Way too complicated..please help advise

[mokap25]

The Action-Packed Gaming Company, based on the success of the previous season’s video game featuring the character Sam Li, of the popular Fist of Awe series of martial arts movies, developed for the current season a similar martial arts game featuring a new character who is also a martial arts master. The new game had improved 3-D graphics, enhanced multiplayer capability, and dozens of new martial arts moves developed by real-life masters. However, marketing surveys showed that teenagers were uninterested in this new game, and the game sold very poorly.

The passage implies that an explanation for the failure of the new game is based on doubt regarding which of the following assumptions?


Teenagers make purchasing decisions based on the technological merits of video games, not the name recognition of the games’ main characters.
Buyers of video games prefer to purchase games based on popular movies.
The Fist of Awe series of movies was extremely popular with teenagers who regularly purchase video games.
Technological improvement from one video game to the next does not guarantee a corresponding increase in sales.
The successful video game may have benefited from advertising associated with the Fist of Awe movies, a benefit the failed video game did not have.


OA follows

...


OA is A.



I did not understand the question stem itself! seemed so wordy and complicated. Can someone help explain the stem and the answer and do we see questions like this on the GMAT??

I thought the answer was B...this seemed way too tough

Thanks
Kaps

[george.kourdin]

hey mokap...i'll try to answer your questions inline

The Action-Packed Gaming Company, based on the success of the previous season’s video game featuring the character Sam Li, of the popular Fist of Awe series of martial arts movies, developed for the current season a similar martial arts game featuring a new character who is also a martial arts master. The new game had improved 3-D graphics, enhanced multiplayer capability, and dozens of new martial arts moves developed by real-life masters. However, marketing surveys showed that teenagers were uninterested in this new game, and the game sold very poorly.

the passage is saying that a new game was made. this game was based on the success of the previous game (read - previous game was successful). new game had similar theme (martial arts) and a bunch of enhanced tech/video gaming features. the only meaningful difference was that this new game did not feature that exact same character that was featured in the previous game. new game was not successful.

thus we have old game (game A) that was successful and new game (game B), which was arguably superior to the new game in every gaming aspect and had all the bells and whistles that would appear to the gamer, however, it did not feature the same character that game A did.

The passage implies that an explanation for the failure of the new game is based on doubt regarding which of the following assumptions?


okay - based on what we just established above, what is the key difference between games A and B? what assumption did the firm that create the game make? they made a game that was in many aspects "superior" to its predecessor and mimicked the genre (martial arts), however, they main character in the game was different. Is it possible that they assumed that consumers value all the features that were added to the game more than the actual character?

Teenagers make purchasing decisions based on the technological merits of video games, not the name recognition of the games’ main characters.
seems logical/reasonable. even if we didn't prephrase this as an answer, this should be a strong contender in our mind. if the video game makers did think this, this would explain why they decided to beef up the new game with all these features and didn't think to include the original character.

Buyers of video games prefer to purchase games based on popular movies.

does the argument have anything to do with movies? it has to do with video games and two editions of the same game. this is irrelevant/out of scope

The Fist of Awe series of movies was extremely popular with teenagers who regularly purchase video games.
again - its great that it was popular, but this is irrelevant and is by no means a critical assumptions needed for the argument of the video game makers to hold

Technological improvement from one video game to the next does not guarantee a corresponding increase in sales.
well if they made this assumption than they definitely need to loose their jobs because they proceeded to do the exact opposite of what they assumed/believed

The successful video game may have benefited from advertising associated with the Fist of Awe movies, a benefit the failed video game did not have.
again irrelevant and out of scope


my 2 cents is that once you read the argument, the key difference between the two video games (the character) should be the sign/key to the answer and we should be looking for an answer choice that somehow relates to the hero....
OA follows

...


OA is A.



I did not understand the question stem itself! seemed so wordy and complicated. while i certainly think that some of the rc/cr stuff is wordy/complicated, this one isn't it. i'll let someone more knowledgeable chime in, but i reckon that this question is roughly 500ish level difficult. its just too face up.....and questions like these will definitely appear on the gmatCan someone help explain the stem and the answer and do we see questions like this on the GMAT??

I thought the answer was B...this seemed way too tough

Thanks
Kaps

[jnelson0612]

Thank you George! That is a good and comprehensive explanation.

[kaankoc89]

deleted by moderator JNelson

Please be aware that I had to delete your post because of the profanity it contained, which is not allowed per forum rules: read-before-you-post-mgmat-cat-verbal-guidelines-t2724.html

[jnelson0612]

Please let us know if there are further questions.

[vijay19839]

The passage implies that an explanation for the failure of the new game is based on doubt regarding which of the following assumptions?

I am still not clear on what this question means. Can MGMAT Instructor please clarify what this question means? It was very difficult to decode these kind of question stems in the exam under time pressure.

[tim]

it's basically asking which one of these assumptions DOESN'T help us understand the conclusion. essentially what we have here is an assumptions question, but the word "doubt" means we're actually looking for the opposite of what we usually do in assumptions questions..

[michaelbrettgonzalez]

Hey Tim and Jamie

I have read and re-read the question... "The passage implies that an explanation for the failure of the new game is based on doubt regarding which of the following assumptions?"

If the question had read "what bad assumption was made by the maker of the video game?" there is not doubt in my mind that I would have gotten it right on the first try. The way it is phrased, however, still drives me a little crazy and is so confusing that if I get something like this on the real GMAT I'm not sure I'd do much better.

Any advice on mastering the intentionally confusing questions in CR?

Mike

[tim]

Other than just paying careful attention to the wording and making sure to trace out the logic exactly? :) I've found one technique that works on occasion: Regardless of which direction (positive vs. negative, strengthen vs. weaken, company A vs. company B) the question is asking you to go, if you can set up a dichotomy and put four answer choices on one side and one on the other, you have your answer. Try it sometime! You might start with OG13 #102, which is in our curriculum for week 8 and which I always teach this way.

[michaelbrettgonzalez]

Thanks Tim - I do find that helpful. I'm going to call it the "one of these things is not like the other" approach.

[tim]

ROFL that's exactly what I call it in class! :)

[JbhB682]

Hi - can any of the experts confirm if this question is perhaps reviewed through on of the Ron Purewal video's (Thursdays with Ron? )

Those video's are very detailed and i think this questions requires just that

please assist !

jd

[kin_poon]

I think the question can be rephrased as follows: The passage implies that an explanation for the anticipated success of the new game is based on which of the following assumptions?

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Nice thinking: the key to this problem is to untangle the confusing question. I think your rephrase is useful, except for the word 'explanation'. Usually we use the word explanation in relation to something that's already true, such as, here, the failure of the game. I might offer this rephrase of the question: People who thought that the new video game would be successful may have made which of the following assumptions?