What would you like to know about your players?

I'm a big fan of a theory called "Jobs to be done" which is all about how to find out why people purchase what they do. Might be useful here.

The idea is to investigate past behavior as an indication of purchase preferences. In traditional product interviews with a potential customer you ask a lot of things like "If it did this, would you buy it?" or "What kinds of features do you like?"

These are all what economists would call "stated preferences" -- what they *say* they want. Instead you should look for "revealed preferences" -- what they actual did.

In this case, the question would be what did you play last and why. Who was there? Walk me through how you guys decided to play that game, what did people say when it was brought out? All these things tell you the forces at work when they actually decided to play a game. If you can see common themes in their choices, this might help determine what kind of people are interested in the game you are selling them and the marketing terms that appeal to that segment.

Haha! The problem with "Do you like my game" is that in Western countries it is considered impolite in most cases to say your idea or creation is bad. So most of the time you get bias toward politeness.

In these cases it might be useful to take them through a past scenario and then spring your idea on them and see their reaction. You want them to remember a real specific past event and relive it.

For example, you say: when was the last time you played a worker placement game?

What did you like about the game? What were the best moments ?

What were some bad moments that happened in the game. How did you feel after playing? How did your friends feel?

Then you could describe your game and it's core mechanics to them: "I'm designing a worker placement game that does this.... And this.... What do you think?"

What you are looking for at that very moment is their emotion. If they say: that's interesting. And then look away or don't seem enthused you might have a hard sell. But if they get excited and say that cool and what if it did this, and what if it did that... You might have a hit (at least an easily marketable idea) on your hands.