3DVelocity have bagged themselves an interview with Futuremark:

How can you ever hope to convince people that results from a synthetic benchmark are as valid as those from a "real" retail games title? The stock quote the keeps appearing is that "people play games, not benchmarks". Tero: While it is true that people play games and not benchmarks, it really does not mean that only games can be used as benchmarks! Both games and synthetic applications can be designed well or poorly to serve as a benchmark. You really have to determine these case by case.