This does not sound like a good idea whatsoever unless roblox warns you if you are affected by this
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I guess so, but I feel like there’s a bit of a difference considering that if Roblox was willing to, they could’ve added to the problem by adding a built-in AI thumbnail generator to cut the middleman entirely. This doesn’t really seem like the same thing as a ChatGPT wrapper or a texture generator, or maybe the actually useful stuff like Avatar Auto Setup or the autocomplete for code. Could just be wishful thinking though.
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Only thing I don’t like about this update is this:
Roblox is basically asking us to forgo something that is basically engrained into the dev ecosystem. I understand why the change is being asked here but I think this should’ve been discussed with some developers beforehand.
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I’d like to see a follow-up on this as I question the effectiveness.
Would it not also be counter intuitive if the majority of Roblox players want that similarity? This update is assuming most of Roblox want new and totally different experiences, but that hasn’t been the norm on Roblox. There’s a reason for that.
Roblox limits creativity due to the lack of actionable discovery and Engine limitations. Telling people what to play is different from me telling Roblox what I want to play. With search, Roblox is still guessing what people want instead of giving us Filters to manually get what we want to play.
As for engine limitations, I say that as most games on the platform look similar. Graphically and otherwise. I’d love a 2d engine or support natively. Shaders to diversify look.
The algorithm also favors micro transactions, multiplayer, 3d, experiences that have high replayability. That doesn’t fit my game, but it also doesn’t fit most of Roblox. We need engine and discovery improvements to get to another audience on Roblox. This announcement isn’t going to fundamentally change Roblox’s audience, or that’s my view.
And thus, I ask for stats to back up this change. I fear it will do more harm than good. There’s also the fact that Roblox would control said data. It’s in their interest to make their own features look good. I can’t fact check their numbers despite my skepticism. The data science people are internally motivated. I hope these concerns are taken into consideration and I’d love a response.
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This concerns me because I have a game whose title is literally just “Firefighters 
” When you search Firefighters my game is the top result, but there are a lot of games that are named similarly. I don’t have the warning in my creator dashboard yet but I’m still worried.
Most of these games are newer so I guess they won’t count, but some are older and are literally called “Firefighters” too, is the number of players important to decide which one is original?
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What do you base this on? Either way, Roblox wants the platform to be filled with unique experiences, and I would think that they’ve thoroughly considered the potential impact to player engagement patterns. Roblox has been in this business for years. They have a goal of what they want to be, and they have massive amounts of data to base it on.
I can assure you with full confidence that this is more of the fact that most Roblox developers simply do not know how to make their games look different and utilize the engine to its full potential.
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How would this effect games using similar icons to each other? Since a lot of games follow the market leader when it comes to successful icon translation to their playerbases
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To be fair, as a player I actually do find [WHATEVER UPDATE] making part of the title invisible to be frustrating. The full title should be visible for the best user experience.
A case can be made for an update notice feature to replace it, however.
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I really appreciate the effort here!
As of lately I haven’t been able to find many games (if any at all) that are engaging and unique. Coming from a developer standpoint, I’m eager to see if this will boost underrated content!
When I create a new game in the same genre I’ve created in prior, I always use my most successful game in that genre as a foundation. I use the core mechanics, change the map up to fit a new theme, and add a couple new mechanics. A lot of the time I will reuse the entire codebase with some changes, same UI, some of the same models, and the same overall Explorer structure. I then create an entirely new marketing/branding identity with new thumbnails, descriptions, title, etc.
@starrrydays is this methodology an effective way to create on Roblox, essentially cloning old place files and improving upon them, trying to make the best game possible each time? Or will the overall Explorer structure and shared assets harm my discoverability? What exact is the line of a “similar experience” that will get dinged? Clarification here would put me at ease - right now I feel like I need to unnecessarily shuffle the game assets and explorer structure to do well. I release fairly similar but really fun games to different audiences, slightly improving with each release over time. If I need to entirely change my strategy, that will be good to know.
I appreciate you all, this feels like an extremely good change if it’s not too aggressive to where we need to start from scratch each time.
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That’s… wonderful. It makes me proud to look at an announcement like this after years in distance, and see this platform is figuring out most of its major problems. It’s honest and wonderful work, and I’m glad for that.
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This is the only thing that I’ll consider a Win for Roblox, We’ll finally find some original games instead of over-repetitive “Simulator” games.
Finally originality gets a spot in Roblox! Seems nice!
But how will this affect games that share similar genres like tower defense or battlegrounds? An algorithm would pick up ‘Anime Tower Defense’ to be similar to ‘Robot Tower Defense’ while being two completely different games.
Same with battlegrounds for example; “Heroes Battlegrounds” compared to “Alien Battlegrounds”, while once again this can be two completely different games with unique mechanics.
Along with this thumbnails will experience overlap as thumbnails are designed, based on metrics and science, to attract users to their game.
As my final potential issue, Titles needing to be short and catchy. How will this issue be solved? Considering people will now have to actively avoid similar naming (which may lead to less accurate metadata) in order to boost their exposure.
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Roblox’s front page over the last four years from my recollection suggests trends and games getting popular from said trend or copying another game. If your game didn’t do that, then success was highly unlikely. Watch RoBuilder or other game devs and that sentiment was shared.
I agree that Roblox should have unique experiences. I’m saying it’s not that right now as much as it could be. Not only that, I’m saying I don’t think this announcement changes the root issues as to why there aren’t as unique experiences as Roblox wants there to be.
While it is true that many creators don’t know how to utilize custom materials or otherwise, more technology there would allow for stylization not currently possible.
As someone who has read most of the docs and strives to make my game stylized as it can be, I’m saying there’s not enough control graphically.
2D support would be interesting, but I do not think Roblox ever will launch anything related to 2D. Their vision has always been real-world graphical fidelity and realism, to keep their shareholders satisfied in their investment into a high-tech game engine. Retro looks or toon shaders would not sell as well.
This is a simple 2D project I made to test out animations and map movement, while shaders and such are not capable, spritesheets are fully usable with ImageRect offset. As to why developers don’t often do it, I suppose it is not profitable at all.
That sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, like how AAA game studios will stick to the familiar and chase trends because they don’t want to take risks with unique content. The lead Roblox developer scene isn’t immune to this. In other words, players will play what’s trending because that’s the majority of what’s being offered, such as on the front page and top search results. This change seeks to remedy at least part of this issue.
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Yes, exactly. Changing the page to offer more diverse content should do the trick, in-part as you say.
I wish to explain that the solution is not one and done. I just hope this update doesn’t backfire and make it more difficult to make innovative games. That’s my caution. We’ll see what happens.
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This is extremely worrisome and feels very non thought-out. Lets actually hope its not as direct as similar thumbnails and games get weeded out for just the top on each genre. You have a great point explaining. Its like they kept it so vague so that they can damage as many games as possible.
there should also be certain keywords labelled as slop, such as sprunki or squid game.
Roblox has no incentive to cause players to play less games on the platform. If you think this is punishing too many games, then consider that this is more of a result of the amount of games that are low quality, low creativity, and manipulative in how they present themselves.
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