How to Successfully Grow Your Game (Ft. Sensei_Developer & Vikinglaw) | Promoting and Advertising your Game

This was actually really useful! Haven’t finished reading the whole thing yet but it is pretty good! Nice work!

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Thank you. I’m glad you found this useful. If you ever need help with anything to do with marketing you can let me know and I would be happy to help.

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Hey, thanks for the advice. It’s informative and truly helpful however, I can’t seem to be able to shrug off the feeling that it is far deeper than that. It’s to the point where I’m considering doing a controlled experiment, where I fully replicate your steps in order to see if it would truly work. I will use your advice and see what I can perhaps achieve with it.

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Very interesting. But I don’t give very much hope to ads. I have one game that about 10 people play per month, and the time they spend in the game is maybe a few minutes. It takes at least an hour to finish the game. If players are not interested, it is probably useless to promote the game. The game doesn’t even have an English name and I did it for two years. :eyes:
But it’s my hobby and I’ll do games even when no one plays them. :wink:

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I am glad you found this information helpful. I haven’t really shared any of my advertising or marketing tactics with anyone but I am glad I did because hopefully people are able to use this information to create an amazing game.


Replying to @BroOfNoob
I plan on making a tutorial on how to properly market and make your game more appealing which you may find helpful because it will go over getting better player retention, making your game more playable, and making your game more appealing. If you are talking about your game mountain climbing then I think you will find it very helpful.

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Hey I have been excessively thinking about this. I have come to a few conclusions I would like your opinion on.

Game Quality and Demographical targeting

Firstly, a good game has no criteria. It simply needs to be “enticing”/“attractive”. These words are extremely vague so it’s hard to understand what I mean by that. What I mean is that a successful game can be unoriginal, it can have bad gameplay, it can have a horrible core gameplay loop, as long as it’s a game which is simple(meaning easy to understand the concept of it,why someone would enjoy it) and manages to target a demographic which with the help of the algorithim, it manages to maintain, a game can be successful. There are of course many strategies which can increase your likeliness of a successful game, the main one being promotion. Now, these claims are something I made after analyzing current and past front page games. Front page is generally split into a four demographics. Roleplay games(ages of 6 to 17),Simulators&Obbys games(ages of 4 to 12), Anime games(ages of 9 to 18) then finally Quality(ages of 9 to 50). Now, using these categories, lets compare them to the demographic of Roblox as a whole. Roblox’s demographic is from the ages of 7 to 25 with the largest group by far being 7 to 13(prepubescents) which take up roughly 50% of Roblox’s userbase. From 13 to 17(adolescents) make up 30% of Roblox’s userbase. The other 35% is split with 18 to 25 having 15% then 25+ having 5%. Those are my estimated figures and not based of the dubious demographic statistic Roblox has posted(which do not have verification). Using this demographic data, it is clear as to which games would be the most popular. The most popular games will be Simulators/Obbys, then Roleplays, then Anime games then Quality games. I may have had some confirmation bias with this, so if you believe I am incorrect, please provide some clarification with evidence.

Networking and Appealing to people

Secondly, the best way to network is to be a slave for others.This guide will be very unethical. I will demonstrate a guide. Generate a set of social media accounts and for a month or two, continue to post fake portfolio content, such as scripting systems, animations,vfx,gfx,music and modelling. Bare in mind, these have to be either made by you or untraceable in order for you to do this. Also, they need to be of a high quality standard. Whilst doing these, make sure to drive the algorithim to make you go towards Roblox-centric content, having developers and content creators at it’s epicentre. Make sure to frequently post on social media platforms such as Twitter and Tiktok till you are on regularly good terms with the general community. Now, you can start doing comissions with premium comissioners. Continue doing these and develop a friendly relationship with several teams. Preferably, have most transactions be in Robux. After doing this for 4~5 months, you have a great track record. Now, you can trace popular developers and content creators and respond to their social media actions rapidly by having notifs. Now, if these developers need comissions or favours done, make sure to respond asap. At the 6th month, you can now make some games. I would recommend amassing a team with your connections and participating in many game jams. With a positive track record, you can now make official games. You can either develop your game jam ideas or, make entirely new ones. My recommendation is to go for games such as simulators,two player obbies or advanced simulators(games like work at a pizza place). Within month 8, you will be a popular figure and will be able to do whatever you like. This in all reality, is the best means if you truly want to be sucessful by any means. For me though, I am far too romantic to do such a saddening thing. With any profit you make, you should use this to either hire people or advertise on Roblox or on other platforms using Roblox as the currency.

