More Wisdom from Sterling: Just substitute "Focus Groups" for "Playtest Groups"

Fair warning! Jim Sterling can either be hysterically amusing or banally irritating with his videocast personality, depending on your tastes. Don't let his persona get in the way of sound wisdom. This video talks about the problems in the video game industry with focus groups changing the style and direction of a game, and subsequently wrecking the title as a result because what a focus group says it likes and what those people actually like are far too often very different things.

I think there's more than a nugget of truth here and I also think if you substitute "playtest groups" or "survey groups" for "focus groups" you get some eerily predictive results on the way development for D&D Next is going. And keep in mind I'm enjoying the D&D Next playtest at this moment, but not without the caveat that the game is nowhere near being competitive enough to usurp my continued dedication to Pathfinder.

EDIT: Hey, Escapist, turn off aut-play in your embedded script!

Here's a link to the site instead, since I HATE videos that start playing automatically.

Anyway....something to think about with regards to both the video game industry and the implications of what's happening with DDN. The similarities are a bit too close for comfort, I think. My hope is that the analogy is ultimately faulty....that a playtest group, and the people responding to WotC's surveys are actually more involved and more representative of the overall gaming crowd for D&D. I am pretty sure a very small percentage of people are actually playtesting DDN, while the rest act out and cast judgement after a quick read-through of each packet--if that--or sit around armchair designing with spherical cows all day long.

Jim Sterling Speaks the Truth about Preorders

Thank god for Jim!

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Previewed, Preordered, Prescrewed

I pre-ordered Aliens: Colonial Marines (on the PC, which seemed to have fewer issues than the console version), and while I wasn't as traumatized by it as many were and even enjoyed the single player campaign, although the multiplayer remains inaccessible for me, I also didn't spend as much on it as I could, having bought it on sale at Green Man for about $30. On the other hand, I've also got the Season Pass for A:CM as part of the deal, and to be honest, I don't see it being useful to me know, since either the game is bugged and won't let me get into multiplayer, or there's simply no one playing it. It's AvP all over again, but with atrocious bad press.

But know what? I also preordered Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3. And Both of those games were already selling for $40 at Origin recently, and elsewhere. These are both games I will or am enjoying, albeit with less time recently to devote to playing them (what with saturating myself with PS3 titles and such), so I am reminded, once again, of why one should never, ever buy any games that aren't part of a huge Steam sale...or one of the many emulation sales by Steam's competitors.

Either way, Jim is right: we need to stop preordering, stop buying season passes without hard evidence the game's worth it, and try to assuage the game industry from engaging in these abusive marketing tactics.