Entitled said:
I think, in a certain sense, the online community circlejerk also has it's own social desirability demands.
What do *you* want from games? "Innovation" seems to be a popular demand, that makes us all sound refined and knowledgeable, but it's one of those cases where the word ounds good on paper, but in practice, most of us would rather play a comfortably familiar genre with nicely fine-tuned mechanics, and slightly curious setting, than something with no familiarity at all.
I'd say that's right enough. We all want "innovation", but what innovations do we actually want?
Listen to those crickets, man. They be chirpin' pretty hard.
Innovation is a vague concept to most gamers, like the concept of "more" in Disney movies, as dreamt of by the incumbent Disney Princess of the moment. We want innovation because like it or not, there's a certain amount of habituation to our hobby, and we don't want to be essentially replaying the same old shit over and over. The thing is, most gamers know about jack shit in terms of game theory or narratology, so they're stuck hoping and being unable to formulate coherent wants and needs.
So what do you do to try and fit in, during a focus group? You blindly agree. Oh yeah, a cover system. Oh yeah, make it gritty; I'm maybe sure I'll possibly like that, but I can't voice my lack of certainty because we're all here for the donuts and coffee and easy 200$! Yes, make the protagonist a brown-haired male! I mean, uh, Call of Duty, right? Wanting a game to be like CoD is good, right?
Right?
Nope. Focus groups aren't the problem, the problem is that people who participate in focus groups are afraid to speak their minds. As soon as you're stuck in a group of people, fear of ridicule becomes a factor. If there's a *single* Brown FPS player in the room, you can be absolutely fucking certain that everyone else in the group will try and pander to his tastes, because *he* embodies the statistical hardcore gamer. *He* is the one guy who needs to be sold on the premise at all costs.
There's a science to making things fun to play with, and ideally, if the gaming industry wants to keep expanding, it'll have to create a generation of educated gamers who are far less passive. I'm not saying we all need to be NeoGAF or GamesIndustry fanatics, but staying in the realm of casual interest means you won't be able to contribute to any serious games-related debate. Playing does naturally impart some basic game theory tidbits, but the end result is still a gaggle of neophytes who can't really design coherent mechanics for shits and giggles.
That, I think, is the real problem. Gamers need to be educated. That way, our preferences and what we'll mention as advantageous aspects in focus groups will expand.