History Main / AnEconomyIsYou

[[folder:Simulation Games]

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' averts this in large part due to the setting. Not only Link can buy, sell and use items that would be considered mundane such as food and household labor tools, the people traveling outside of the settlements have plenty of reason to be buying the things that only Link seemed to use in other games now that [[CrapsackWorld Hyrule is a ruined kingdom swarming with ruthless monsters]] (and some travelers do get attacked on the road and can sometimes be seen fighting back).

** Shops at the beginning of both parts of ''{{Persona 2}}'' sell food, clothing, and other mundane items, averting this trope, but you can spread rumors that make various shops carry weapons and armor, among other things. And you're probably not the only one buying this stuff, given the escalating chaos over the course of the games.

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', you can buy exactly the same items in every era. There's a caveman stocking up on robotic attachments, just to cater to that niche TimeTraveller market.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' averts this somewhat with a wide variety of cosmetic items, including furniture for housing, barding for your chocobo and so on. That said, most of the smaller settlements only have one or two shops selling nothing but armor, weapons and potions.

** The only shops open for business in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto3'' were gun shops.

* If a {{tabletop RPG}} features explicit price lists for items and services, expect a heavy (quite possibly outright exclusive) focus on things the average player character adventurer is expected to need as par for the course. Other things and businesses handling them will obviously presumably ''exist'' in the game world, but if the details ever become important it'll be up to the {{game master}} to make something up on their own.

* Played with in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate 2'' in Waukeen's promenade: there are several doors where clicking on them informs you that these shops contain furniture, earthenware and other sundries useless to an adventurer; however, you can only enter the shops that sell useful stuff.

*** How many of Hyrule's population need magic refilling potions or heat-resistant tunics? [[AllThereInTheManual The guidebooks]] {{Handwave}} the Goron Tunic by stating that Hylians used to mine in the area.

-->-- '''Beedle''', ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword]]''

*** How many of Hyrule's population needs magic refilling potions or Goron tunics? The guidebooks for {{Handwave}}s the Goron Tunic by stating that Hylians used to mine in the area.
*** PlayedForLaughs with the Magic Bean salesman. At the start he tells you that the beans aren't very popular, so he'll sell them cheap. Every time you buy one, he increases the price by 10 rupees and raves about how much popular they're getting, even though you're obviously the only one buying them.

*** You can actually see items for sale in a market, and you can pick them up... But Link always puts them right back, for various reasons.
*** It's later lampshaded, in the Oocca shop in City In The Sky. The text below each item boils down to "Why do we even ''have'' these?"

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'''s auction house. Everything that's up for auction is something Link can use. There's things up for sale that people besides Link might want or need, but Link is the only one who will need all of them. Everybody will bid on something, even if it's something they probably couldn't use (why did that gossipy older lady just buy a treasure map when she probably doesn't have a boat?). But where it really smashes headlong into this is the fact that if anybody besides you wins the auction, you can leave the room and come back to find that they returned it to the auction for literally no reason and more often than not ''the person who bought and returned it is at the auction bidding on it again.'' The item will always be returned to the auction house until you win it.
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'', Beedle lampshades this when you look at one of his "Sold Out" signs, and Peatrice the Item Check girl develops a crush on Link as ''no one else in Skyloft is using her services'' and she initially thinks he's constantly visiting specifically to see her.

[[folder:Platformers]]
* The Thorntail Hollow shop in ''VideoGame/StarFox Adventures'' does sell things that the locals would consider food (Dumbledang Pods and Grubtub Fungus), though both are available for free from the trees and standing around on the ground. It's just as well, then, that the entrance seems designed to keep out Thorntails and Earthwalkers. No wonder he's considering moving...
[[/folder]]

** Shops at the beginning of both parts of ''{{Persona 2}}'' sell food, clothing, and other mundane items, generally averting this trope, but you can spread rumors that make various shops carry weapons and armor, among other things. And you're probably not the only one buying this stuff, given the escalating chaos over the course of the games.

* Averted heavily in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' [[AnAdventurerIsYou Adventure Mode]] - pretty much any human city will have multiple stores dedicated to things you have absolutely no need of - leather, furniture, basic clothing, bolts of cloth, jewelery and other assorted trinkets. It will also most likely have a market, which tend to be much more useful - there are usually loads of farmers there, who all sell edible plants.

