Argument 13 欢迎指正~~

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT13 - The following appeared in a memo from the chief executive of a video game company.
"We have recently been offered the opportunity to buy the rights to produce a video game based on the soon-to-be-published children's book "Squirrel Power," by Peter Wood. While the cost of the rights is substantial and will place economic constraints on our company in the short-term, there are two reasons that the purchase of these rights will undoubtedly be a wise investment. First, Wood's last three books have been best sellers and the movie based on his first book was highly profitable. Second, the popular characters and story line in "Squirrel Power" will save us time in developing our video game, thereby reducing our costs."
WORDS: 603        TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2010-1-27 10:13:21


  In this argument, the CEO of the video game company reaches the recommendation that buying the rights of the newly published children's book to make the video game will be profitable and to substantiate this conclusion, he points out that due to the best selling of the author's first three books, they may receive a profitable income. While the mature characters and story line will save the company's cost on the game development. At first glance, the argument appears to be reasonable and somehow defensible. Careful examination reveals that it suffers from several logical flaws which make the conclusion unconvincing as it stands.
  In the first place, the fact that the author's last three books were best selling has little relevant on the development of the forth book into a video game. There is no clear evidence showing that the forth book would be as best as the last three ones. It is entirely possible that the children readers are bored with this kind of story books and the market reflects just so so. If this is the case, the conclusion that this producing video game activity will be profitable on the basis of the best selling book is absolutely untenable.
  Secondly, to say the lease, if the book is actually a best seller again, whether the production of the video game will be profitable is doubtable. It is a complex procedure to transform a book into a video game which depends not only the quality of the book but also the working capability of the video game company. So, the recommendation that as long as the book is well known,the game will be profitable is far to acceptable.  (论证的有点不充分)
  Thirdly, this book has not been into the market to meet the readers’ satisfaction, we cannot assume the characters and the story lines are popular and attractive. It is possible that children may think it is a repeat of the last three books' characters and stories which can be a worse effect on the development of the video game. On the other hand, the transformation of the book into the game will partly undermine the original character and story due to the purpose of the game so that any conclusion based on this assumption is incredible.
  Finally, movies and video games are totally different. In this memo, there is no information mentioned that the company has sufficient producers to achieve this task and the equipments are well developed to be used. On the other hand, in this memo, the CEO didn't mention the cost to create a video game from a story book so that we have no reference to evaluate whether this buying activity is worthy to do. Besides, buying the rights of the book to produce a video game already place economic constraints on our company in the short-term, attention should be paid more and more to think it over than to make decisions so fast.
  In summary, the opportunity to buy the rights to produce a video game based on the newly published book should be evaluated once again on the basis of some new evidence collected effectively. Till now, evidence above just gives the wrong impression on decision-making and merely rootless. The CEO should collect information including: the total amount of cost on producing a video game from a children story book; a survey on children whether this kind of story is still well acceptable. Maybe they can wait for the reaction of the readers until the forth book is well spread to decide whether buying this rights or not.