You seem to agree on the point that dedicated fans of the genre are a better source of feedback than casual audience.

Originally Posted by KillerRabbit
Of course you have sampling bias on any forum -- that much is obvious. But how is biased? It's biased because you only sample the most dedicated fans of the genre. The question then becomes whether or not that is bad group to poll. Clearly you think it is but I really don't -- those fans understand the genre best and they will do the best job of spreading the word about the finished product.


Originally Posted by Tuco
It's just a matter of fact across all genres and styles: the general, casual audience has nothing more than casual expectations.
Give them a neat package, production vaue with enough polish, and they will never question the minute details of what you are selling them, if not months later in hindsight.

Of course, you two are purposefully putting it in the most unlikable way, as if being "causal" about something was some sort of shame or mark of infamy, but that's disingenuous, because it's meant to be a generic consideration, not a qualitative judgement.
I don't really blame people who aren't that much into a topic for not being able to make distinctions on nuance, but that doesn't make that nuance meaningless.

I mean, I can't understand shit about motors, I don't see why MY opinion about what's the best motorcycle on the market and what feature it should offer should be valued above the one of an expert in that field.

EDIT- Oh well, look at that, I didn't even remember we basically had this very same topic discussed in the first page of this same thread. So, there's that too.


And I'd agree with that. Tuco gave a good example.

It's not useless to hear what "the masses" say - casual players can point towards certain problem areas perfectly well ("I'm not enjoying this part of the game" - maybe worth a look). But casual audience won't give you detailed feedback, won't try to carefully analyse the source of the problem and won't suggest (potentially) viable solutions. There's also the matter of "good enough". A casual player is likely to say "it's good as it is", while a veteran of the genre might go "yeah, it's good, but this and that part could be improved; game A used approach X and I think it could work in this game as well".