In all reality, networking is not something many developers can do because the more popular a developer is, in general the less they use social media and with rare cases who do, they will still likely not speak to you. Networking is far better done with content creators as they have to use social media but even with them, they still don’t really reply to others. Using Discord is the best tool if you are attempting to network but that requires serious time dedication. To even scratch the surface, you’ll have to invest atleast 2 months of your time in order to become a regular who is reputable and to develop relationships with moderators and higher ups.

Advertising

Advertising using social media is definitely something you should however, all social media platforms have an inert ‘cap’. This means that unless you pay the companies, your chances of being algorithimically recognised are about 0.001%. Even with support from other creators, this only becomes 0.005%. Youre better off buying an account to be honest but, people tend to be quite extortionate.

With small youtubers, I do not actually know too much. This is something I do actually think might work so for my next game release I will give it a try.

A social community is a must, as I have made clear in my unethical guide.

When it comes to advertisements, I recommend that you do not use sponsored games and instead, go for banners. When it comes to banners, my key tip is to use bright contrasting colours such as Red and Purple. Make sure to have an unique ad because otherwise, it’ll be 90% ignored. Games should only be advertised when you have a lofty sum to offer and have also done prime research on key times which players play roblox and on what dates. Additionally, you should change your advertisement every week if you are planning a long run.

Overall, I think the key message which a lot of top creators hide is: Be 100% tactical. Do not let anything go to chance and make sure you are hitting every criteria possible. Of course, it is possible to get lucky however, for anyone who cares, such an idea is ridiculous to fantasize about.

Please let me know what you think of this, either in messages or here. I hope the algorithm blesses you and thanks for reading :pray:

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I made a pretty long response and I don’t want to flood the chat with it so I made it hidden.

Response

Let me break down what I think about almost everything you said. So first you said a successful game can be unoriginal which I think is somewhat true because if you copy an already successful game why would people want to play your game instead of the already successful game? Well, they don’t but if you make your game better than the already successful game or if you put a twist on it than you have a reason why people would want to play your game over a already successful game. I made an article around 12 days ago where I encouraged this.

Now the next thing you said is that you can have bad gameplay. Now I don’t 100% agree with you on this either. It would also be nice to see some examples of games like this that are successful because this article is about having a successful game after all. So I really don’t think it is possible to have bad gameplay and a successful game but I would like to see some examples because I don’t have much to say about that. After that you said that a game can have a horrible gameplay loop and still be successful. What I think is that isn’t true because again I don’t see any successful games with a horrible gameplay loop because really to have a good gameplay loop you need to have a simple one or one that is easy to understand. Then you said “and manages to target a demographic which with the help of the algorithm, it manages to maintain, a game can be successful.” Now the Roblox algorithm only goes for games that have players playing for a while that is why Pet Simulator X is so popular is because people will sometimes afk grind and therefore roblox pushes it out to more people to then continue to do the same thing. I really don’t see any games that are popular with a horrible core loop, bad gameplay, and unoriginal.


You also talked a lot about player demographics and I believe that what you said is somewhat true. Now when you say “The most popular games will be Simulators/Obbys, then Roleplays, then Anime games then Quality games.”, that really isn’t a good speculation because you said that quality games are last but quality games aren’t really a type of game in my opinion because I would argue that there are a lot of high quality simulators, obbys, roleplay games, etc. For example Clicker Mining Simulator is a high quality game because it has a very good core gameplay loop, good visual effects, and nice UI. Also Altitorture and Draw Obby are also very high quality games and they are both a obby. I could also say that Emergency Response: Liberty County and Southwest Florida Beta are also very high quality games and they are Roleplay games. This is just the tip of iceberg there are also so many more high quality games that are simulators, obbys, and roleplay games.


I took a look at your opinion on Networking and that is just crazy. I only skimmed over parts so tell me if I missed anything important. First you the best way to network is to be slave which is simply not true and that is not how networking works. You don’t need to make a bunch of fake social media accounts and fake work to get commissions all you need to do is make high quality work that is original and there will always be room for improvement. Developing on Roblox is also a talent/hobby it is not normally a business. If you ask almost every developer who made a living on Roblox they will always tell you that at one point they did it as a hobby not as a business. If you have a mindset of doing it for the money then you will get nowhere. You then went on to talk about a bunch of random stuff revolving around development projects. After that you said "In all reality, networking is not something many developers can do because the more popular a developer is, in general the less they use social media and with rare cases who do, they will still likely not speak to you. ", which is not true because I have talked to a lot of developers who have successful games and they were happy to talk to me. Then you said “Networking is far better done with content creators as they have to use social media but even with them, they still don’t really reply to others.”, which again is not true in my experiences and you really didn’t give many examples of this. Afterward you said “Using Discord is the best tool if you are attempting to network but that requires serious time dedication.”, which I am not really sure what you are talking about there. Then you said “To even scratch the surface, you’ll have to invest atleast 2 months of your time in order to become a regular who is reputable and to develop relationships with moderators and higher ups.”, which I don’t know if you are still talked about discord. So no comment.


