Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
We face these decisions many times a day in our own lives. For example, imag-
ine that at the grocery store, we see two cans of green beans from different compa-
nies on the shelf. While they are otherwise identical, there is a price difference of
five cents between them. We could stand and ponder what would have caused the
difference. Does the store have too much inventory of one and is trying to reduce
it? Why is there too much inventory? Was it not selling?
Why
was it not selling?
Perhaps the wholesaler of the more expensive brand is taking more profit? Or,
turning to a factor that is likely more important to us, is there a quality difference
between the two brands?
We could launch an investigation, interviewing the store managers and the
wholesaler and researching the prices at other stores. We could jump out onto the
Web to see ratings and reviews of other people's experiences and opinions with the
two brands. We could pull the financial statements of both companies and exam-
ine their relative profit margins to see how much they are really making off their
products.
Or we could just grab a can and continue shopping.
While all of that information could certainly be relevant to our decision, espe-
cially the quality difference, is it really worth the five-cent difference to go through
all of the effort? We are far more likely to decide between the two based on a single
factor: Is the possibility of a little extra quality in our beloved green beans worth five
cents?
This would certainly be a different story if we were purchasing a new car and
were looking at a difference of $5,000 instead. Why are those two seemingly similar
automobiles priced so differently? In that instance, the information may be worth
getting.
I'm not going to attempt to solve this problem now. We will attempt to quan-
tify the costs of pleasure, pain, happiness, and even
time
in future chapters. The
point is that by just grabbing a can of beans and moving on, we have made a
ratio-
nal
choice to remain
ignorant
of facts that could possibly be relevant to us. The cost
of that information is just too high for the benefit we would get out of it.
These decisions are common in the game world as well. Many times, the cost of
the information is directly related to the computational power available to us. That
is an external barrier that is not directly related to modeling of behavior, however.
Even if we had more than enough processing power with which to compute things,
there are times when it is more rational to
not
acquire information.
