HELP - Game is failing to profit

[Lava_shield]

About a week ago I advertised my new game: Medieval Tales [ALPHA]. I’ve spent roughly 4k Robux, and only have 1.3k visits (only 388 came from the ads).
Many players enjoy my game (92% like ratio), some even playing for over TWO HOURS. I have 6 gamepasses, all with nice icons and reasonable prices. But somehow I’ve only made 69 Robux off developer products and gamepasses.
I see so many poorly made games that have 100k+ visits. Where did I go wrong?

How can I improve my game’s monetization, and ultimately improve my game’s income?
Did Roblox’s Ad Manager screw me over?

Developer Stats

[mena5555 (Blaze)]

It completely depends, first thing I’d look at is the statistics that the ad manager has given you, ctr etc, i could take a look at those metrics if you’d like.

But by looking at the numbers, you can see exactly where the problem occurs. For example if a lot of people are being shown your ad, but not many clicked on it, then your icon/front game presentation is messed up. If people click the game but dont play it, then you have to make your description/thumbnails more appealing, if people play, but then leave shortly after, the issue is with your gameplay/gameplay loop. It’s all about the numbers.

[Willicl_e (willicl)]

After playing I am going to be honest with 3 things.
1: I as the player felt very confused as to what I was doing. I couldn’t see a tutorial, or objective. Most games have an objective towards. I’m not saying yours doesn’t, but it is not clear to me as the player what I am meant to do.

2: The game felt very very pressuring for me to buy items with robux. I mean, there’s even a donation board there. There’s way too much being pushed for the player to buy items. Most stalls ask me to buy gamepasses. I am also immediately asked to invite friends.

3: It’s too laggy. My sent/recieve are way too high, and a lot of actions require a few clicks to go through.

I think firstly you need to give a clear objective to your players for what exactly they’re meant to do, or the “end goal”. Or something for them to work towards. I don’t know what I am meant to do with my coins, or who I am meant to go to in order to get more. Or what I should work towards. Granted, joining the game gives me a description, but with no way to achieve said goals of selling crops or thieving. I managed to work it out in the end, but the crops process was just clicking, which was quite boring .

Secondly, cut back on pushing the player so much into buying robux gamepasses. It is going to cause a negative feedback loop.

Lastly, some optimisations to not have 300 to 500 KB/s recieve would be a good idea. Maybe less communications with the server to the client

Best of luck to you, mate.

[Lava_shield]

Thanks for your response, I feel like our icon + thumbnail are decent, but certainly could be better.
Here are some of my stats:
CTR = 0.94%
Play Rate = 0.16%
47 concurrent players at peak
The second time I ran ads I did worse:
CTR = 0.75%
Play Rate = 0.11%
21 concurrent players at peak

[Lava_shield]

@Willicl_e

as the player felt very confused as to what I was doing. I couldn’t see a tutorial, or objective.

There is a short tutorial whenever you pick a role/team, but I agree the objective could be clearer. The reason you didn’t enjoy the game was probably because you were playing alone (the game relies on being multiplayer).
Lastly, I’m trying to increase revenue, so why do you think reducing the amount of game passes will help?

[mena5555 (Blaze)]

I played your game as well, and i agree with all of the things that the other guy listed. It might be biased because i was alone, but i couldnt tell what i was supposed to do, i joined and walked around and clicked guis but i had no idea why i was supposed to make money, and what to use it for. And even now im not 100% sure what the point of the game is. You could definitely make the objective clearer.

[Lava_shield]

Yeah, looking back it may have been a good idea to make the objective more clear. The game is simple, but the objective may be too difficult to understand. Any ideas to make the objective more clear?

[Willicl_e (willicl)]

I’m not saying to reduce revenue by reducing gamepasses. I am saying stop making them so “in your face” if that makes sense.

Example: There’s a stall where I can buy a music item. I thought “okay, awesome. I have 500 coins to spend”, I went to check, and click “Buy”, and it was a robux item. It isn’t bad to have robux items, but it was misleading, and I felt kind of pushed to buy a robux item. There was very little in the game to buy with coins other than horses from what I could find, unless I am blind, but even then, it wouldn’t have been obvious if there were.

Another example was another NPC which the player could ask how to earn more money, thinking it would give me good advice or a tutorial or whatever. But instead, it was a 2x gamepass or whatever.

I think toning it down will make the player less likely to think the game is pushing them for money, stay longer, increase retention, and increase the likelihood for the player to buy a robux item. Also add more things to buy with coins, or something.

As for a tutorial, I would recommend something interactive. Like a GUI on the left, telling you where to go. The player goes there, and then the GUI updates with what it should do next.

I love your GUIs though. You have some good animations, and I think your game just needs a few (albeit somewhat annoyingly large) tweaks to be in an understandable clear state. You mentioned the game relies on multiplayer. As a result, you might see issues with getting players. Funnily enough, a game that needs multiple players for full functionality and has no players will struggle to attract new players and then the cycle repeats. It could be worth dialing back the full reliance on multiplayer to begin with. Maybe NPCs which can interact, and as more players join the server, there is less of a need for interactive NPCs (like robbers) so they despawn. Just a thought though, it’s what I would do.

