An Inside look at Focus Testing

[WindKnight]

http://giancarlovolpe.tumblr.com/post/82641459722/a-little-behind-the-scenes-look-of-the-early

Giancarlo Volpe, showrunner of the Green Lantern animated series, put together a comic detailing his experiences with focus testing on the show.

Some interesting items to pick over... for me I found it interesting that the audience seemed to love the show, but the testers decided they found it confusing and frustrating, not to mention how the audience was split into aged groups for boys, with all the girls lumped together for one group.

Also... the general impression I've gotten from people talking about focus testing in games is that they tend to focus exclusively on 12 year old/preteen boys... the age group the comic notes as 'already being 'too cool for school''

 

[Xeorm]

Yea, it's a great example of just how useless getting information can be when you don't ask the right questions or collate it usefully. Which is unfortunate, because focus groups are widely used, and yet give only bad information (or more accurately the people deciding things interpret badly)the majority of time.