The game doesn’t give nearly enough information about why games fail. This can be seriously confusing sometimes. When I don’t put much effort into a game[1], I’m not surprised when it isn’t loved. When I throw my entire staff behind a AAA project and blow the top off of my past records[2], getting a 4.5 in reviews makes me sad.
I recommend that something which should be researchable is Post-Mortem Analysis. Make it cost money but not research points, and require you to assign a staffer to work on it if you want one for a game. When a PMA task is completed, it’ll give you a breakdown of (some of the) factors that impacted the most recent game’s score. I recommend the detail of the report be based on the Research skill of the employee tagged for the task, as well as the score the game reached. Since figuring out what went wrong with bad games is critical, they should get more in-depth PMA. (If you do a PMA on a smash hit, there won’t be a lot to say aside from ‘hey boss, we’re going to be working under the shadow of this thing for a game or two, so don’t expect to break the charts twice in a row.’)
Since your R&D staff have nothing to do BUT research, as long as you have enough lab budget to hire at least one of them, you should get a gratis PMA once the R&D lab is built. Drop the option from the standard developers and then make sure the player doesn’t miss it by making the R&D staff good at it.
People who are playing the game with the wiki open and a calculator in hand won’t get much if any benefit from this feature, but people who want to do that don’t constitute a sustainable market niche on their own.
[1] During a period of cash crisis, I once released a small shovelware game using retrotech. It was named Desperation and was a Game Development Simulation targeted at Mature audiences. Reviewers hated it, but given that I dumped it out with very little time and almost no money, it still helped with my cashflow problems.
[2] The baffling 4.5 was an expansion to an MMO. The MMO in question scored a perfect 10. It was ‘White Light’, a Sci-Fi MMORPG targeted at young players, and also a conclusion to a very successful Sci-Fi series. I’ve found that making sequel-MMOs is rewarded by the game. The sequel bonus is great for getting an MMO off on the right foot. Surprisingly, the execrable expansion didn’t harm the magnificient MMO.