The New Guys Launches to Help Video Game Studios Identify and Reduce Audience Risks

A new audience-risk and narrative-reception consultancy named The New Guys has officially launched to help video game publishers, studios, and investors spot and reduce potential creative and commercial risks before games are revealed, marketed, or released. Founded by Matt Braynard and Joey Snyder-Kloos, the firm focuses on how players, influencers, creators, reviewers, and online communities are likely to respond to a game's narrative, characters, dialogue, visual presentation, marketing copy, and broader audience positioning.

According to Matt Braynard, game companies already invest heavily in quality assurance, localization, user research, and marketing, but too many projects still reach the public with obvious audience-reception problems that could have been identified earlier. The consultancy offers confidential services such as rapid audience-risk screens for trailers, store pages, and scripts, narrative and market-fit audits, executive outside-voice briefings, launch war room monitoring, and greenlight and transaction risk memos.

The company utilizes a methodology called the TNG Audience Risk Index, which evaluates games across factors including player-fantasy integrity, franchise expectation fit, message density, character appeal, representation execution, creator-market vulnerability, community expectation mismatch, regional market fit, and revision feasibility. Co-founder Joey Snyder-Kloos emphasized that the goal is not to flatten creativity or dictate what studios are allowed to make, but rather to help teams understand how their actual audience may interpret creative choices.

The New Guys is particularly focused on two market segments: Western publishers managing studio relationships, and global developers—especially Asian publishers and studios—seeking stronger alignment with North American and European player expectations. The firm's founders bring diverse backgrounds to the endeavor. Matt Braynard is a political strategist, commentator, and published fiction author with a background in psychographic analytics and messaging, while Joey Snyder-Kloos is a gaming industry veteran specializing in player culture, community engagement, and creator ecosystems.

In discussing the need for proactive risk assessment, the founders pointed to recent industry examples where misjudged audience reception led to severe backlash, such as Wildlight's fantasy multiplayer game Highguard. Highguard experienced a swift player count crash following its surprise reveal and rapid launch window, eventually shutting down its servers on March 12. The founders noted that similar reception challenges have historically impacted other major releases, highlighting the importance of identifying and resolving sensitive creative concerns well before players get their hands on a beta or final release.