Hello fellow developers! You are obviously here because you want tips on how to make a popular and successful game. Well, before we start, let’s find out your definition of “successful”
- A passion project.
pros
Can bring in loads of players and build you a great reputation, also tends to make you respected by the community.
cons
If it isn’t very popular(between 10-100 players) it will likely not generate as much as a profit project(P2W) with the same amount of players.
- Profit Project
pros
Can generate LOADS of robux and/or USD(or whatever currency you use) despite having a low cc player count.
cons
Tends to give you a bad reputation. And can easily flop if you don’t update constantly.
- Profit Passion Project.
pros
Generates loads of robux and a great reputation! The near perfect mix between the two game types.
cons
Unfortunately, this perfect mixture comes with slightly less profit than a P2W game. There will be some haters, someone who notices the P2W like properties of your game.
Honestly, despite the cons this is still my personal favorite game type to develop.
Depending on your definition, you want to make a different type of experience.
Click any button that suits your current goals
Passion Project
So you want a strong community and fun experience that you enjoy developing eh? Well, follow these tips to help YOU make a successful game!
- Experience.
If your game feels boring, add something fun, or random in it. Take natural disaster survival for example. Wouldn’t be boring if it wasn’t so random? If everything is so predictable, why play a game at all? So what I am saying is, try to make you game somewhat random, not too random, not to predictable. You need the perfect balance between the two. For example: say you have a simulator game. It is full of things to do, but the player likely knows exactly how things will go. You get cash, upgrade stuff, buy new worlds, and repeat. Doesn’t sound fun, does it? What if you add random events that happen? Like a race, or a competition, or anything else that makes the game unpredictable! An example of too unpredictable would be: a story game, that’s about a simulator? Doesn’t make sense.
To sum it up, when making an unpredictable event, make it make some sort of sense. Does making a serious meeting room with no poop in a game called poopland make sense? No.
Exceptions:
If your game has a storyline, and the unpredictable thing or event doesn’t make sense. For example:
The storage. A game where the world has been morphed into one large storage unit. We don’t know how or when, it just happened. People are speaking of being “famous” or being an “idle” before the world became a storage unit. Famous stars in a storage unit talking about how they are no longer famous. Makes no sense, but sparks imagination and theories.
- Replayability
So now that you have a game that is unpredictable but still makes some sense, how will it last in longevity? Well, add loads of fun “never ending” content to explore! A great example of this is blox fruits. It has a bunch of fruits to unlock, each one more powerful than the next. Loads of enemies and islands to defeat and unlock. And a huge level cap. Sounds like there is a lot to do in there right? If you said “yes” you’d be correct. That’s why that game is so dang popular, it’s the number one game on Roblox! If you don’t know what to add to your game in its next update, or when it in development, ask the community, or someone you know. Ask them what they’d like to see in your game, or what they think is missing. Once all is said and done, now you game has a bunch of things to do!
To sum it up, add more stuff to your game. If you don’t have ideas, ask a friend, or the community.
- Originality
Now you game is fun and replay able, but is it just another “copy and paste” game? Is it original at all? Make sure your game feels somewhat original and isn’t like all the others in its genre. An example: say your making a simulator, it’s got worlds, pets, and swords to unlock. Sound familiar? That is like LITERALLY EVERY OTHER SIMULATOR! This sort of ties to tip one, but maybe adding some events, maybe different things to unlock instead of just swords, pets, and worlds. Maybe add levels, ranks etc.
To sum it up, add something different into your game, something no other game in your genre has.
- Quality
Now that your game is near perfection, let’s add one more thing. Quality. Something quality would be like, untitled boxing game. Its animations are sleek, its UI is amazing, and the thumbnail and icon GFX is clean. If you want something like this, I’ll admit, it’s quite tough. But you can try nitpicking at your own stuff and making small adjustments to make it near perfect, so then, something about it just feels better. Like in death ball, its UX just feels better than blade ball’s UX, but what is better is quite difficult to explain. Of course, as devs it’s quite easy to explain, but as an average Roblox player it might be a little more difficult to explain.
To sum it up, make sure you game is enjoyable to you. That way it is almost definitely enjoyable to the player.
- Community
Since this is a passion project, and you want a strong community, listen to said community. If someone suggests a worthy update, consider adding it. Heck if you want, you can respond with something like “hmmm, sounds nice, we’ll consider.” That way, your fans feel heard and it makes them happy, thus creating a loyal and strong community.
To sum it up, listen to the fans!
That is it for the passion project section!
Profit Project
Now that we have gone over the passion project section, let’s start with the profit project section!
- Effort
If you want max profit off of the little children that play your game, you need to put some sort of effort into your games overall look and feel. Try to make it immersive and responsive. If you want more tips I suggest reading tip 4 of the passion project section.
To sum it up, try to make your animations and VFX slightly above average, that way the player enjoys it and it wasn’t too hard to make.
- Content
Again, try to add a lot of content to the game. If you don’t want to put too much time into the amount of content your game has you can just add it in future updates, although still add a bunch of content on release or it’ll die off before you get the chance to update. Make sure to also update frequently! Otherwise, again, your game will surely die off.
The sum it up, add loads of content on release, and then slowly add more content in updates. That way on release players won’t leave very quickly giving you time to release the next update, thus retaining the player.
- Monetization
Now that we can retain the player and keep em happy, let’s talk about how we are gonna get some profit from it. Let’s talk about the king of profit. MICRO-TRANSACTIONS! Make sure there is a visible shop button where all your gamepasses are. Make sure the price is reasonable or else no one will purchase you gamepass. Say you have a VIP pass that grants an exclusive VIP title and 2X of an in game currency or something like that. I reckon you can’t sell that for 5k robux. A more reasonable price would be 250-750 robux. With great prices, comes great sales. In addition to gamepasses, developer products have great sales as well. As the player can buy it multiple times over. Let’s say you have a tycoon, and the player is broke, well, they can purchase 1k cash for a head start, over, and over again. Meaning at first they spend 50-100 robux on cash. 3 times. That’s 150-300 robux! From a single player!
The sun it up, make gamepasses visable, make them worth it, and make sure to ad developer products.
- Advertisement
I personally suggest YouTubers. They are honestly the best. They boost your cc player count greatly and keep it high over a long period of time because the video they post never actually goes away. In addition to YouTubers, when one popular YouTuber posts a video(at least 100k subs) other YouTubers see this, and make a video on your game without pay! If you aren’t willing to pay a YouTuber for a video, then consider making your own. The best ones are YouTuber and TikTok. Preferably short term videos. Tends to reach people faster. If you prefer Roblox ads then go for 10-20k for an decent relatively cheap ad. Do 40-60k for a reliable ad and 70-100k for the best possible ad. Try to make your ad last from a weekday to the weekend. So something like Tuesday to Sunday, then extend it for another 1-2 weeks.
To sum it up, pay YouTubers to make a positive video about your game. Or post your own short term video on social media. If you prefer Roblox ads, 10-20k is decent 40-60k is good 70-100k is almost certain success!
That’s all for the maximum profit section. Now let’s move on to the next section! The mix of maximum profit and a happy community.
Profit-Passion Project
— coming soon!
Keep in mind this tutorial isn’t too in depth and may fail to cover certain subjects. This is mainly for small indie developers.