In the advertising section you said “all social media platforms have an inert ‘cap’.” which is not true because why would a company stop someone from becoming big on the platform that makes no sense. Then you said “This means that unless you pay the companies, your chances of being algorithmically recognised are about 0.001%.”, which again is not true to get recognised on social media platforms you have to post consistently, have high quality content, and actively engage with your audience.


Now you said “When it comes to advertisements, I recommend that you do not use sponsored games and instead, go for banners.”, which I do agree that sponsoring your game isn’t really that effective. Another thing you said was “my key tip is to use bright contrasting colours such as Red and Purple.” which I also agree on. Then you said “Make sure to have an unique ad because otherwise, it’ll be 90% ignored. Games should only be advertised when you have a lofty sum to offer and have also done prime research on key times which players play roblox and on what dates. Additionally, you should change your advertisement every week if you are planning a long run.”, which I do also agree on.

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Summary

You don’t need to copy a successful game in order to for an unoriginal game to become popular. Originality is generally something which is not within Roblox as a whole, and where there are original games, they are not purely popular because of such originality. Personally, I am struggling to think of any games which are actually unique aside from Deepwoken which is still not entirely unique. As for popular games with bad gameplay, Blox Fruits takes no.1,Natural Disaster(although I and many love it) has bad gameplay,pls donate has bad gameplay. Although bad gameplay is subjective, these games have bad gameplay(as unbias as I possibly can be). For a horrible gameplay loop, most games on the front page are as such. Murder Mystery 2,Rainbow friends,Natural Disaster Survival,DOORS,any tycoon or obby. I do agree with your next point. I used “Quality” to encompass all other categories, not to specifically mean that all roleplay,obby,simulator or anime games are bad. Quality was referring to unique game ideas which do not fit any of those. I suppose the best category to replace that would be Horror since the rest of the games are typically horror. The social media accounts were not to be false rather, a whole different virtual identity. I disagree with your point about “if you’re doing it only for money, you will get nowhere” as I know of many,many examples were people are money-oriented and still manage to become pseudo-successful not to mention, most top creators are in it for money, even if they were originally different. I think sucecssful is too broad of a term in order to determine things, for my interpretation of successful, a game must have atleast 1 million total players and 1k ccu avg. Regarding Discord, Discord has isolated communities which in general, regulars whom do participate in such servers typically do not accept/get friendly with other users till they speak to them for long periods of time. Therefore, I was referring to this and speaking that if you truly want to network on Discord, you have to invest a lot of time and communication in order to climb up social rankings in such servers till you are at a position of power in which you have direct contact with people of interest. This again, is subjective. I believe in general, you are dubious of my whole speculation on that aspect which I do understand why someone may think so however, thinking purely tactically, I do not see any flaws in my methodology. To iterate regarding advertising, this cap I was referring to is the beginner’s cap not for the entire platform. Companies are businesses and of course they want people to pay them. It is purely logical and is proven by statistic, I am unsure of what you do not understand. When it comes to the actual posts themselves, high quality content is once again, something which does not matter. Engagement is by far the most important aspect in attracting customers in any business/service. I suppose that is what I was attempting to speak about.

Let me know what you think about this.

I think from this conversation, I have been able to recognise that Engagement is the prime factor for a game. It does not matter of the quality nor of much else. If you can sucessfuly engage a large group, you will be successful. Engagement can be purely incidental, with the algorithm or it could be methodical, targeting specific demographic,appealing to them and lots and lots of promoting. I think these are the key ideas to take from growing a game.

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This article is exactly what I want to see, and I am currently struggling to promote my game.

I tried placing Sponsored Ads on roblox. But the effect is not significant.

Some incoming players can play for over an hour, with an average time of over 15 minutes. However, due to the inability to obtain sufficient users at the same time, the churn rate is high.

Starcraft Simulator (RTS) - Roblox / About

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It’s important to remember engagement is partially a derivative of a game’s quality and a million other small things, avoid neglecting quality just because you can succeed without it.

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Oh for me, I am someone who (sadly) is hyperfixated on being the best. If I make a mediocre game, then lords knows what would happen… I still believe though, when speaking purely analytically, engagement is the most important thing. As long as you target a demographic and do the things which that demographic truly wants then you can succeed(to a degree).

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This was a very comprehensive and quality guide. Although I think the point that a game needs to be high quality to be successful is incorrect. You can see many examples of low quality games exceeding numbers such as 10k active.

