Knob
Opportunity cost
You might say: the alternative I cannot take
Opportunity cost is the valuable alternative forgone by committing time, resources or attention to an action. Tune the shared budget and each action's demands, not just its printed price.
- What it does
- Connects local decisions to the wider economy and action schedule.
- Ask
- What else could this same time, money or attention have accomplished?
- Typical
- Set shared resource budget, action cost, occupied time and whether competing actions can overlap.
- Trouble
- Everything can be done at once for free, or an apparent trade-off charges a resource that never runs short.
Connections
- See also: Economy
- See also: Cost curves
Sources
- Tynan Sylvester, Decision-Based Gameplay Design, Difficult Decisions: reload vulnerability, spending priorities and attention
If he leaves the battle, however, his troops will be at a disadvantage and vulnerable, but then again, his better stewardship of his economy may allow him to better reinforce his army
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Opportunity cost" (choice-opportunity-cost) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal