In our new series, Exploring Industries, we’re branching out from the spaces we all normally associate with consumer insights to investigate the ways testing in the wild fits into perhaps unexpected places in unexpected ways. In our first installment, we’re exploring the gaming industry!
In an industry where a single game can cost millions before players even click “Start,” every early decision carries weight. Rising development costs and a crowded market mean one wrong move can sink even the most promising project.
Gaming faces the same modern constraints
Today’s game developers face a familiar paradox: Players want something fresh and innovative, while publishers want predictable returns on investment.
With development costs climbing and competition becoming more saturated, the pressure to make the right calls in early stages of development has never been greater.
The cost of getting it wrong? Millions of dollars in development resources, countless hours of creative effort, and – perhaps most importantly – the erosion of player trust.
The last one is hardest to win back, and once it’s gone, revenue potential tanks. Players have grown increasingly weary of copycat games and profit-driven design, and they’re vocal about it. A launch that feels like a cash grab gets called out in reviews, picked apart by gaming influencers in front of thousands of followers, and remembered by communities long after the patch notes.
That creates real tension between everyone involved: publishers chasing safe bets, developers protecting their creative vision, influencers shaping the conversation, and the players it all depends on. And when trust breaks, the damage doesn’t stop at one game. Players bring that skepticism to whatever the studio makes next.
Developers need a new approach to validate their creative visions before committing substantial resources. One that starts with what players actually want.
The gaming industry needs a market research reset
Traditionally, market research in gaming heavily relies on historical data, social listening on apps like Reddit and Discord, focus groups, and community feedback.
But here’s the problem: past successes don’t predict future hits. Historical data and forum scraping tells you what players are reacting to; what they say they’re doing right now and what they think they need. It doesn’t find what kinds of ideas are going to break through and create some excitement.
That’s the say-do gap: the difference between what players say they want and what they actually engage with.
It’s a common obstacle in gaming: A Discord poll calls for an enhanced building system. A Reddit thread says they’re tired of the farm sim genre. A focus group says they love the studio’s art direction. Then the game launches, and players behave differently from how they said they would.
Nobody’s lying. When you ask players what they want, they might answer aspirationally, or as the player as they’d like to be: the one who has time for a 60-hour story and a complex building system. Community spaces also amplify that effect. Discord servers, subreddits, and forums are great for building a fanbase, but they’re also echo chambers. The most engaged players speak up, and it’s easy to mistake the loudest voices for the whole market.
Close the gap before the build
The best way to close the say-do gap is to stop asking players what they want and start watching what they do, before you commit to building anything.
Take the game Grave Seasons for example: Farming sims had become so oversaturated that players were openly calling the genre stale. Then, a murder mystery farming sim had a breakout moment on TikTok with less than 27 seconds of gameplay footage, and players were begging for more content.
It was a passion project, made by a studio with niche interests in horror and farming sims who thought, “What if we blend the two?” And it was well received.
What if every decision you make for your game could be safely backed by what players respond to?
In an industry so broad-reaching and strongly tied to emotion, there’s endless opportunity for building dedicated niche audiences, filling underserved gaps, innovating on tried and true genres, and tapping into nostalgia.
That’s what Orchard does. We take your ideas, build creative and messaging around them, and test them in the wild, in the social feeds where players already scroll and make decisions. Players don’t know they’re being tested, and that’s what makes this approach so effective. In the Seed stage, test which ideas spark interest before anything gets built. Then Shape the idea by testing what makes it stand out, like art style, story hooks, and mechanics. Before launch, Activate it by testing trailers, key art, and messaging so you go to market with what’s proven to pull players in.