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I definitely think I should have worded that better. So I do agree with you don’t need to have a high quality building or scripting but what I do think is you need to have high quality gameplay mechanics most of the time if you are going to have a successful game. For example if you look at the most engaging games on the front page most of them don’t look high quality.


But each one of these games has a good reason for being successful. For example Escape Running Head is a game that is very engaging. The reason I think this way is because there are a good amount of stages where you are trying to not get caught by a running head. Then there is a game called Hero Brawl which is also engaging and has good gameplay because you can become one of your favorite superheroes and fight on the battleground with unique powers. Which is pretty interesting to the average child. So hopefully I made a little sense.

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Your point about even having good gameplay mechanics is false. There are literal simulators based around clicking a button that easily reach successful player counts.

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Simulators based around clicking a button can be engaging. Especially to a child and most of the Roblox platform is children. When a game is engaging and people want to play it the Roblox algorithm will push it out to more people and it will become very successful. One thing that you should note is that those button clicker games are more engaging to children than some people might think. When I look at one of these games I say it said
:computer_mouse: Click your way to the top of the leaderboards!
:desert_island: Unlock awesome islands using rebirths!
:moneybag: Upgrade your stats to become more powerful!
:paw_prints: Unlock OP PETS with gems!
:trophy: Compete with other players in PVP!
:boom: Raise your combo to achieve more clicks!
:rage: Enter BEAST MODE every 2 min with INSANE stats”, which these are some very interesting gameplay mechanics that make the game unique and enjoyable.

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I think your game may be good for normal ads but I would be careful about that. You might also want to think of having more appealing graphics for your game thumbnail. Another thing I would recommend is getting small youtubers to play your game if you can.

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Now I saw some people personally reach out to me for help and I kinda felt like I didn’t give enough tactics to help with advertising and growing a game. So I decided to reach out to some friends to try to find more methods. Hopefully you found this stuff helpful.

Target Search

Now you may be wondering what I mean by target search. Well, what I mean is you are trying to find stuff that is trendy that you can implement into your game but don’t try to be spammy. Also make sure to try to find something that not too many people are making games on. A good way to do this is to use Google Trends or the Roblox search bar.

Having Youtubers Play Your Game

Now I see a lot of people struggle to get youtubers to play their game so I think I should explain it a little better. First you can really just contact any Youtuber but it is going to be better if you contact smaller ones because they are going to be more likely to do it. Then you should offer them something here such as a promo code, a pet, access to something, or anything unique. You need to give them value and if you do that they are going to be very likely to play your game compared to if you didn’t. One other thing that you should note is your game needs to be high quality and complete. What I mean by that is it shouldn’t have a lot of bugs and it must have engaging gameplay so they can make content on your game. Now one last thing I would like to tell you is that it is not a good idea to pay youtubers large sums of money but if you are you should pay them based on how many people from there youtube video play there game. You can do this by having a tracking url such as a bit.ly link which you can use to see how many people click that link.


I had another method but I decided not to add it because it is kinda controversial right. So sorry about only having two tactics. Hopefully you found this somewhat useful and I look forward to hearing feedback on these tactics.

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Information Release

Now I would like to add somethings to this this article’s thread which is about understanding how Roblox’s Discovery algorithm works which I really didn’t explain much. So first I would like to talk about the Roblox homepage because the homepage is the biggest place for discovery on Roblox itself. This means you will probably want to understand how the Roblox homepage works which you can learn more about that by clicking here. Next I want to go over updating your game. Now updating your game is probably one of the most important parts about growing your game. You may ask why that is? Well, when you update your game you can have people that want to check out the cool new update and sometimes you will find people that want to produce content such as a youtube video on the games update. Which leads me on to my next thing I would like to talk about which is having youtubers play your game. So one thing some people don’t realize is when you want youtubers to make videos on your game you must do certain things such as produce content for youtubers to make videos on, allowing free cam so youtubers can make stuff like cinematics on your game, and so much more. Which a lot of people surprisingly fail at. Anyways that is everything I wanted to share and one more thing I do plan on making a detailed google doc that will go over everything about growing your game which when finished will have over 50k words.

Don’t think that to have a successful game you need luck because that is simply not true.

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Really useful. Ever since twitter changed its approach to non-paying members i definitely don’t get the same views. So will be focusing on other methods of advertising.

I guess what i need to do is push the selling point that I probably have the only high quality MOBA on Roblox right now.

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Hi I have tried advertise my game on social media and there’s 3rd party who contact me that they had networking with a youtuber and they will charge me robux to let them play my game. Is it worth a try or a scam?