It’s no secret that a review can make or break the early launch of a game – lots of early and continued positivity will continue to drive new players to the title and build on an early success, whereas a few negative responses can hold a game in its tracks before it even has a chance to grow – and there are a huge number of case studies for this.
One of the most notorious examples will probably be within the hugely anticipated No Man’s Sky – with huge promises of procedurally generated worlds and a massive expansive universe for plenty of travel and diversity, the developers had seemingly aimed to overdeliver on what they had and the release went differently than they had hoped – a hugely negative response to the game saw a huge influx of refund requests and had went a long way to make many distrust the studio – along with a slew of poor responses in video interviews, the game was pretty much dead on arrival. It has since recovered, a number of very positive updates and genuine feedback from the developers saw a turnaround, but the launch was anything other than perfect.
The opposite is true for a very recent title that took the summer by storm – Fall Guys. There had been initial server errors due to the huge number of players alongside an early cheater problem, but with a very communicative team and a huge list of overwhelmingly positive reviews from day one, the game was able to experience a meteoric rise throughout the summer and has many choosing it as one of the best titles to release this year showing just how strong positive reviews and good marketing can push a title forward.
The need for good reviews is particularly important in games that may be less visible to an audience, the lockdown and pandemic period has seen the huge rise in other genres such as online mobile casinos but given the lack of representation in app stores or marketplaces, reviews need to be as visible as possible – here is the red lion casino review which provides a great example of how visibility and a good review can get a new title off the ground too, and when these reviews come from external sources or customer feedback it makes the approach much easier for new players as they feel the game can be trusted.
With a growing number of sources through social media and review sites, it’s becoming increasingly important to make a good first impression – even a little hiccup early on and you have a list of tweets and a number of videos outlining where the problems are and it can be hard to sway the minds of those who’ve seen something negative early, and with a changing landscape that have many players sceptical of trying something without first seeing feedback is making it more difficult to get players onboard to test just through seeing a title in a list – winning early is winning big, and positive reviews have become a vital part of that equation.
