I’ve just learned the genre u choose will affect whether your stats are in the red, yellow or green, like the 50th and 90th percentile are different depending on genres. Does that affect in any way how good it does in the algorithm? Cus i could be in the green in one genre, and in the red in an other, which doesnt make sense to me. If the genre is considered in stats, cant I just change the game’s genre to one that’s less competitive and just do better in the algorithm?
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The algorithm doesn’t take genre into account, but of course games from a less popular genre are less likely to be successful than those from a popular genre.
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I don’t understand this. I’d assume that, in making a game in a popular genre, you’d have higher expected popularity, but lower variance among the amount of popular games–as per oversaturation and the possibility that your game will be substituted easily or won’t be found. On the contrary, making a game in an unpopular genre holds lower expected player popularity, but a much wider spread in the variance for corresponding player counts–something like DOORS in horror of 2022.
I think many of the top developer teams are currently dominating in the “popular genres,” (and some with en masse hypercasual-like content 
) so I’d make an argument that the bar for making a success–specifically for smaller dev. teams–in a popular genre is higher.
I mean, if the bar for a “successful” game across all genres is measured by a measure of popularity, then I guess you could say that one is more likely to make a game more popular in a popular genre than in an unpopular genre.
Another thing is: filling a niche? I would consider this as a factor of success in something I see.. but that’s just my opinion. If you’re able to fill a niche, you might be able to hold onto your playerbase for waaaaaay longer than expected.. so something like Bee Swarm Simulator or Murder Mystery 2..? By the nature of a high-variance genre, there’s a higher chance to have a cult success. On the flipside, becoming a dominant provider in a niche in a popular genre is much harder due to the amount of substitution and audience preference for lower quality content, right?
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it can go a lot of ways, it depends on multiple factors I’d say. I guess it’s all in comparison to other games in that genre.
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yeah pretty much, for example tons of people in the anime/brainrot/maybe still rng genres…
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Many games from a popular genre (aka Brainrot) are becoming very popular these days, even though they’re all essentially the same thing. Of course, you can also make a popular game from an unpopular genre, but that’s often more difficult. You need luck, money, and a very good game, or the game has to have something to do with… Brainrots.
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Some Roblox staff member said stuff about people gaming the system based on genre, and I don’t think they were supposed to. It was like an “oop” moment.
Like what do you mean people switching their genre meant more push in the algorithm? Cause that’s what they were basically saying. I can’t find where it was though.
It’s like that staff member was making a villain out of the gamifying genre, like x genre is more popular, but they were saying it like it meant something more. As if Roblox was artificially boosting genres they wanted to be popular. Not just what most liked.
The difference between Adventure and Obby or something like that. I can’t find it though.
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there’s also this, interestingly enough. Apparently the genre in the algorithm can be different than the one you yourself as the developer select.
You’re quoting from something from 2024, the platform is quite different now.
Benchmarks and the scorecard are there to give you a sense of how you are performing but that doesn’t directly impact the discovery algorithm.
There have been a variety of posts on the algorithm over the past year, i’m not an expert, but from what i see many people are reading things into what the analytics are not saying.
It’s like saying Human are Mammals therefore all Mammals are Humans, the latter is not true.
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What I’m about to say is kinda unrelated but had been on the back of my mind: Is it efficable to target a genre that appears before other sorts on the Charts page, or does that not make any sense? Like, has anyone looked into the results of optimizing for chart sorts? Or, does the ordering get randomized (I don’t keep track)?
Without a post directly stating a difference, it’s speculation either way I guess. I think most would assume what Genre we set is what the algorithm sees it as. Your post stated something different from that assumed notion.
I tend to watch posts on discovery like a hawk. From looking back (why it took me an hour+ to respond) and off the top of my head, I can’t find anything that definitively reclarifies that difference.
To show what I mean, here’s a more recent update on discovery, from August 29th:
The quote above I highlight because it sounds similar to what I quoted from you from 2024 about a human evaluator. None of that though tells us whether the algorithm and what we see as the Genre are the same, as of right now. The input seemed to be a human in 2024 based on your account, but the update I refence doesn’t really talk about the difference in seen Genre.
I assume now that what’s in the algorithm for Genre and what a developer sees/sets as Genre is the same, because it had that update. Or, something else between your post from 2024 and now. That said, is that true?
Again, I say it’s speculation without a staff member straight-up saying “What you set as a developer for Genre is the same as what the algorithm sees as the genre for your game.”
an aside
On a larger note, it’s difficult not to speculate, whether based on data or otherwise. Communication about discovery can be hit-or-miss, often unclear or just a lot of information.
Like I spent a month initially, and updated over the years, diving into the history and how discovery at Roblox works. Is that made null by now? Probably most of it. It’s still the baseline of what I think.
For example, off the top of my head, there was a note about Roblox taking up to 14 days for a game to show up in search results on the Discovery documentation on the Docs site. That note is not there anymore in the docs, but is that still a limitation of the system?
It’s my bias to assume a system works how it used to until presented with new information, rather than to throw everything I know out the window. I think that’s a valid bias.
This is a perfect example of what I mean btw: