While Roblox is still calming down from the excitement of #RDC2018, we wanted to provide a recap of all of the amazing lessons and games that came out of RDC US this year. For video recaps, be sure to check out twitch.tv/roblox.
The weekend was kicked off with a Friday night party for all of the attending developers. At the party, developers were able to mingle with other developers from the platform, play games (Pong, Dance Dance Revolution, Pac Man, Connect 4 and Jenga were amongst the games available to play), grab food and dance! Developers were also provided with an icebreaker that was hosted on the RDC mobile application, which could win them tickets for the raffle while also getting to know other developers at the conference. The raffle prizes included a VR headset and a drone!
Attendees got an early start to the day on Saturday, kicking off with a keynote presentation from the one and only Dave Baszucki, aka Builderman. He announced some big news: we’ve hit 4 million developers and are on track to pay out $70 million to our developers this year! Dave also discussed some of his broader visions for Roblox, Roblox Studio, localization and highly requested features.
Up next after Dave Baszucki, Grace Francisco presented the health of the Developer community, and gave attendees and viewers a peek behind the curtain into some of the ongoing community programs. Grace reviewed new features offered by the Developer Relations team, such as the Developer Hub, the Roblox Champions, Sorcus’s roadmap and more! Grace also revealed an upcoming content module that we are rolling out on the Roblox Developer Forum and Medium: How to Build Your Business on Roblox.
Following Grace, Roblox welcomed guest speaker Kristian Segrestrale, CEO of Super Evil Mega Corp, a gaming company in San Mateo currently known for Vainglory. Kristian gave a fantastic presentation on what it takes to build a game company, and provided viewers with six core takeaways: build a company with a good team in culture, focus on engagement, build lasting value, make things that you love, translate your games, and get to know each other.
Adam Miller took the stage after Kristian to take a quick look back at the updates and features that he reviewed at RDC 2017, but also included features that shipped that weren’t in RDC 2017 presentations, as well as some upcoming features expected to ship in the coming year. Adam covers topics such as larger Roblox servers, detail systems for CSG and Meshes, new physics, the shield effect, and more.
The last of our keynote speakers, Chris Misner, Head of International at Roblox, discussed where Roblox is headed- internationally! Developers might’ve seen games and threads being translated to Spanish on Roblox- specifically, the First Mover program was focused on the localization of top games on the platform. Chris discussed the program, and outlined what Roblox intends to do to help internationalize efforts. We’re already in French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish, with plans to expand into more languages soon!
You can watch the full stream of keynote presentations here.
After being treated to a preview of the years to come for the Roblox Corporation, developers made their way to their Breakout sessions of choice: Design, Developer, and Business.
Breakout Tracks:
Design:
This year’s Design track focused on demonstrating how to improve your Studio experience, and design games with other aspects in mind, such as reach and performance across multiple platforms. Roblox employees from across the company presented different design themes to consider when creating your game. Stephen Jobe began with a discussion on “Creating the Worlds You Envision Within Studio”, followed by Kelly Mayes’s talk on how to make your game more social and thus grow your player base. Grace Lin came on before the break and gave attendees on some tips to keep in mind when designing games that will ensure that your game works across the platforms that support Roblox.
Following the break, Arseny chatted with attendees about how to design your game for performance- which is key to in-game experience. Adam Miller then walked attendees through the process of making changes on the Roblox platform, and woot3 wrapped up by providing some tips on how to customize Studio to optimize your time and skills. Following woot3’s presentation, developers headed back into the ballroom for engineering and developer panels (see below).
You can watch the full Design track here.
Running Your Business on Roblox:
The business track is a new one to RDC this year, but it appeared to be a huge hit among attending developers! This track covered everything from monetizing your game, to building a company and advertising your brand. The Business track opened with a monetization panel, which included Jeff Maher (Head of Analytics at Roblox), AlexNewtron and Berezaa. During this panel, the three discussed some key ways they have monetized their games and incentivized in-game spending from their players. The topic then turned to the importance of moderation, and attendees got a peek behind the curtain of moderation. Sorcus wrapped up the segment before the break with a conversation about the game ratings coming to Roblox, and a few other features on the horizon.
Attendees filed back in after the break to watch RickytheFishy, Blockfacebob and Blockfacesteve discuss marketing tactics they used to spread the word about their games! Panelists discussed ways to best leverage Youtube, Twitter and some paid advertising options to grow their player base. The marketing panel was then replaced by a panel tasked with outlining the ways that the panelists- Sharksie and AlexNewtron- built a company from their Roblox games. They had some great insight into ways to set yourself up for success when transferring learnings from game development into the real world! Finally, cowbear16 took the stage to tell attendees his story of how he took his Roblox skills to the real world and built a name for himself: he discussed how learning Studio led him to write and publish two books, while also funding some international travel!
