APF68
Audience Promise Fit
Measures whether the title delivers the experience the target player expects from its genre, IP, positioning, and marketing promise.
The TNG Risk Index
Nine dimensions. One clearer view of pre-release risk.
The index turns audience-reception concerns into a comparable score, a clear risk profile, and practical revision priorities. It is a decision tool, not a prediction of review scores or sales.
Illustrative assessment
A project profile built like a stat sheet.
The sample below shows how nine signals combine into one executive-readable view. Higher scores always indicate greater risk.
TNG Risk Index // Project profileNightglass
Illustrative data
59
Overall indexElevatedOut of 100
APFAudience Promise Fit68High
PFIPlayer-Fantasy Integrity74High
FCFranchise Continuity42Elevated
MDMessage Density63High
CACharacter Appeal49Elevated
RERepresentation Execution56Elevated
CMVCreator-Market Vulnerability61High
MCRMarketing Copy Risk70High
RFRevision Feasibility35Guarded
The nine dimensions
Where audience trust is won or lost.
Each dimension isolates a different source of reception risk so executives can see what is driving the overall profile.
PFI74
Player-Fantasy Integrity
Measures whether story, characters, and mechanics preserve immersion, aspiration, agency, stakes, mastery, and the role the player came to inhabit.
FC42
Franchise Continuity
Measures alignment with established canon, tone, legacy characters, world rules, and prior audience investment.
MD63
Message Density
Measures whether thematic or instructional messaging begins to compete with entertainment, pacing, discovery, and character voice.
CA49
Character Appeal
Measures whether key characters are coherent, memorable, charismatic, emotionally compelling, and appropriate to the intended player fantasy.
RE56
Representation Execution
Measures whether representation feels human, earned, and character-led rather than tokenized, programmatic, or detached from the world and story.
CMV61
Creator-Market Vulnerability
Measures how easily dialogue, scenes, screenshots, interviews, or design choices can become decontextualized creator talking points or viral attack surfaces.
MCR70
Marketing Copy Risk
Measures whether trailers, store-page copy, reveal language, and campaign claims create a promise mismatch or unnecessary controversy before play.
RF35
Revision Feasibility
Measures the risk that meaningful mitigation cannot be completed within the present production stage, dependencies, budget, or schedule.
How scoring works
One direction. Five risk bands.
Every score runs from 0 to 100, and higher always means greater identified risk. The overall index is a weighted score across all nine dimensions.
Low0–19
Guarded20–39
Elevated40–59
High60–79
Critical80–100
What the number means
The index is an evidence-based ordinal decision aid. It is not a probability of commercial failure, a review-score forecast, or a sales prediction. Whole numbers avoid implying false precision.
Revision Feasibility
This dimension scores the risk that mitigation is difficult within the current schedule, budget, dependencies, or production stage. A lower score means the issues are comparatively workable.
Evidence base
Depending on scope, scoring may draw from builds, scripts, character materials, creative briefs, trailers, store copy, audience positioning, creator-market conditions, and current production constraints.
Decision output
The profile identifies primary exposures, lower-cost fixes, and the order in which changes should be considered. The score is the start of the decision, not the end of it.
TNG Risk Index