Many developers believe that the best way to get more players is to spend robux on ads and similar avenues of advertising.
I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t spend robux when trying to generate a player base, however before thinking about how to spend money on your game to get more players, I think that you should focus on how you can get more players in your game for free.
Here are three things that are quite simple but often overlooked by many developers.
Three things to consider:
- Is my game fun enough?
- How many things can I do for free?
- Does my game fill a gap in the market?
1. Is my game fun enough?
In my opinion, before even considering how your game will generate monetization, you need to make sure your game is fun enough to play again. You can easily spend money to purchase ads to gain more people but at the end of the day if your game is not fun enough to make those same players say “Wow this game is fun, I’m going to ask my friends to play with me next time!”
If your game does not have any replay value it will not succeed.
Because I’ll tell you what, I gladly played my own game for 2 hours straight and had fun with my own friends playing on it.
2. How many things can I do for free?
There are lots of games out there that are riddled with game passes that allow you to have more fun in the game. There’s no problem with that. However, the problem is that many of these same games limit their fun factor by offering very little free to play features of the game, often leading a player into frustration as to why they need to pay before enjoying a part of a game that they are not certain as to if they’ll even have fun having it. Make sure your players have lots of things to do for free before considering additional premium features.
3. Does my game fill a gap in the market?
Awesome! So you spent a couple of months developing a prison game. The game is fun, there’s lots of free features to do, and you have fun playing your own game.
However… you now compete against many other prison games alike have an existing fan base, has a plethora of features (maybe even more than you), is very well polished, and is updated on a recurring basis.
Your game might be good, but is it good enough to stand out in this crowd? Even if you game meets the bare minimum, players are usually not looking for the bare minimum. They don’t care you spent countless hours working on your game because all they want to do is have fun. If you decide to build a game in oversaturated genre, your game must be excellent. If you can’t even distinguish what you game does worse than your competitors, then you are shooting way over your head.
Moral of story, make a game (or experience) that fills a gap in the market. Ask yourself what game would you play on Roblox that hasn’t been made before, and ask yourself if you would have fun playing it. If you would have fun playing it, make sure your execute it to the point where you be able to spend countless hours playing your own game.
If you have fun playing your own game as a previously unexecuted idea that fills a gap in the market, chances are other players would as well and appreciate the fact that your game even exists.
In order to increase the amount of players that play your game, you need to address these questions in order to create a foundation as to how successful your game can become.
In my opinion, a good game will always have players (There is a saying of: good products sell themselves). You might think your game is good. But is it really? If it was that good, don’t you think it would have more players? When there is a problem, there is a solution.
Try your best to address problems you are able to identify and solve them accordingly the best way you can.
Now here’s my question to you:
What are problems that a developer faces when developing a game and trying to increase its playerbase without a recurring advertising expense?
