Silent Mock Reviews: Predicting Media Response to Your Game

The success of a video game depends on many factors: the quality of the game itself, catchy ideas, great atmosphere, style, and fun gameplay—as well as the promise the title holds for players. Marketing, PR efforts, and all the buzz leading up to a game’s release play a big role in shaping how players perceive it. Yet, one of the most crucial factors influencing its reception is the reviews and scores it earns in gaming media. This is where a silent review can really come in handy.

The Moment of Truth

The critical moment for a game comes when the embargo lifts and reviews start rolling in, or in the first days after launch. This often happens during the final stretch of production, known as “crunch.” At the stage, when developers are pushing to finalize the game and prepare the day-one patch.

At this stage, creators track two things: whether sales are meeting expectations and how the media responds. Will the game earn a green score on Metacritic? Yellow? Or worse, the dreaded red—dashing hopes of world domination and leaving the team stunned, like a bucket of cold water to the face.

It’s tough to know what really matters after spending years “inside the box,” working on and fine-tuning your game.

To improve your chances, you could take a page from Sun Tzu’s playbook.  “He will win who prepared himself” and “engage people with what they expect.” It might seem unexpected to bring up The Art of War in the context of video game development. However, this advice actually makes a lot of sense. Doing solid industry research can help you. It gives you a sense of how much of the market you can capture, based on factors like release timing, competition, and pricing.

But no amount of research can fully predict how new ideas, gameplay, or mechanics will land. The best way to know is through playtesting—ideally with outside help. This allows you to see how gamers respond to your concepts. You can also understand how they perceive the mechanics and how they connect with the visuals.

This approach helps secure player reception, but what about predicting media scores and reviews? You can’t just rely on in-house efforts and guesswork. The good news is, there’s more you can do than just wait for day one and hope for the best. There are steps you can take that could help prevent PR disasters before they even happen.

When It’s Too Late to Act: Why You Need Silent Reviews Early On

Developers and publishers get feedback from both the media and players, but they can usually only use it to improve future projects or create patches for minor issues in the current game. Typically, developers focus on patches or DLC only after the game launches. By that point, the initial impression is set, and it’s hard to shake. Even if the game had great potential and seemed promising, a rough launch can make it hard for it to recover and reach its full potential.

How Silent Reviews Can Be Your Prophecy

What if you had all the information—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—delivered to you as a developer or publisher before your game even launched? Imagine being able to review this data early enough to make adjustments and improve the game. With this knowledge, it would be possible.

When it comes to the media, you only get one shot. Your game only lives once.

You could always add extra content or fix bugs later, but chances are, the media won’t give it the attention it deserves. At best, it might get a quick mention, lost in a flood of similar updates every month. What really matters is what you deliver on day one, especially without a day-one patch. That’s what people will judge and remember, particularly in digital media, which never forgets.

So, is there anything you can do? Actually, yes.

Have you heard of “silent/mock reviews”?

If not, it’s because they’re literally silent—bound by NDAs and never published. They’re similar to the classic reviews you see on gaming sites and in magazines. However, they are based on work-in-progress code rather than the final version. Silent reviews happen well before you send out the review code. This gives you the chance to gather feedback from journalists and experts early on. This lets you prepare for the launch and make meaningful changes to the game based on their insights.

Friends as Prophets?

If you have some gaming journalist friends, you might consider setting up a round of silent, mock reviews to get their feedback.

While this could be helpful, remember that their opinions might reflect personal bias. Knowing you, they might let the desire to maintain a good relationship or expectations for future collaboration influence their judgment. This kind of social bias can lead to reviews that are either too generous or unnecessarily harsh, depending on their personal feelings towards you. In this way, friends might offer evaluations that reflect their relationship with you rather than the true merit of the game itself.

Even if reviewers are aware of these social dynamics and personal motivations, this awareness doesn’t completely eliminate bias. Instead, it highlights its complexity, as reviewers may, whether consciously or unconsciously, allow their personal feelings to influence their assessments.

What’s even more important is that, by relying on this strategy, you’re only getting feedback from local journalists. This limits the diversity of perspectives you’ll receive, which could be a problem if you’re aiming for a broader understanding of your game’s reception.

Silent Reviews as Professional Prophecies

The second way to get the “prophecy” is to outsource the process to a professional company that provides Silent Reviews for the gaming industry. These experts leverage their connections in the media and access to journalists from around the world. They will select the right experts based on your game’s genre and arrange for them to review it.

In a matter of weeks—typically 2-4 weeks, depending on the length of your game—you could receive a comprehensive action report. This report will include an in-depth analysis and an executive summary. Strengths and opportunities for further development will be highlighted, as well as weaknesses and potential threats you can still address. Since the report is based on multiple opinions, you’ll get a detailed analysis of the pros and cons that the media is likely to highlight. You’ll also receive suggestions on how to overcome challenges or make the most of your strengths.

The report will also include the predicted average Metascore for your game, as well as practical insights for development and communication to help you secure higher ratings.

With such a silent review you will have a chance to adjust your last stage of development to win on Day One. Sometimes, small tweaks can make a huge difference in how your game is received. Plus, critical issues aren’t always about the game itself; they can also stem from its marketing communication. If you make a promise about your game and fail to deliver, it can be seen as misleading by gamers and damage your reputation.

Prevent Overpromises: The No Man’s Sky Case

One of the most fitting examples is No Man’s Sky (Hello Games). Its developer was even sued for false advertising after failing to deliver several features promised at launch. The gap between what was promised and what was actually delivered was disastrous. At launch, No Man’s Sky topped the online player charts but nearly vanished as an online game within weeks.

Promise something you can’t deliver at launch, and the consequences can be devastating—and, in most cases, irreversible. As Engadget puts it, “We’re living in a post-No Man’s Sky world now, and rather than release something that doesn’t live up to expectations, developers are keen to keep their projects in the oven longer.” Remember the words of Shigeru Miyamoto:

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.

Listen and Focus: Ready, Aim, Fire!