I’ve been getting close to releasing a unique obstacle course game, and I’m currently focused on ensuring I make a decent return on my time/money investment. I’ve had a few questions about Ads, UX, and Monetization.
I would prefer responses from those who have already released successful games.
Advertisements:
What’s the best advertisement option?
How much R$ is optimal per day in order to facilitate a positive feedback loop?
Should I dump everything I have into a single day in order to attempt to hit front page?
My game doesn’t have a long max play-time, which might mean exposing it to the most amount of people is the optimal choice for ads.
I currently have up to 150kR$ available to spend on ads, but I’d like to cash out a chunk of it, so how much should I save?
How can I get my game onto the “Obby” or “Adventure” playlist?
UX
My game has an end to it, which players will reach within 3 hours Is this way too short?
Should I wait to release until I’ve added more content?
I would prefer to release as it is without adding much more content I’m experiencing burnout, and I tire of working with my outdated code
I’ve got a lot of changes I could make to my game to improve the look and feel (Changing background music, better UI), Is investing the time to improve both of these worth it?
Monetization
I should have thought about this from the start, but currently the only monetization I have are a skip stage button for 15R$, and a some speed/jump power boosts which essentially makes the entire game a breeze for 500R$, 750R$, and 1000R$.
Are there changes that need to be made to improve this. Are there other monetization options you’d recommend?
Should I make my game paid access? From my experience paid access games automatically make players assume higher quality, additionally I don’t think my current monetization will be effective to the majority of players.
I personally would like to move on from this project, so I’d like to know as many small changes i need to make to optimize my game’s success. Thank you in advance.
Hello Polill00,
Depending on your game genre, here’s two things that you can do:
If this game provides high interactibility between the players, then I strongly suggest you to try to reach 1200 concurrent players, because according to my analytics, that is one of the milestones according to the roblox algorithim.
In order to get that spike, I suggest you advertise your game a bit on all social media platforms to keep everyone hyped and publish it on a weekend day. You should blow 2000R$ to 10000R$ on Tablet and PC sponsorships on that day.
If this game is mainly a “solo” game then try to advertise 500R$ to 1000R$ everyday for 2 weeks and that would reach one of the milestones.
PS: Milestones are like tags that Roblox gave your game according to its calculations, for example if you have a like ratio of 80% and 1500 concurrent players, roblox might qualify it as an Up-And-Coming game.
Hope this helps.
I always think it’s best to publish the game if you think it is ready, and add updates later. This will have players come back, and atract new players at the same time.
But as you have stated that you don’t want to, don’t feel obligated to make new content! Obviously this could help increase your playercount, but your health is more important than a roblox game.
If the game looks better from the start, players could think: “hey, this game looks good, im gonna keep playing it and give it a try.” instead of leaving instantly because it looks boring.
About the Monetization
I think the price going from 15 to 750-1000 is too big of a change, but it lets the stage-skip feel cheap at the same time.
Indeed, if its paid-acces people will assume high quality. And if players don’t like the game, you still have the robux they paid. But on the other hand, it could also push away a active playerbase who would rather not spend money on roblox.
Hope this help! Feel free to react for further explanation or opinions
This made no sense. By publishing your game people would come back? You’re wrong, do you know why some games does pre-orders? Is it because their game isn’t finished yet? Nope. They’re trying to build fame while leaving the game mysterious. This seriously depends on the game genre.
This is just common sense. Make the game look good + make updates…
I just don’t see your point. It’s like telling people to make sure their scripts works, something that everyone knows.
You said your game has an ending. This can result in players leaving to never joining again. Players can join again when they see there was an update or extention of the game. I also never said publishing makes players come back. i was talking about the updates.
Yes, it depends on the game genre. Obviously with games like jailbreak it doesnt matter as much how often you update. It does, but not that much. But if your game has an clear ending, you would have to work more on adding more stuff, or depend on completely new players joining.
Sure, maybe it is common sense. But that doesnt make it a wrong answer. if you work on the looks of the game and make it work smoother it will help significantly.
Only if the game has passed its trial runs. There should be multiple smaller campaigns before making a large push (in my opinion) in order to avoid dumping a larger sum of money into something that isn’t proven yet. And before doing trial runs, there should be smaller trials done on the ads themselves (200 robux per ad) to ensure you’re getting a good robux to visit ratio.
Research competitors in your genre and figure out how they’re extending game time.
Get opinions from testers to figure out which areas most desperately need improvement. They can identify a few elements they do or don’t like. Also watch them play your game, on an alt if possible. Sometimes testers will run into issues and simply not tell you about them.
Reading between the lines here (apologies if I am misreading the situation), monetization should be at the bottom of the list of priorities. That being said, I think it would be wise to include products at lower prices (250R$, 100R$) if only to help you calculate which prices and products are bringing in the most revenue. Another potential issue is hiding the purchases behind a shop button. Show the player your products. For example, prompt a skip stage purchase if the player fails X number of times. Of course, it’s possible to overdo it and anger people, but on the other hand, the point of all this work you’ve put in is to get people to click on the in-game purchases. Making them aware of what they’re missing out on can be the nudge they need to take that leap.
What’s a good robux to visit ratio, from my research it seems to be about 1% CTR on ads. I tried out sponsoring and got terrible return compared to normal ads.
Thanks for your input, I’ll be sure to include your suggestions.