[Lava_shield]

Thank you for your feedback. I agree with what you’re saying about the difficulty playing singleplayer. I was hoping people might choose to be a farmer when playing alone, but I realize the farmer gameplay may be too simplistic. I’ll try and make the farmer gameplay more engaging

@Willicl_e

little in the game to buy with coins other than horses from what I could find, unless I am blind, but even then, it wouldn’t have been obvious if there were.

I don’t know how long you played, but you missed quite a few things. You can buy horses, weapons, tools, helmet skins and fireworks. All of them save, except the fireworks.
You can also hold down proximity prompts:

@Willicl_e

I am saying stop making them so “in your face” if that makes sense.

It does make sense, and I would do this, except I seem to have no other option. Ads aren’t free and I’ve spent the past 4 months making the game. I don’t want to be pay-to-win, but I want people to actually see my game passes and buy them. If you have an alternative monetization strategy, I am open to hearing it.

[MrOnlyKemal]

When i joined the game i selected knight as my role, i was immedietaly thrown in the middle of the map and i didn’t know what to do. I think you really need to create a tutorial.

Here are some other suggestions:

Suggestion 1

You should display the price of the coins in the coin shop. I don’t wanna click on each button to learn their prices.

Suggestion 2

As i said, you need to display the gamepass prices and you could also add descriptions to gamepasses, some of them are really hard to understand. It just says “Pro Stable” with a pickaxe and a horse picture. How do i know what they do?

Suggestion 3

I also fell for the same mistake as @Willicl_e did, theres not a clear sign that you can hold buttons on proxmity prompts. They look like they will be instantly activated with a button click

Suggestion 4

Instead of saying “You don’t own this skin” you could create a simple lock icon on top of the buttons to display that they dont own that skin

Suggestion 5

This isn’t anything big but i think you need to add a way for users to see if a setting is toggled off or on. Maybe you could just make the button darker when its activated

Bug 1

My character doesn’t fall down if i die standing still

Bug 2

I can enable all the UIs at the same time

Bug 3

I get this error if i try to buy a gamepass

That’s all i wanted to say, i think this can be a great game with some extra effort!

[Lava_shield]

Thank you for this feedback. These are really good suggestions. I wasn’t even aware of bug #3, this actually may be the reason why people aren’t buying passes! You are a life saver!

Now that multiple people were confused with proximity prompts, I’ll make sure to change that as well.

[Willicl_e (willicl)]

Ah, I held E too, but I think it was just one money bag near the crops.

I didn’t notice more items, but then again, it wasn’t obvious. Making it more obvious would be a sound idea.

Lastly, nothing wrong with robux items, but like I said, remove them from being so pushy. Keep them there, have a game store, and incentivize players to it. You also earn money from premium players by the way. The longer they stay in your game, the more robux you earn. A way to keep premium users in would be good.

[Lava_shield]

@Willicl_e

Ah, I held E too, but I think it was just one money bag near the crops.

Another person also was confused with the holding E, so I decided to reduce the HoldDuration.

@Willicl_e

You also earn money from premium players by the way.

I did happen to get a fair amount of premium players. For some reason Roblox is only showing me how many premium visits I got, not how much I actually earned. I know there’s a waiting period for receiving premium payouts, but I’m confused to why it won’t show how much I earned.

[mena5555 (Blaze)]

One thing that I’m also seeing from your dev stats is a session time of 5 minutes, for a game centered around multiplayer this isn’t good because it shows a lack of engagement in your game, as well as the fact that a fast and constant flow of players leaving the game is not sustainable for a game of your genre.

[Lava_shield]

I noticed that session time was rather low as well. I’ve been working on trying to keep players engaged for longer, any ideas?

[mena5555 (Blaze)]

Hmm, well I’m sure the previous suggestions that we listed would increase average session time, but you should probably take a look at overall engagement as well, like how many players are still there after 5 mins etc. I’m not sure exactly on things that should be added to your game because the direction you want to take it is based on your decisions. But some overall things that should help would be:

1. Ofc, a clear objective. I would check how many players are still there after 5 mins, if you’re noticing that less than about 50-60% are still there, then there might be a problem.

2. Add side-tasks, or something that can keep the player engaged while they are playing alone. If you are advertising and each player leaves before another can join, then its basically a huge sinkhole of your money.

3. You could make it more challenging over time or smthn, to make sure players don’t feel like it’s repetitive, just some food for thought.

4. You should also check how many users are returning, if not many are returning then a daily rewards system might be useful.

5. Possibly an achievement system or something that will keep players feeling like they accomplished things, which might help with engagement.

And lastly, before you advertise again, make sure you do a small advertisement, with that small advertisement, you look at ALL your stats. Check how good your icon, description, thumbnails, and gameplay is. If you don’t optimize your game for success before you start your ads, then you are just throwing money at a wall and hoping it sticks.

Once your stats are good, then you can do another small advertisement, if the results turn out well, then pour in some more cash and let the roblox algorithm take care of the rest of the heavy weight. You do NOT advertise to keep the game alive, that is just unsustainable and will leave you with nothing. Otherwise, if your stats aren’t good, repeat the process with fixing things up and doing a small ad.

If no matter what you do, and you TRULY tried hard and nothing is working. Then it might be time to move on to making another game. Sometimes certain games just don’t have the right audience for it on roblox. Just because you are making a new game doesn’t mean you gave up. Thanks for reading and I hope some of this info helps you out , good luck with your game!