** It takes a little bit to even explain how much the auction house is this in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker''. Everything that's up for auction is something Link can use. There's things up for sale that people besides Link might want or need, but Link is the only one who will need all of them. Everybody will bid on something, even if it's something they probably couldn't use (why did that gossipy older lady just buy a treasure map when she probably doesn't have a boat?). But where it really smashes headlong into this is the fact that if anybody besides you wins the auction, you can leave the room and come back to find that they returned it to the auction for literally no reason and more often than not ''the person who bought and returned it is at the auction bidding on it again.'' The item will always be returned to the auction house until you win it.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/RiverCityRansom'': A wide range of completely normal items can be purchased, and they all give stat increases. Unfortunately, the only way to find out exactly what an item does is to buy it.
** But played straight with the secret magic shop in the underpass. Everything in the store is explicitly designed for combat, so did they set up shop and wait for years until some student decided he needed to lay waste to a rival school with a sword?

* ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'': all replicators inside the Von Braun and Rickenbacker sell only tools of death, gameplay-related hardware, medical supplies, and (health-boosting) food. The only exceptions are video game cartridges.
** Slightly justified because the replicators simply turn currency from {{Nanomachines}} into products according to the user's profile, and that the machines were already reprogrammed to dispense these unconventional items due to the tumultuous situation on-board the Von Braun and Rickenbacker. Also worth noting is that the player can also hack into the vending machines in order to force them to dispense a wider range of items for less, so it's possible that the MegaCorp that sponsored the Von Braun may well be money-hungry enough to sell soldiers bullets from vending machines,
* Spiritual successor ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' is [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation exactly the same]] (minus the videogame cartridges). Except in this case there is a machine that is explicitly for selling ammo. You'd think that firearms wouldn't be allowed to begin with inside an underwater city with big glass windows all over the place.
** Pah. That's just the kind of short-sighted hand-holding you'd expect from ''government''.
** It's ok because no matter what weapons you have, [[InsurmountableWaistHeightFence you can only break the windows you are supposed to]], so people in Rapture probably don't have to worry too much about property damage.
* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' has this as well. There are ammo, weapon, and medical vending machines, and while it does make sense that living on [[DeathWorld Pandora]] would require such a thing, there's never any sign of any place selling the ''other'' necessities of life, like food and water.

* Played to some degree ''VideoGame/BaldursGate 2'' in Waukeen's promenade: there are several doors where clicking on them informs you that these shops contain furniture, earthenware and other sundries useless to an adventurer; however, you can only enter the shops that sell useful stuff.
* Nearly every town in any ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' game has an item shop, weapon shop, and armor shop, yet it seems the [[AnAdventurerIsYou hero]], and/or his/her [[AllInARow party]], are the only ones who would ever need such things.
** Although it's played with in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'', where you get to play as Taloon, one of the guys who works in these stores, and you see a whole bunch of NPC adventurers come through to buy and sell.

** Platinum features two bars and a restaurant. All of which are filled with people that want to fight you, and only one of the bars will sell you liquid refreshment: Moo-Moo Milk, which is used to heal Pokemon...
** Pokemon X and Y feature clothing and accessory stores, which let the player (and presumably other residents of the town) buy new outfits, hats, and bags.
** At least that generation has a grocery department selling normal food (but not to you) in the department store town. The closest mention to people food in the earlier generations was the vending machine drinks you gave to the thirsty guard.
*** There was a restaurant in Celadon, but they were eternally in the middle of an eating contest and couldn't serve you.
*** For all we know, every place sells other stuff, but the PC only cares about things related to Pokemon training.
*** The Pokemart shelves are completely stocked with merchandise you can't even look at. So that could be "normal" items like food and clothes.
* Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'' when you ask one particular merchant if he has any weapons or magic items:

** Further lampshaded by the Magic Abacus, a celestial bureaucrat with the job of making sure the items you need are conveniently available exactly when you need them. He cuts corners by selling them to you himself (and overcharging for them).

** Completely averted in the fan-made expansion ''VideoGame/ADanceWithRogues''; as there are shops in Betancuria that buy or sell only clothing, and one merchant in the southern portion of the city sells only dyes. You even get to go into a tea shop, but that is because the proprietor is a weapons instructor in his spare time and will train you to fight in his basement, you don't actually get to buy anything.
* Subverted in WorldOfWarcraft, there's plenty of random houses you can't go in, and and people sell things like Beer, Toys, et cetra.

