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Levine: Developers should avoid focus groups
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 31st July 2008
Ken Levine worked as a designer on System Shock, Thief and BioShock.
Speaking at the conference, Levine said that focus groups often struggle to see the whole view of a game at the early stages and that there had been issues with groups testing BioShock as nobody wanted to play a game in an underwater objectivist utopia.
Levine also drew on examples from his time spent with Looking Glass Studios, where he helped design the first Thief games - famous for flying in the face of traditional gaming conventions.
"Here was a game where you had a sword and a bow and arrow, and you had to hide under a dresser for half an hour... It's not exactly saying, rev up the focus group, they're going to love this," said Levine.
"We had people going to focus test groups and asking, 'Would you like more weapons or less weapons?'" - the answer was obvious, of course, yet the entire point of the game was to provide a sense of vulnerability.
"Marketing people have really improved their methods, and it's much more sophisticated now, but you can still get some really bad data out of these things."
If you could have changed BioShock then what would you have done to make the game more enjoyable? Let us know in the forums.
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Didn't get to see anyone nearly as cool as the Bioshock crew though. :'(
Either way, he's probably right. Without having something to actually play with, many people would struggle to know what they liked/disliked about a game.
Remove all the Cockneys.
Lol.
No consolification.
make system shock 3!
Agreed.
Definitely
I think a visit here may well open his eyes.
Cockneys, Working Class Londoners with a very distinct Accent and Dialect.
Yeah, that was dumb.. Not much fun.
On the other hand, Valve's willingness to toss whole portions of an already developed gamed into the beta stage shows that this may be what it takes to deliver a good product.
They make delicious cheesecake which we sell at the place I work; one day a police officer asked me where we get our cheesecake from i told him the cheesecake factory and he thought i was being a smartass but i told him there exists such a place.
... Or have the courage of you convictions and produce a game that fulfils your vision.
I gotta get me some cheesecake...
I know that - I was born within the sound of Bow Bells myself - I just didn't happen to notice any in the game!
Well, plenty of other people did. :D
+1!