How It Works
Games research, rebuilt as technology.
This isn't a wrapper around an LLM, or a dashboard sitting on third-party data. It's a games-specific research and decision system, built from the ground up.
How Critical Compass Works
From an idea on a napkin to post-launch recovery, Critical Compass can support decisions at every stage of development.
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1.You send what you have
Send us your materials. This could be a GDD, a pitch deck, or even just a concept and some questions. The more you provide, the stronger the output report.
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2.Critical Compass builds the evidence around your game
Our system establishes the game’s competitive context, player expectations, product requirements and commercial landscape using proprietary research, first-party datasets and purpose-built analysis.
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3.Experts review, challenge, and compile the findings
Our team reviews the system’s conclusions, tests the evidence, resolves ambiguity and applies expert judgement before anything reaches you.
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4.You receive a clear, directional report.
You receive a complete report with findings, graphs and answers, with clear actionable paths to help you validate decisions, avoid risks, and give your game the best possible shot at success.
Receiving real-time market data and game insights from Critical Compass was pivotal in advancing our publishing partnership with Focus Entertainment. Their tireless support was essential in making this collaboration a reality.
Uppercut Games
We're fast, accurate, and affordable.
We truly believe that access to quality decision support shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. We also see advice drenched in opinion, or misread signals. You shouldn't have to slash your development budget for objective peace of mind. People rely on Critical Compass for advice they can trust, at a price they can afford.
Turnaround time
Critical Compass
2 - 5 days
Traditional Consultants
3 - 6 weeks
Price
Critical Compass
Starting at $5,000
Traditional Consultants
$50,000 - $1,000,000+
Industry focus
Critical Compass
100% games industry
Traditional Consultants
Broad and non-specialised
Work ethics
Critical Compass
System powered + Industry Expert-reviewed
Traditional Consultants
Manual and Vulnerable to mistakes
Data use
Critical Compass
Secure with no cross-training
Traditional Consultants
Questionable
| Critical Compass | Traditional Consultants | |
|---|---|---|
| Turnaround time | 2 - 5 days | 3 - 6 weeks |
| Price | Starting at $5,000 | $50,000 - $1,000,000+ |
| Industry focus | 100% games industry | Broad and non-specialised |
| Work ethics | System powered + Industry Expert-reviewed | Manual and Vulnerable to mistakes |
| Data use | Secure with no cross-training | Questionable |
Simple, transparent pricing
Most Popular
Prelaunch Report
$5,000 USD per report
For any unreleased PC game
- Full Market Ready
- 360° competitor analysis
- Audience sentiment
- Price & release tracking
- Genre differentiation
- Verified & Evidence backed
- Free re-run ?
Post Launch Analysis
$10,000 USD per report
For any released PC title
- Core Features and Genre analysis
- Competitor and similar games breakdown
- Launch period review
- Root cause of performance
- Recovery and optimisation plan
Custom Reports & Agents
On Request
For any type of games business or question
Scoped to the research questions and complexity of use case. Tell us what you need, and we'll quote against it.
We currently only service the PC market. Console data and analytics are coming soon. Sign up to be the first to know as we add new datasets and features.
Put Critical Compass inside your organisation
Your personal Critical Compass -- a self-directed intelligence department that provides timely decision support.
Unify internal portfolio data, our proprietary research models, and external market intelligence into a single, governed, AI-driven decision support layer. Our engineers construct the custom models and workflows directly with your people, working with whatever internal data and systems you already have.
Why can't I just ask an LLM?
Ask any mainstream LLM to review your pitch deck or financial data... then ask it the same question again. LLMs are non-deterministic, and notoriously unreliable with numbers -- numbers, evidence and player sentiment are our source of truth.
Critical Compass starts somewhere fundamentally different: proprietary games research, structured game and market intelligence, purpose-built analytical systems, and five years of encoded domain methodology. We've built some of the strongest quantitative and qualitative games-specific research in the industry, so the conclusions are grounded in evidence, not generated on the fly.
No hallucinations. No personal opinions. No AI slop.
AI is part of the machinery. It isn't the source of the expertise.
The games industry has never lacked market research; it has lacked market research worth paying for.
Emre Can Deniz
CEO, GYLD
Our intelligence starts with our own research.
We don't build Critical Compass by scraping communities or repackaging the work of other researchers. We firmly believe that dev blogs, post mortem findings, and other people's labour is off limits -- both to preserve research voracity and to respect our industry colleagues.
GYLD conducts original games research, collects and maintains its own datasets, and works within platform terms of service and applicable law. We've been collecting data since 2020, and our databases are now a continuous, large scale collection of all the public market signals that matter and can be obtained ethically.
Our commercial partners praise our rigour, attention to detail, and ability to provide meaningful and timely insights. We built this capability because world-class games research has historically been expensive, bespoke and available to relatively few companies. Critical Compass makes that depth of evidence available at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Questions? Let's chat.
Whether it's a question about the method, the data, or the decision you're facing, ask us. A real person answers: [email protected]