Developer Track:
Over on the Developer track, Val kicked off the panel and discussed effective combat design and mechanics. Claus Moberg then took the stage with a presentation about developing games for reach, and how to develop with an expanded player base in mind. Finally, Mahesh wrapped up the session with a lightning round of Summer feature previews!
Returning from the break, Lucien discussed ways to leverage Roact and Rodux to build amazing GUIs! Developers then learned how to customize Studio from Doug, who discussed spoke about how to develop good dock widget plugins! Finally, Jovanni spoke more about how to actually localize your game and design your game to be localization-friendly.
Panels
Engineering Panel: Developers all met back in the main ballroom to hear from some of the engineering leads of Roblox answer questions and discuss upcoming features. You can watch the full presentation here.
Developer Panel: Following the engineering panel, Roblox developers zKevin, HenryDev and SilentSwords joined JParty on stage to field some questions from developers online and in the crowd. Be sure to check out the full presentation here.
Game Jam
After wrapping up presentations for the day, developers turned their focus to the annual Game Jam competition! This year’s theme was “Alternate Physics”, with the intent to create a game that demonstrates a spin on the standard laws of physics. Most developers grabbed other developers to work on their Game Jam creations, while a few solo devs dove in and started working. Developers stayed up all night to produce some amazing creations, and by the end of the night, we counted more than 40 developer teams creating! As we neared game presentations, developers raced to put the finishing touches on a playable game, and to ship them in preparation for presentations. After 15 finalists were selected, judges awarded 3 teams with their Game Jam plaques.
Though only 3 teams were sent home with awards, the games that came out of Game Jam were absolutely stunning. You can find a full list below, along with a link to their place to play them, if available. We loved the amount of inspiration, teamwork and support we saw at the Game Jam this year. Teams pushed each other to be more creative and develop at a higher level.
Team Name: Game Name
First Place Winner:
- Bomb Squad: BLAST HOOK BLAST HOOK - Roblox
Second Place Winner:
- Reversed Reality: Space jam Space Jam - Roblox
Third Place Winner:
- Darth-Sparkle-Rose-Unicorn Devs: Altered scapes Altered Scapes - Roblox
All Game Jam Games Submitted:
- Radical Donkey Congs: Tunnel Vision Tunnel Vision (UPDATE: WORKS) - Roblox
- RAD Dreams: Crazy Caps Crazy Caps - Roblox
- Team Pizza Kids: Boom and fricko Boom and Fricko - Roblox
- Strawberry Jam: Flatland Flatland - Roblox
- ducknuggets: T pose adventure T-Pose Adventure - Roblox
- Prismatic Game Studios: Ro-pulse Ro-Pulse - Roblox
- Alternative Phyisque: Space Jam Space Jam - Roblox
- Battletoads Killed My Dad: Speed Run 5 SR 5 - Roblox
- Ripped Cage: Row Blocks [Unavailable]
- Inverzion: Drop Drop - Roblox
- Snow Fairies: Wizard Simulator [Unavailable]
- All-ternate Nighters: Would you please the ketchup: the sequel [RDC] Would you please pass the ketchup: The Seque - Roblox
- Alternate Studios: Atomizer ⚛Atomizer - Roblox
- Epsilon 3: Event Horizon [RDC Honorable Mention] Event Horizon - Roblox
- Syntax Error: Graviators Graviators - RDC Game Jam - Roblox
- yeet city 8102CDR: Up / Down Pizzeria Up Down Pizzeria [Open-Source] - Roblox
- Par Four: Jake the newb Gravity Golf - Roblox
- Alternative Facts: Photon fighters Photon Fighters - Roblox
- Money: Gravity grid Gravity Grid - Roblox
- Team Ultra: Mission to mars Mission to Mars! - Roblox
- Luke Warm Pizza: Ro-ckets Ro-ckets! #RDC2018 - Roblox
- Blam!: ITS NOT JUST A BOULDER It's not just a boulder - Roblox
- Tryptic: Vertigo [RDC 2018] Vertigo - Roblox
- Mad Scientists: Mad tower MAD Tower! - Roblox
- Swiggity Swook comin’ for Bazook: Trainwreck TrainWreck - Roblox
- Luk: Is Now Is Now - Roblox
- Mustard: WOULD YOU PLEASE PASS THE MUSTARD would you please pass the mustard - Roblox
- The Blox Guys: Orbit [RDC 2018] Orbit - Roblox
- Citre: Gravity Switch Gravity Switch - Casual GameJam 2018 - Roblox
- Paper: Paper Noob Paper Noob V0.1 - Roblox
- Broken Game: Break Jail 2 Break Jail 2 - Roblox
Thank you again to everyone who took part, and to the amazing staff that made the weekend possible. RDC EU is right around the corner, and we’ve got some awesome stuff planned for the EU conference!
What did you think of RDC2018? How do you like these Game Jam games? Comment below and let us know! Don’t forget to check out #RDC2018 on Twitter for tweets and photos from he weekend!
