the latter impossible, as once you get a Founding Father, he's yours. No other colony can get him. Whether or not this is good depends on whether or not you were able to get him first.

** It's also averted with some items which, depending on your location, will be cheaper or more expensive depending on how rare said item is in that area. One character even advises you in-game that a good way to make money is to buy fire flowers in Petalburg and sell them in Rogueport for a 2 coin profit.

* In ''[[TabletopGame/SevenWonders 7 Wonders Duel]]'', if you lack any resources you need for a building, you can purchase the missing ones from the bank. The cost of each missing resource increases as your opponent collects brown and grey cards that produce the resource you're missing.

* ''{{TabletopGame/GURPS}}'' went to a ridiculous extreme in justifying and averting this trope. Magic items are balanced via a relatively simple economic system they built for the game (and explain to any GM who wants to change it).

* Ammunition in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' becomes exponentially more expensive the further into the game you go: Ammunition in early-game ammo kiosks will set you back a dozen credits, and by the end-game it's in the tens of thousands range. Of course, the game has an economy that can be best described as MoneyForNothing incarnate, so you've got practically nothing ''but'' ammo you can spend your ever-increasing cash reserve on. The same goes with the "death" regeneration cost of 7% of your total funds. Normally this isn't a problem but some of the areas, while having lower-level enemies, can be more tricky, and with rewards reduced, can quickly drain your cash reserves if you're too careless.

* Most [[IdleGame Idle Games]] incorporate this in some way:

* In ''VideoGame/DefendersQuest: Valley of the Forgotten'', ''every'' new hire costs more than the last new hire, regardless of the new hire's class or what town you hired them from (and it's not like you're buying pre-trained or pre-armed folks, either; they all start at level 1 with no equipment.) This is especially ridiculous when you consider that you're traveling around a land where most of the towns have been thoroughly devastated by the Revenants. The people you're hiring ought to be grateful just to have a job, especially one where the employer pays for all their equipment...

* In ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'' on DS, the price to spend a night at the inn goes up with every level that your party increases, as does the price to revive a fallen member at the hospital. Items and equipment are also rather pricey -- in the first two games, a single Nectar costs a whopping 500en. In ''The Drowned City'', healing items get a much needed price drop, such as Nectars now only costing a mere 50en. Ironically, the shopkeeper here is a major {{Money Fetish}}ist; probably best if she doesn't find out she's selling this stuff at such a staggering discount...

%% (Actually, these responses are EXACTLY HOW REAL GOVERNMENTS REACT AND THUS CONTROL (or attempt to control) THEIR RESPECTIVE ECONOMIES)

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', Young Link needs to buy some beans, which you can plant in various places to create levitating plants in the future. When you buy the first one, the seller tells you that he's not moving any stock, so he sells it to you for 10 rupees. When you buy the tenth and final one, he tells you that his beans are selling like mad, and he'll let you have it for 100 rupees, yet Link is his only customer.
** Specifically, you can only buy one bean at a time, and each sequential purchase sends the price up by 10 Rupees, starting at 10 for the first purchase. You end up paying, in total, 550 Rupees, so even with the biggest wallet in the game full of cash, you still won't have enough to buy them all in one visit. Each purchase results in a new comment from him about how they're more popular than the previous purchase.
** Interestingly, this is actually averted in ''Videogame/TheLegendOfZeldaI'', as different stores have different prices on items you might want (the Magic Shield, for example, can cost between 90 and 160 Rupees depending of the store), so you need to keep track of which merchant has the best deals. Also, the most expensive item in the game, the Blue Ring, its sold in a single, ''hidden'' store in all of Hyrule, so you have no option but to pay the full price for it (a whooping 250 Rupees, five less than your maximum wallet limit).
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' has it in the opposite direction. When freeing the town and thus getting access to its stores, one store is very obviously meant for the wealthy (it doesn't even let you in without cleaning your shoes first). The few things it sells are so ridiculously overpriced that it is impossible to buy them with even the biggest rupee bag. It is an option though to kick that shop out and replace it by the discounter that a child from your hometown founded, leading to ''much'' lower prices.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' has a similar example to the above. Initially, the Bomb Shop owner on Windfall Island charges such ridiculous prices for his wares that it is impossible for Link to buy any even with the biggest wallet available (even then, the upgrades are impossible to get at this point in the game anyway). These prices do not sit well with Tetra and her pirates, who simply tie him up and steal the bombs from him, after which he lowers his prices to reasonable amounts that Link can afford.
** Beedle in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' is the only seller of the valuable Adventurer's Poach, which holds your bombs, bottles, medals, etc. He sells three out of the four available Adventurer's Poach, but will only sell them one at a time and the price of them increases from 300, to 600, and finally to 1200 rupees. [[LampshadeHanging He completely denies]] about raising the price of the Poaches.

** Beedle returns in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' recurring at stables, bazaars, and other rest stops Link passes through. He always stocks arrows and a selection of critters just right for combating the area's natural hazards. He also overcharges for the arrows compared to any other merchant and the critters can be gotten for free in the right places, but that's the price of convenience. Also, activating the Great Fairies requires increasingly larger donations the longer you go in the game, with the final Fairy charging a whopping 10,000 rupees to talk to you.

