Please, enlighten me good sir. Tell me, at what point in the development do game companies hold focus groups? Also, how much info do they give the participants? How would they present the information? Finally, how diverse would the participants be?
Here's my thoughts on it while you school me in the art of marketing. Do you believe that bungie had a focus group play the whole campaign very late in the cycle of development and ask what thoughts were on the story? (When it would have been too late to make any drastic changes) Or would it have been more likely that early on they story boarded the game as a whole and asked what was thought about it? (Which would sound pretty good depending on how they told it)
I watched the alpha and played the beta. Honestly even doing that, I was intrigued with the world of destiny. As a focus group participant, I'm sure I would have felt the same way, especially with less information. I severely doubt they sat everyone down and said "yeah, the whole story is gonna be on cards you have to read, while a narrator says stuff during the game. Whatcha think about that?"
Focus groups (while they can be helpful) are so biased sometimes based on what company does it, what they are asking about, how they present it, and who participates; that they are usually not the most helpful way to make major alterations in the way a games development is handled.
Tl;dr - I don't think you know as much about focus groups as you think you do. Especially not enough to be calling people ignorant.
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I have my BBA with Honors and a Law Degree but my post secondary education must be failing me on the simplest of concepts since I clearly know nothing about focus groups! You sitting there making guesses on how the development came to be, is well just that, a guess. The point I was trying to make was that some very simple marketing knowledge and concepts would have helped the story develop beyond the pile that it is now. I also pointed out they lost half their staff which would also hurt production. I'm not going to argue with some random kid in his first year of business admin courses .. I get paid too much to argue so no point in wasting the efforts here. Bottom line. The story/Grimoire or however you get the storyline is severely lacking. A game with a 10 year plan should have started a little stronger. That's all - happy gaming!