Focus Group Responses (1)

General Observations
There is a wide range of understand in this group when it come to what a serious game actually is and I believe everyones individual understanding of this is dramatically affecting their answers.

1. What do you think of the game so far? Would you play it?
Everyone in the target audience said they would be willing to try out the game. However there were a few who doubted that they would get into it or play it, simply because they do not think they would be interested in improving their fitness. I was interested to see that one person felt that the game would take up too much of their free time and though that it sound like something that was more catered for people who are into going to the gym and are into gaming. I then emailed this person back to ask why she thought that and I pitched a scenario to her involving the iPaq and her daily life, she then responded by saying if she had a free iPaq with Fitness Freaks on it, she would probably find ways to slightly change her habits so her character could get more exercise. There was a large percentage of the target group who were very excited about the game and who are looking forward to testing it out.


2. As far as characters go, would you prefer to see an avatar with a
photo of your face on it or would you prefer for it to just be a cartoon that you can
customize?
For this most the group actually said they would prefer to have a cartoon that you can customize, however many of them also mentioned the fact that if it was their own photo then the character would become more personal and the game would be more serious for them. Which is what we are trying to achieve.


3. Would you prefer the game to have some kind of story line?
For this question, almost every one in the target audience emailed me back with a question on how we would do the story line. In the end all of them bar one said a storyline would be good as it would make it more fun and so would draw you into the game more; it would also link everything together rather then simply a disconnected set of challenges, one person mentioned that a story line will help a lot by making the game more fun and there for it would seam less like actually working out. Another person in the target audience also mentioned the idea of the story being sort of like a 'pick a path' one, their reasoning for this was so if you clocked the game the next time you went to play it, it would not be exactly the same.