Argument13 【0706G－LOVEAW小组】第十二次作业

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In this argument, the arguer claims that the company should grasp 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.  However, this argument suffers from several critical fallacies.

In the first place, the arguer unfairly assumes that the children's book "Squirrel Power" will undoubtedly be profitable. As we know, the mere fact that Wood's last three books enjoyed tremendous popularity and the movie based on the first book earns big money only indicates Wood has the talents in writing, and that people may like such style of stories. But there is no guarantee that every fairy tale or novel of Wood will be so successful like his past three ones. Common senses tell us that it is possible that famous writer's books tend to be sold out easily and enjoy people's attention, however, simultaneously, people also expect to obtain high-quality writings, which may cause dissatisfaction if the new book is not as good as they think and lead to the decrease of sales of the newly-issued book. Thus, the past best sellers can not show any sign that new best seller will come out. The arguer fails to establish a causal relationship between the three successful books and the coming "Squirrel Power" success.

Moreover, the arguer fails to prove the causal relationship between the popular characters and story line in the book, the saving of time and money. The popular characters and story line may need more working to adapt them to the applying in the game, for they may  be very complex and very different from the tradition ones, and the company may even need to buy more advanced equipments. These will cost both more time, and more money. In addition, perhaps just because people are very familiar with such figures and story lines, so they demand higher towards this game. In such cases, the production needs more patience and investment.

Last but not the least, even all of the assumptions are proved to be true, the arguer fails to consider other aspects about the profits, and other alternatives. Profits is a function of cost and revenue, and before we make a decision about purchase, we should carefully weight these two. First, I will consider, what about the market of the game? Perhaps the markets are already full, or people no longer prefer such kind of games, and turn to others. Even if the video game will be popular, I still cannot know the relative importance of other investments, as the company has economic constrains in that time, so whether the revenue can overweight the opportunity cost is still under discussion. Without consider these factors, it will probably lead the loss of the company.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to the recommendation to buy the rights to produce a video game regarding "Squirrel Power".