I occasionally get paid to take part in research focus groups where you discuss consumer products in front of a one-way mirror and tonight I'm getting called in to talk about video games, specifically fighting games.

As part of the screening interview via phone they asked me if I owned any from a list of fighting games and I told them I owned Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance so i guess I'll be talking about that game for the X-Box.

I'll let you know how it goes (happens an hour and a half from now). Woo hoo!

Cool stuff

you're lucky. Good for you.

I've done a few of these too, they're never for any games I'm interested in, howver they did pay like 80 bucks cash for 2 hours I believe..

I wouldn't mind 80 bucks for two hours work.

I wouldnt call discussing video games work. We do that here daily and dont get paid for it

Just a reminder that you sign a confidential agreement for such things. I am not sure if they monitor such things but i would just keep quiet about it. Just my opinion.

Damn you to hell.

Hmmm, I didn't sign a confidentiality agreement... but it DEFINITELY wasn't work. Getting paid to talk about a video game for an hour was the opposite of work!

I guess just to be on the safe side I won't discuss too much details, but I'd have to say this was a great hour. There were 8 guys in the room and we were all owners of MK: DA across platforms. We talked about what we like, what we didn't like, who our favorite character was, what we could improve upon the game, and most important what we'd like to see changed or improved in the next Mortal Kombat, and if we'd buy the next MK game.

Next time I do it I'm going to ask in advance what you guys think about a game and I'll bring that info to the table.

How did you get involved in one of these? Can anyone do this?

The ones I did, it was some service that I called and did a profile for. Then I got called to do various things, some video game related, some things related to tech devices such as pocket pc etc.. I haven't heard from then in over 6 months though.. I'll have to see if I can't find te contact I had for the chicagoland area..

Check craigslist.com, they post things like this frequently.

Hopefully somebody suggested that if they add a quest on the next MK game, to actually make it a quest, and not just combo training disguised as quest.

Actually the Konquest mode was well-received by the group, it was a good way for people to learn the moves.

Someone suggested that MK move towards having a tag-style format where 4 players can get involved and I thought it would be great if you can pull off a two-player team fatality where both players have to do a code in order to pull it off.

Everyone pretty much hated that there was just one fatality per character.

My auto insurance company called me and asked if I wanted to participate in one of these things, and it just went from there.

And make sure to put craigslist.com instead of craiglist.com, which is a page full of sex links (thankfully no pics )