[a习作temp] argument147..sally组作业...有拍必回 [复制链接]

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发表于 2006-2-22 18:44:49 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC:147.The following appeared in an editorial in a business magazine.

"Although the sales of Whirlwind video games have declined over the past two years, a recent survey of video-game players suggests that this sales trend is about to be reversed. The survey asked video-game players what features they thought were most important in a video game. According to the survey, players prefer games that provide lifelike graphics, which require the most up-to-date computers. Whirlwind has just introduced several such games with an extensive advertising campaign directed at people 10 to 25 years old, the age-group most likely to play video games. It follows, then, that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase dramatically in the next few months."

Word:611          Time:1:00:00          Date:2006-2-22

The argument is ostensively well-presented, but indeed not logically reasonable. In this argument, the author provides a recent survey of video-game players to persuade people trusting that Whirlwind will probably encounter a dramatic increase in their video game sales. At the first glance, the evidence in the argument seems to be somewhat credible to support the author’s prediction about Whirlwind sales.

However, first and foremost, the information that such survey offers does not lend much support to the author’s conclusion.  Obviously it is a defect that the author omits mentioning that the players selected in the survey are randomly chosen. It is entirely possible that the investigators only select those who prefer sports or shooting games, which definitely call for higher quality of graphics. Whereas, the reality reveals that most players of the region would like to play games which have outstanding scenarios rather than choose better graphical games. Again, even they do prefer lifelike graphical games, there is littler direct evidence to show that they are able to afford such up-to-date computers which these games needs as the foundation of the normal operation. Perhaps, they merely wish they had such kind of computers to enjoy higher quality of the games. But unfortunately they do not. Under these circumstances, the responses of the video-game players selected would not make any sense without clear restriction of the survey.

What is more, whether can the advertising campaign that Whirlwind has made affect as they have imagined is still open to doubt. Even grant that most video-game players prefer lifelike graphical game, the author fails to provide any information to substantiate that it is the period of age-10 to 25 that are the largest group of consumers. In the first place, youngsters between 10 and 25 might, to large extent, prefer other styles of entertainment to playing video games, for example, these young children and adults maybe can not help enjoying the beauty of the nature, they are especially fond of sports activities and so forth. Moreover, with regard to the confine of money and energy, the individuals between 10 and 25, whose major goals are to obtain knowledge and skills as many as possible, might not have had chances to enjoy such advanced video games. Consequently, on the basis of the two points, the advertising campaign of Whirlwind would turn out to a commercial failure.

Finally, failing to put other significant factors into account about the sale increase, the author too hastily asserts that Whirlwind will reverse the declining trend and experiencing  dramatic increase. As the author does not exclude the existence of other video-game company that manufacture similar lifelike graphical games, the joining in the field of lifelike graphical games of Whirlwind might lead to severe competitions between companies in the market of video games, which would seriously decrease the sales of every company according the rules of market. Further, I have enough reasons to doubt that for the declining trend and altered major target of production, the competing ability of Whirlwind might seriously decrease too. So they might find fewer ways to survive under this pressure. Again, the author is too optimism about the situations of video game market to make the prediction that the sales of Whirlwind are likely to rise. Perhaps there hides potential economy crisis which is able to destroy video games market.  Therefore, to this extent, the evidences in the argument are not reasonable enough to persuade me to trust the rising sales of Whirlwind.

To sum up, because of these defects, the argument is far from convincing. To further improve it, the author needs to give more credible response to all the points I have presented.

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