Unless a game has to do with historic or fact-based content, I really don't like the idea of someone who doesn't understand the concept of game design or games in general to give their input. That's basically what a focus group does and as we all know, some of the best products ever made ignore focus groups. This is the problem with games in general. Instead of selling the idea of playing something fun, marketers now want to sell games based on the characters or the story. I think so much of it is ass backwards.
The truth is most game protagonists are shallow and most stories for games suck. This is because the industry doesn't hire actual writers for most games to develop characters or stories, and instead do it themselves. This is why in 2015, one guy is able to annihilate an entire race of aliens by himself. This is why a lot of women are poorly portrayed. I think there's a good solution for all this. Instead of getting an ultra-feminist or a political correctness group to tell developers how to write their characters for the sake of their political agenda, maybe publishers should hire people who are professional writers for books and movies and have them work directly with the game developers. AND maybe, MAYBE marketing should be focused away from the characters and story and more on what makes the game so much fun to play.
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