Game Visibility

Help and Feedback Platform Usage Support
#1

  1. What do you want to achieve? Keep it simple and clear!
    I have made a game which I want to try and grow

  2. What is the issue? Include screenshots / videos if possible!
    I made my game and got it to a releasable state. I put a lot of effort into it and I think even in this early state it provides a better experience than its competition.
    I spent $100 buying ad credits and purchased sponsored ads for the game, targeted at the region I want.

The problem is that the game is not visible at all. Searching for it by name does not find it. Searching for any related keywords does not find it.

Whats worse, I am seeing low quality baseplate/toolbox games that are dead and not remotely related to the search query (like created 5-10 years ago with 0 players) showing up in the search results, while my new game which matches the keywords, has effort put into it and an ad campaign running never shows up nomatter how much I scroll.

For context, this is the game in question:

  1. What solutions have you tried so far? Did you look for solutions on the Developer Hub?
    Iā€™ve read some articles/other posts about this but have not found any concrete or particularly useful information.
1 Like
#2

Unfortunately, you really have to be popular to end up in the search results. This is yet another flaw with ROBLOXā€™s broken search functions. Most frustratingly, searching your game will probably yield completely unrelated results like BROOKHAVEN RP LETHAL COMPANY HUGGY WUGGY or something.
My advice? Get some friends to play it, and play it regularly. Be sure to be playing whenever you spend Robux on advertising/sponsoring. Slowly nurse your game into life. It will take time, but (hopefully) it will pay off.

#3

Thanks for the reply. I know robloxes search is a bit broken but this seems crazy that even dead baseplate games that do not match the search query would show over my game.

Iā€™m not a Roblox player. I donā€™t come from a group of friends playing games. Iā€™m an adult professional game developer (Iā€™ve worked in the industry for 12 years) who has become interested in Roblox due to all the perks of the platform and I thought I would try publishing a few games to see how they perform.

I was not expecting too much, but this lack of visibility even when spending on ads seems wrong.

#4

First off, you should really work on your game. For a professional game developer (no offense) the game is pretty dead, and the language is on vietnam. Also make your ads more appealing to others, and try to add words in your game like ā€œSimulatorā€ or something like that. Roblox has a really bad search system (in my opinion)

#5

Well yeah, the game is dead. Thats my whole problem! It appears impossible to find. It does not show up in any search results. Random games made in 2014 with 0 players which seem to be empty baseplates and have names like ā€œCAT TESTā€ are showing up when I search for my game. My ads get 5 impressions a day at best. I dont think the Vietnamese aspect should have any relation to that? I have my own reasons/research as to why I am targeting the Vietnamese market for this one - and there is a large Vietnamese market for Roblox. The CEO even mentions it in the RDC 2023 keynote.

Iā€™m not trying to show off saying Iā€™m a ā€œprofessionalā€ game developer, just trying to give some background context about how Iā€™m coming into this roblox development space. I come from the world of casual mobile games where I understand how to market & get players into my games - but roblox is a very different experience and I am trying to learn how I should approach marketing.

#6

then try advertising, plus there are probably a ton of games that are similar to yours