To reiterate:
- They're braids, not dreadlocks.
- Focus testing is ubiquitous and done on nearly every product and piece of marketing you can think of, from movie posters to snack food to political candidates. They're not some special team you go to when you want opinions on something like a female or minority protagonist.
- Focus testing is not "bad". It doesn't "ruin the developer's vision". It's feedback. The choice to change anything remains with the developer.
- Focus testing is vital because people are launching products and they have no idea how they will be received. It's a huge investment and they have to reduce risk.
Yea... If some of you think developers themselves don't bring people in early on projects for both focus and play testing fairly often, you're only kidding yourself.
That's on top of what marketing will do once a product is closer to market. Dev's do it to make a product and marketing does it to position the product.
It's just kind of a weird thing to bring up in an interview... But it's NOT a weird thing to do.
Especially when financial investment is so high, lots of jobs on the line and ROI for focus testing is almost always worth the low spends. Up to the stakeholders to decide what and what not to implement though.... It's silly to NOT get consumer data.
And yes having female leads in big budget games is still very often considered a risk. Not that it isn't financially viable... Just that it's an added risk. So it's good they are testing the market reception for it to support or discredit their decisions to make the best possible product.