🚀 go-pugleaf

Larry Phillips comments are on the mark here. To put it more succinctly :

When a professional developer (someone who will sell the results of
their work for money) decides to develop a product they will have to
make many design decisions that affect the final outcome. A good
sampling of the types of design decisions that have to be made when
developing a game were posted by Mikko.  The ultimate answer is that
each decision will have one of three effects on the final product :
fewer will buy it, none, more will buy it.  Determining which of these
effects it will have is a VERY difficult job. To make such decisions a
developer can do a market survey such as Mikko did and ask for open
ended feedback. This is really only effective when the developer has a
good idea of the background of the people who are responding to the
survey. The reason the background is needed is that the effect will
vary depending on the "type" of customer. Decision A may have the
effect that more "professional" users of Amigas will buy the product
but fewer "student" users will.  The key is to figure out the aggregate
change of buyers, either positive or negative. This is what a good
marketing person can do. A good marketing person is as good as gold,
a bad one can bankrupt you in a hurry. If you are a one person shop
(does the back of your "President" business card read "Janitor" ? :-)
then you have to do both jobs. The danger is assuming that because you
are a damn good developer, you are also a damn good marketeer. There
are different skill sets involved. I spent a year here at Sun working 
very closely with the Product Marketing group and learned a _lot_ .
Prior to that I thought of Marketeers as glorified combination Public 
Relations/Salesperson types.


--
--Chuck McManis						    Sun Microsystems
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: <none>   Internet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"I tell you this parrot is bleeding deceased!"