* In ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'', every successive HP Memory upgrade is usually at least twice the price of the one you just bought from the same vendor. [=PowerUP=]s likewise in the first two games. ''[[VideoGame/MegaManStarForce Star Force]]'' does this too.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}'', the only money is bartering with 5.45mm ammo left over from before the apocalypse. The ammo is in perfect condition, and packs more punch than the homemade crap you usually find. Therefore, you must choose between supporting the economy and saving your ass in a firefight. There's even an Achievement (Scrooge) for hoarding 500 Bullets.

** ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}'' ties this into the main plot to an unusual extent. The pastoral Tazmily Village does not even use money at the beginning of the game, but the BigBad's plans include changing that.

* In ''[[VideoGame/TheOregonTrail Oregon Trail II]]'', supplies get more expensive the farther out on the trail you go. This is {{justified|trope}}, since the prices would include the additional costs involved in transporting them to a remote outpost. In an equally justified inversion, horses get significantly cheaper.

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}''
** The items get exponentially more expensive, which is made even more bizarre when you consider that your protagonists are Japanese school children, and that the person selling you the gear is a police officer who was fully aware of the situation.
** By the time things get ''really'' costly, you're getting so many Yen out of Tartarus that you could buy out ''his entire inventory''. Apparently, he's also aware of this. Why the ''swimsuits'' are so expensive is a question for another day...
* The Nurse's Office in ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'', similar to the ''VideoGame/{{Etrian Odyssey}}'' example above, will charge you based on the level of the main character.

* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Recettear}} Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale]]'' plays with the trope in many ways:

* In {{Videogame/Robocraft}} the costs of new parts for your robot start to get downright silly as you progress through the tiers. For instance, wheels are reasonably priced at a few hundred a pop in Tier 2. But in Tier 5, each one costs upwards of 4000. And it only goes up from there.

* In the ARPG ''VideoGame/{{Sacred}} II'', high-level items are more expensive than low-level items. A level 120 healing potion sells for $1200, enough to buy 150 level 1 pots if you are level 1. And both heal exactly 24%. Further, one can merge one $1200 pot with 19 $12 pots, making a stack of 20 $1200 pots.
* ''[[VideoGame/SaGaRPG SaGa]]'' series:

** ''VideoGame/SaGaFrontier'': You can exploit this trope. You can buy and sell gold nuggets in this game, and in one of the locales its price rises and falls as per the good old laws of supply and demand...except the game's programming recalculates the worth of your inventory ''in the sell menu before any actual goods change hands''! So, start with an inventory of about a dozen or so gold nuggets, "sell" them until the price per ingot is zero, and then toggle the number of ingots that you're "selling" until the price raises to a level where actually selling them ingot by ingot nets you a profit. Then, travel to another locale where the price of gold is fixed and buy more ingots than when you started, and repeat for effectively infinite money.

* The first ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' for the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis had outrageous prices for weapons and powerups. You earned money by taking jobs but since the jobs paid very little, you ended up having to do the same few missions over and over again in order to get enough money to progress in the game. However, if you know where to find the data buyer, earning a lot of money really fast becomes a cakewalk, so long as you have even a mildly competent decker.

* ''Videogame/SunlessSea:'' Mostly averted, as prices for goods vary depending on the setting and story reasons rather than any form of progress in the game, so prices only rise or fall depending on what kind of island or city you're currently visiting. The Khanate will invoke this, however, to scalp the utter hell out of you (as seen in the page quote), as they don't like Londoners much and will make you pay out the nose for even the most basic goods unless you've earned enough favor to have a Trader's license.
* ''Videogame/SunlessSkies:'' Averted, as whatever you buy in one port will likely have the exact same price being sold elsewhere, so no profit will be made; the actual profits in such operations are snatched up by bigger companies. There are both Bargains (opportunities at small ports where folks temporarily sell limited stock of an item at lower prices) and Prospects (commissions taken at the main ports where you deliver a certain amount of a certain good to a particular port, and they pay you a higher price and an extra shipping fee for gratitude once it's all delivered) to further tip the scale away and give you the chance for actual profits.
* In ''VideoGame/SystemShock 2'' with good stats and lucky clicks, you can either reprogram vendor machines to give items at lower prices, or change the stock altogether, replacing soda drinks with armor-piercing bullets.
* ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'':

* ''VideoGame/TestDrive Unlimited'' suffers this with the police fines. They start off reasonable, but as the player progresses become ridiculous. Further, they are based off of the number cars the player collides with and the only tactic the police use to stop the player is running into him.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* In ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'', the most expensive item that can be bought in a shop is an ordinary lantern, which fetches a price worth several magical items and weapon upgrades. The reason the price is so high is that the lantern is mandatory for exploration of several [[BlackoutBasement dark areas]].
* Anyone who has multiple charm notches, mask shards, or vessel fragments to sell will raise the price the more of then you buy. Sly goes from trying to justify this to ouright lampshading it by the time you get to the last mask shard, described thusly:
-->''As it turns out, I do actually have one more of these shards left. Very last one! I feel bad charging you so much for the previous shards, especially because it means I have to charge even more for this one.''

* In ''Fanfic/RiskItAll'', Ren is frustrated to find that his prestige point shop charges high for products he needs like body armor. To make matters worse, he can only sell them back for a fraction of the prestige points he paid to buy them.

*** This is backed up by store prices being consistent the world over, since every civilization met is being incorporated into a command economy but the system hasn't had time to break under its own weight yet. [[RealityEnsues Everyone with a lick of sense can see it coming, though, and a black market is already well-established]], but this is just WorldBuilding and not used outside of the plot.