A question about game design

[ThisnameisVeryRandom]

I saw a post saying that game design is correlated with if the game succeeds, which makes sense. But then I thought deeper about that and I had an unsettling thought I hope isn’t true.

Basically, i’ve noticed that on roblox tycoons simulators and obbies tend to have higher player count than other genres in the likes of games like Black Magic (Fighting Games). Others are more extreme, with all dungeon crawlers I’ve seen have really low player count on average (Master Keys Dungeon Shooter was the most successful one I found), Bullet Hell genre is nonexistent (Aside from Bad Time Tiff there are basically none), and story driven games have only recently having actually gotten popular, despite the genres being quite big in other places (although bullet hell has in general been in decline so maybe it’s just that)

I’m wondering if a high quality game with good gameplay could still be unsuccessful because it’s genre has a smaller audience on Roblox. Could the genre of a game have a large factor in it’s success??? And should a soon to be newbie developer like me be concerned about this topic for the future when I decide to start making a game?

Thanks,
ThisnameisVeryRandom

P.S. I’m asking this because i’ve been thinking of a story-driven bullet hell game but now I’m wondering if I should change the idea.

[Pharyx_Styx]

It’s a catch 22.

Yes catering to the masses helps with popularity.
but
Until we bite the bullet and get sufficient alternative content and an efficient means of locating that content for the players, alternative audiences won’t form, since the main form of exposure is popularity.

Side note: Roblox players seem very game hoppy, going from one game in the current popular template to the next as soon as they exist, retention is hard even if you make everyone’s favorite cookie.

[Monophony]

People forget that the majority of players are young kids who in the most part are on mobile. These kids want to pick up a casual game and get right into it. It’s all about simplicity. Take jailbreak it’s cops vs robbers when you boil it down but there are other elements like the various places to rob etc that also keep the larger audience interested

[vastqud (vast)]

When you’re developing a game on Roblox, you need to really consider Roblox’s playerbase as it relates to the intended audience of your game. If there is a large audience for your game on Roblox and it is well-made, it will almost certainly get popular despite what some people say.

A lot of people think that advertising and getting your game featured are instant pathways to success. They’re not. Likewise, it works both ways; if your game is well-made (and perhaps more importantly there is a large audience for it), it will get popular with little to no paid advertising needed.

To answer your question, I’d definitely say that yes, a well-made and polished game with a small audience has a high chance of not succeeding on Roblox. The genre of the game, and more importantly, how many players on Roblox fit your target audience, is more of a factor in success than some people think it might be. For example, we can just look at simulators like you mentioned. A lot of them are low-effort and not really that good from a developer’s perspective, yet they rake in tons of Robux and get a lot of plays almost purely because there is a large market for that kind of game on Roblox. If your game wants to do something unique or not too explored on Roblox, it had better appeal to Roblox’s playerbase and more importantly your target audience.

[starmaq]

Exactly, Roblox’s community has a different taste of games, first reason being the majoirty are children that are mostly -12 years old, so you know, anything that’s just not cool and… ahm… cringey, and the 2nd reason being is, how us humans work; if there was 10k people, and 2k of them liked a game, then surely the other 8k would also enjoy it, remember the phrase “Keep them coming back!”, people will also keep coming up to games that involve you collecting points or something like simulators for example, these games are infinite, people will never stop playing them, and if someone did, 2 will come in to replace him since they saw him playing it so they had to aswell. And this has been going on in roblox since the start, the genre of games “where you keep them coming up”, so developers just forgot about story games and other creative ideas, and went to the bad genre, which of course they knew would make more fame and money out of. Heck, I never remember a story game hitting the front page, besides Robot 64 which was soooo underrated.

So yeah, the moral is roblox’s community only like games where they keep on playing
But I’m not letting you down! Make whatever type of game you want, you never know maybe it will work out just fine, maybe you won’t get as much popularity as you wanted, but this is your first step, you made a game just because you wanted to, not for the fame or money.
Just think about it, maybe a youtuber or someone known from the community played your game that could be a critical success which would bring many many other players.

Don’t change your ideas upon what this stupid community wants. Do whatever you want, even if you made many projects and they all weren’t soo successful, don’t worry this world isn’t as unfair as we know, you’ll get your shot one day.

[superhudhayfa]

You ask about “success”, by every person has a different interpretation of “success”. Everyone’s heard the saying that there’s a key to success, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their is a single door, or doorway, to success.

What’s your goal in creating this project? Are you doing it for profit? For fame and acknowledgement? Out of sheer boredom? Because you like the game’s idea? Or something else entirely?

Once you understand what your reason for starting your project is, then you can start to think about this question. Originality is both scary and subjective. Simulators, obbies and tycoons may be seen as “unoriginal”, whereas story games may be seen as “original”. I’m not going to delve into the intricacies of this here, however when taking into account (generally), “original” games are harder to pull off than an unoriginal game due to the unoriginal game being only able to be cast as unoriginal due to the fact that its widespread, therefore telling us that it DOES, in fact, have a large constant player base, but due to the fact that newer ones keep appearing and the, generally, “repetitive” gameplay, they don’t last long. However, if you manage to successfully create an original game, which you keep somewhat regularly updated, you can obtain a steady playerbase that will be able to outlive that of an unoriginal game, though getting to this point is what makes it more difficult.

If your goal of success is fame or acknowledgement, an original game will help with some of the older playerbase, whereas unoriginal games (notice the plural form) will allow you to gain some with the younger playerbase - however, these aren’t excluded to the both of them.

If you want income, unoriginal games are likely to provide large, fast income over a short period of time, before dying out, whereas an original game is likely to provide income over a larger period of time when invested into.

If you’re doing it for out of boredom or because you want to, then go for it! It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make the front page, just ask a few of your friends or community (if you have one) to take a look at it, and if they like it, hurray, there are people that enjoy what you’ve made! If they don’t, at least YOU had fun making it and probably developed your skills further in both game design, your respective development fields and possibly even marketing. A game you enjoy making is more easy to create, for you, than one that you absolutely hate, as well as prove to be more easy to update.

Here is a link I made a while back that is incomplete and I haven’t gotten around to updating and, honestly, has way too many jokes in comparison to the actual content, though perhaps you’ll learn something from it.