Game Ideas Un limited: Opportunity Costs

  There's not enough time in the day, I hear myself saying.  I've got e-mail to answer, forums in which to participate, books to write and edit, articles to do.  Someone is wondering why a project is lagging behind; someone else wants me to put something together for something else.  Dinner was a bit late tonight, I've got movies overdue at Blockbuster™ that I've not yet viewed, and as I check on things I realize that I'm falling behind on--or, depending on how you view it, catching up with--my Game Ideas Unlimited series.  That is, each week another one posts, and I try to keep several in the queue so I have time to review them, polish them, prepare them.  Just tonight I added two hundred words to the one that's supposed to be uploaded tomorrow night.  Six months ago, I'd already have sent that article to someone to proofread, and it would have been in its final form at least a week before that.  I need to generate a few articles; but when can I get the time?

  It's not as difficult as it sounds.  I've actually got a list, currently nineteen fragments (not including a couple already finished, and at least one on a scrap of paper on my desk for which I'm trying to remember an important piece).  Each of them could be, or at one time was, an idea for another article.  It's just a matter of getting those fragments to bloom into something worth writing.  I scan the list, and suddenly realize that one of them, an idea I jotted down probably over a year ago and have not yet expanded, is particularly poignant at this instant.  All it says, now at number five on the list, is Opportunity costs.

  For those who don't know, this is a term commonly used in accounting.  I know precious little about accounting, but I once heard an accounting student preach a sermon based on this idea:  everything we do costs us something in terms of what we can't do.  That is, if I have a hundred dollars to invest, and I put it all in Wizards of the Coast, that means I have nothing left to invest in White Wolf.  Every dollar I spend on one thing is a dollar I do not have available to spend on something else.  My financial choices have a hidden cost, a cost in terms of what might have been.  Everyone has to make such choices, even if only in terms of recognizing that having butter on your bread instead of margarine might mean you can't afford jelly.

  The point of the sermon took this into our life decisions.  He particularly said that he needed to invest his life such that in the end he would hear the words, Well done, good and faithful servant.  He noted that there were some things he might do with his life that he might want to do or like to do, but that they were too expensive if they cost him this.  To move it a step away from that focus, opportunity costs mean that if you want to be one particular kind of person, you can't do some things that that kind of person wouldn't do; if you want to have a particular sort of reputation, you can't do certain things that would mar that reputation.  Note that this cuts both ways.  The person who wants to be known as kind and caring can't do something cruel; but the person who wants to be known as tough as nails can't risk being seen as soft.  What we do costs us in terms of whether we are who we want to be.

  I said the idea was particularly poignant at the moment, and I hope you see how.  Opportunity costs impact us in our time.  There is not enough time to do everything; that's given.  We might find a way to have more money, or to conceal information about ourselves that would damage our repuation, and so overcome some of the costs in those areas, but there is no way that any of us can get more time.  In everything we do, we are choosing to do one thing instead of something else.  Those who are particularly organized may be able to arrange their lives such that they manage to do all the things they think important; but that in itself is an acknowledgement of the cost, of the fact that we can't do everything, and must choose to do the things we consider important.

  I note that I am obliged to make dinner every night for my kids; that, and getting them off to school in the morning, are the most fixed, most immutable, of my obligations.  Beyond that, everything is a matter of priorities--well, almost everything.  I might not sleep tonight, but if I don't, I will almost certainly sleep tomorrow, whether or not I would choose to do so.  There are one or two other bodily functions that demand my attention.  Beyond that, everything is ultimately a choice.  You think you have to go to work; in fact, you choose to go to work because the cost of not doing so is too high.  Because you go to work, you don't have that time for other things.  If you did those other things instead, you would lose your income, a cost you can't afford.  I read to my youngest two sons every night, time that could be used to finish my other work sooner.  I believe that there is some return from that; it is worth the time, even though the time could have been used for something else.

  It seems to me that in many of the role playing games I've played, characters have what might be called unlimited resources.  That's not to say that they can have and do whatever they want; rather, they don't usually have to make the particularly tough choices about things.  Once in a while there will be a question of which of two items to buy, or whether to save the money for something you can't yet afford.  But overall this doesn't happen.  I'm reminded of the moment in the Spiderman movie when the Green Goblin tried to force our hero to choose between saving the girl and saving the busload of kids.  That was inherently about opportunity costs.  The villain was attempting to set up a situation in which the hero couldn't save both.  Choices like this are dramatic; they are opportunity costs in stark relief.  Even on a smaller scale, putting characters in a position in which they can't do everything they want to do in the time they have, or they can't afford all the things they think they need, or even that they can't maintain two important principles--such as get the job done quickly and maintain their reputations for integrity--creates a dramatic tension, a critical element in a good story.

  So the next time you find yourself trying to decide whether to buy lunch at McDonald's or save the cash for that game book you wanted, take note that it is decisions of this sort that you want to force on your player characters, to get truly challenging stories.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.