Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
When you get to six figures, however, people start thinking about entire new
houses. (At least here in the Midwest, six figures gets you a nice house.) And that
seems to be a magic number on shows such as
Millionaire
and
Deal or No Deal
.
That tier is enough of a lifestyle change to make a difference to people. When you
are sitting on $125,000, an extra 10 grand isn't going to be that much of a deal. Even
the extra $125,000 in the example above isn't as important because the threshold of
“nice new house� has already been reached.
The next threshold seems to be in the area of a million, which is not surprising
given the popularity of the term
millionaire
. In fact, it is not a coincidence that the
TV show
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
is named the way it is. Can you envision
answering the titular question any
other
way than “Uh… I do!� However, using the
standard rules of both that show and
Deal or No Deal
, the top edge of the game is
the million dollars. Therefore, along the way most people end up asking them-
selves the question “Do I want a hundred thousand dollars?� Usually, when they get
to that point, they go home. If you were to extend those games to include
tens
of
millions, I suspect we would see another tier at the one-million mark. The statements
by the players and families would then be, “We've got our million, that's enough.
Quit now.�
Sometimes, that is good advice. Even Fast Eddie should have taken Charlie's
advice in the movie
The Hustler
. When Eddie was up $11,400 on Minnesota Fats,
Charlie tried to get him to quit for the night saying, “You wanted ten thousand?
You got ten thousand.� Eddie didn't quit and proceeded to lose it all.
I
N
T
HE
G
AME
How Many Troops?
The phenomenon of multiple thresholds can be applied to games as well. Earlier,
we used an example of the marginal utility of building extra units in a strategy
game. Once a certain number of troops is reached, the marginal utility of building
additional units begins to decrease—we simply have “enough.� However, as we
have been examining above, having “enough� is often tied to context. With the
prize money, we theorized that people could be thinking in terms of a nice dinner,
a new video game, a new game console, a new car, paying off a mortgage, buying an
entire new house, and so on. Each of those was a milestone that defined
enough
—
at least temporarily. Once that landmark was reached, the marginal utility of receiv-
ing additional value dropped somewhat. However, as the next milestone was
neared, the frame of mind changed so that additional value was now thought of in
terms of “if we only had a
little
more.� When this happens, the marginal utility of
additional value increases again. Getting additional value is important if the next
goal is to be attained.