** Not quite completely useless - it's a free inn. Which means that after just a few hundred thousand uses, it will have paid for itself...
*** But there's already a free inn on-board the Highwind!
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears'' is especially notable. Some towns can be visited in several chapters, and in each one of them the shop's contents change to suit whoever you're controlling. For example in Porom's chapter Mysidia's shops sell mage gear, while in Edge's chapter, while you control one of Edge's students who's spying, it sells ''Ninja gear''. When ''both chapters happen simultaneously in-story''. And that same shop sold Paladin gear in the original game. Of course the likely explanation is that the shop actually carries ''everything'' and the interface is showing only the gear that interests you.

* Justified in ''{{Recettear}}'', because the town involved is actually a haven for adventurers, so you ''have'' to sell them the stuff they need.
** Also averted, as Recettear clearly isn't the OnlyShopInTown. Recette can visit the market to buy miscellaneous items to sell at a profit ([[{{Catchphrase}} Capitalism, ho!]]) and if you drive too hard a bargain, a customer will walk out.

* Largely averted in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' games, where you can buy everything from wooden spoons to houses. ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' has general shops filled with normal housing items and dedicated food stores. Of course most shops will have something for adventures, and there is an abundance of weapons, but it a world as dangerous as Skyrim it doesn't seem out of place.

* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'': all the stores aboard Titan Station, even those in the civilian sectors, only provide guns, ammo, health packs, stasis charges, etc. Justified, as the store welcomes the protagonist, Isaac Clark, by name, implying that the store is only displaying items he told it to display.
** In the original game, it's implied that the automated stores were hacked by the crew of the Ishimura to provide equipment to fight the necromorphs, though it didn't work out too well for them.

* The only shops open for business in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto3'' were gun shops.
** Somewhat averted in Vice City, where more types of shops were open for robbery, and averted again in Vice City Stories, where some shops were open for protection racket.

* Averted really really heavily in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' [[AnAdventurerIsYou Adventure Mode]] - pretty much any human city will have multiple stores dedicated to things you have absolutely no need of - leather, furniture, basic clothing, bolts of cloth, jewelery and other assorted trinkets. It will also most likely have a market, which tend to be much more useful - there are usually loads of farmers there, who all sell edible plants.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' has tiny villages with just a couple of houses and shop that sells nothing but Pokemon catching and healing items. The only place you can buy anything not Pokemon-related is the massive department store in the big city (Celadon, Goldenrod, etc.), and that one shop that sells bicycles so expensive that they cost more than your body weight in gold - in fact, they cost more than the maximum capacity of your wallet (yet will eventually give one away for free if you ask nicely).

* Averted really really heavily in ''DwarfFortress'' [[AnAdventurerIsYou Adventure Mode]] - pretty much any human city will have multiple stores dedicated to things you have absolutely no need of - leather, furniture, basic clothing, bolts of cloth, jewelery and other assorted trinkets. It will also most likely have a market, which tend to be much more useful - there are usually loads of farmers there, who all sell edible plants.

* Largely averted in Franchise/TheElderScrolls games, where you can buy everything from wooden spoons to houses.

* One of the few games to avert this is ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' which has general shops filled with normal housing items and dedicated food stores. Of course most shops will have something for adventures, and there is an abundance of weapons, but it a world as dangerous as Skyrim it doesn't seem out of place.

* ''VideoGame/SteamworldDig'' takes place in an old Western town and the vast underground mine network beneath it. The town is almost entirely unpopulated except for a scarce few NPCs whose only purpose is to service the player character. In fact, progressing through the game is done by selling the gems acquired from the mines to an NPC, and the money gained from doing so is used to purchase essential upgrades.

[[folder:Adventure Games]]
* ''VideoGame/IndianaJonesAndHisDesktopAdventures'': The village of Lucasio consists of two people who give you healing items, one Marcus who briefs you as to the main quest, one guy who acts as a tutorial, and you. One's got to wonder why Gabriela even keeps so many seats at her cantina. There's a grand total of ''two'' buildings other than the ones inhabited by the game-relevant people (and they're not enterable).
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/Steamworld Dig'' takes place in an old Western town and the vast underground mine network beneath it. The town is almost entirely unpopulated except for a scarce few NPCs whose only purpose is to service the player character. In fact, progressing through the game is done by selling the gems acquired from the mines to an NPC, and the money gained from doing so is used to purchase essential upgrades.