As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard for games to get visibility and traffic on Roblox.
As a Roblox player, it is currently too hard to find good games on Roblox.
The Problem
Any platform with thousands of games, such as Roblox, has a fundamental problem of how to distinguish the good games from the noise. Roblox has not fully addressed this problem - relying mostly on automated categorization (Top Games, Top Earning, Top Rated, etc) to showcase the games. This has resulted in a fairly stagnant home page, which is dominated by the same top games.
The Solution
The good news is that many other companies have already addressed this problem and provided a solid blueprint of what to do. The App Store, Google Play Store, Netflix, Steam, and others are all good examples of how to showcase a variety of content. In the end, I think it all comes down to curated content - content that is chosen by humans, updated frequently, and showcased in interesting ways.
For Example
Let’s take a look at the App store by Apple. They have a tab called “Today” which showcases curated content at its best.
- New Content Each Day
Each day, new content is showcased. Every day has new apps, and new interesting categories, and curated content to explore.
A typical day showcases content in the following manner:
- Game Of The Day
- App Of The Day
- A spotlight with one or more games featured
- A Category with multiple games featured (eg: Our Favorites, Fitness Apps, Games With Great Graphics, …)
- Another category with multiple games featured (eg: Editor’s Choice, Sports Apps, Best New Updates, …)
- Categories that change each day.
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Previous Featured Content Is Retained
Content from previous days is retained, so that you can scroll down and see apps recommended from past days. The content is retained anywhere from a week to two weeks. This helps build up a nice big collection of featured apps for people to browse. -
All The Content Is Curated
Best of all is that the content is selected by a staff of real people, who do all the leg work and hand pick the featured content for you. Much of the content is accompanied by editorial text or other helpful information. -
Genres
In the games section of the App Store, games are featured in a similar manner as above. The games are further divided into genres (Action, Adventure, Board, …) which allows players to find the type of game they want. Within each genre, the games are again curated into helpful categories. Thus within a specific genre, you also get great recommendations, with frequent updates, daily new categories, and all of it is retained for a while.
So What Can Roblox Do
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Featured Games
The featured games is a good start, and a step in the right direction. One improvement that can be done immediately is to retain the featured games from previous months. That way players can view the featured games for this month, as well as the featured games from previous months. -
Add More Curated Content
As in the examples above, there are a ton of great ways to showcase and feature new content on a daily basis. Hand picking content requires a lot of time and effort from your staff. But as other companies have already shown, I think it is something that Roblox has to do in order to progress the platform. -
Retain The Content
All that hard work in curating content should not go to waste. When you add new content, then let the old content stay on the shelf for a while for people to discover. This is a great way to build up a robust featured content section with weeks of great suggestions. -
Embrace Genres
Can you imagine trying to sift through Netflix or a book store if it didn’t have genres. Genres are a great way to categorize games, especially if you add curated content within each genre.