Will Wright: I Distrust Focus Groups
- Scribbled on June 4th, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Interviews, Off Topic
Will Wright stated in a seminar what every artist thinks: focus groups stink.
“That’s when I learned not to trust focus groups,” says Wright. “I’m more suspicious when somebody says, ‘That’s a great idea!’ than when they start pushing back and say, ‘That’s a horrible idea!’, because if they say it’s a horrible idea, then I know it’s unexplored territory.”
The problem with focus groups are many, most of all is that the new scares them. What focus groups want are the safe and the familiar. When you try to please everyone, you end up with Poochie the Dog: an amalgam of bland, tired cliches and no innovation. The old adage says too many cooks spoil the broth; it’s even worse when the “cooks” only care about Cheetos and Coca-Cola.
A good example of this is SimCity: a game in which all you do is zone regions? There’s no win conditions? The publisher forced Wright to include scenarios in the game – and those were the least popular of the game.
(Thanks, Spong.)
June 5th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I wish people would stop claiming focus groups do this or focus groups do that. Focus groups are a neutral methodology. What moderators do with them varies and what clients make of them also varies. And in my experience groups are as responsive to the new as they are to the old – usually depending on how it’s presented.