Introducing Improved Genres and New Subgenres

Updates Announcements
#1

[Update] November 19, 2024

Hi Creators,

Today, we’re excited to share more about the improved genre taxonomy we’re working on, and our plans to roll this out in the coming weeks.

Genres can be helpful to inspire users to explore content in existing and new areas of interests. We know that genres also help inspire your creativity. But, genres needed an update. We’ve heard your feedback on this and that you also want agency over the genre assigned to your experience.

As previously announced, we’ve been testing genre-specific sorts in Charts and recently deprecated the outdated genre picker. In the coming weeks, we’ll be testing a new genre taxonomy on the Experience Details Page and Charts, and provide the ability for you to update your genre.

Improved Genre Taxonomy

We’ve been working on more relevant genres and optional subgenres that better reflect your content on Roblox.

Here’s the new list of genres and subgenres:

  • Action: Battlegrounds & Fighting, Music & Rhythm, Open World Action
  • Adventure: Exploration, Scavenger Hunt, Story
  • Education (no subgenres)
  • Entertainment: Music & Audio, Showcase & Hub, Video
  • Obby & Platformer: Classic Obby, Runner, Tower Obby
  • Party & Casual: Childhood Game, Coloring & Drawing, Minigame, Quiz
  • Puzzle: Escape Room, Match & Merge, Word
  • RPG: Action RPG, Open World & Survival RPG, Turn-based RPG
  • Roleplay & Avatar Sim: Animal Sim, Dress Up, Life, Morph Roleplay, Pet Care
  • Shooter: Battle Royale, Deathmatch Shooter, PvE Shooter
  • Shopping: Avatar Shopping
  • Simulation: Idle, Incremental Simulator, Physics Sim, Sandbox, Tycoon, Vehicle Sim
  • Social: (no subgenres as of 11/18/2024)
  • Sports & Racing: Racing, Sports
  • Strategy: Board & Card Games, Tower Defense
  • Survival: 1 vs All, Escape
  • Utility & Other (no subgenres)

As the breadth of content on Roblox continues to evolve, we plan to update the taxonomy periodically to keep it fresh. We will let you know before we make any changes. We will also share more robust definitions and documentation soon, so stay tuned.

Testing Genres on Experience Details Page and Charts

In the next few weeks, we will begin testing these new genres and subgenres on the Experience Details Page of our top experiences. The genres displayed will initially be assigned by a trained team of Roblox staff dedicated to reviewing and categorizing the experiences.

Genre Blog

Mock example of what a genre and subgenre would look like on the Experience Details Page

In the next few weeks, we will also update the existing genre-specific sorts in Charts to use the latest genre taxonomy. Once we’ve integrated and stabilized these first use cases of the new genre taxonomy, we will launch the ability for all creators to update their genre, starting in late October.

Selecting Your Genre Preference

Starting in late October, you can view and update your experience’s genre in Creator Hub on the Settings page. Each experience can have one genre and an optional subgenre that will tell users at a high level what type of gameplay to expect. We will also release documentation with definitions for each genre to help you make the best selection for your experience.

Our goal is to keep genres on Roblox accurate and relevant for users. And to keep genres accurate, we’re doing a couple of things:

  • Roblox may update any genre selections that appear inaccurate or misleading. We will always notify the creator when this happens.
  • We’ll have a limit to how often creators can change their genre to ensure platform experiences (like genre-specific Charts) are fair and accurate. More details on the process will follow in late October.

What’s Next

We’re working on releasing the much-awaited feature of filtering Charts by genre and more! Charts aren’t just for discovery — we know they help you track trends and can inspire your next big creation. That’s why we’re continuing to invest in them. In the next six months, we’ll add more filters, with breakdowns by country, device types, and genre, enabling users to explore more and discover your experiences.

Beyond genres, we know there are other dimensions of an experience, such as themes (e.g., horror) and aesthetics, that are important to users and will help in content discovery. We’re exploring how to solicit your feedback and call attention to these dimensions, and we will have more to share in 2025.

FAQs

How did Roblox build the new taxonomy? How did Roblox assign the new genres to each experience?

The Roblox team updated our taxonomy to better reflect Roblox’s unique experience diversity.

To arrive at the latest taxonomy, over the last 6 months, we conducted extensive research about our genre ecosystem through user and developer interviews, surveys, cross-referencing how our content compares to industry standards, and via a dedicated and trained team playing thousands of experiences across all genres. This team also reviewed and categorized the experiences and assigned the best-suited genres and subgenres to the top experiences included in the initial rollout.

As new types of content emerge and become popular, we plan to keep our taxonomy updated.

What should I do if I don’t see a genre on my Experience Details Page in the next few weeks?

Not all experiences will have a genre listed. To test the new genres in Charts, we’ve begun by manually migrating many experiences to the new taxonomy. You will be able to select your genre in Creator Hub in late October, and we will notify you when it is available.

What if I disagree with the genre assigned to my experience?

Between now and late October, we are testing the genres and subgenres on just a few areas of Roblox (lower on the Experience Details Page and Charts tab) with the goal to stabilize the feature without causing any material impact to your experience performance (positive or negative).

Starting in late October, you will be able to view and update your experience’s genre in Creator Hub. Roblox may update any genre selections that appear inaccurate or misleading. We will always notify the creator when this happens and you will still be able to update the genre. Please note, though, there will be a limit to how often you can change the genre. We’ll share more in late October.

Can I select more than one genre?

We understand that some experiences can fit into multiple genres. However, to help users discover relevant content in each genre, we need a primary genre. For example, when a user is on the Charts tab and looks at experiences under genre x, they should see unique experiences compared to what they see in experiences under genre y.

We are exploring how to surface additional dimensions such as themes (e.g., horror), additional subgenres, and aesthetics in 2025.

Why isn’t there xyz genre/subgenre?

We selected a set of genres that we think best represents content on Roblox today. If you don’t see a particular genre or subgenre, it may not be popular enough yet to have its own category. We’ve also defined genres based on an experience’s core game loop rather than themes, so some categories you might be looking for won’t be available as a genre. We are planning how to expose themes (like horror) in 2025.

Where is the Horror genre?

We know horror content is very popular. However, as a theme, it spans across a variety of genres. We’ll soon share our plan to elevate horror as a theme in 2025. In the meantime, you can find horror content in many other genres such as the Survival, Action, Adventure genres.

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#2

This topic was automatically opened after 9 minutes.

#3

Difficulty Chart Obbies are a large subgenre of ‘Obby’. Please add that!

76 Likes
#4

wheres the sci fi genre and will the api also get updated

62 Likes
#5

This update feels weird in a good way!

I like the extra genres and the subgenres and it helps players find specific types of genres!

I also do like the clarification on what genre/subgenre horror games can be in!

Will games be able to select multiple genres and/or subgenres? Or would we have to rely on metadata (titles/description)?

40 Likes
#6

Yoooo I been waiting for this one. I do think you should be able to add 2 genres if 2 apply.

26 Likes
#7

Please allow the use of multiple genres and sub-genres as this single-genre system is extremely bad at representing the true diversity of most games. Very few games can accurately be represented with a single genre and sub-genre.

There are many missing genres and sub-genres imo too, such as sci-fi, transportation, building, and education is missing sub-genres entirely (split into subjects: mathematics, language, space, philosophy, etc.)

I am extremely dissapointed at the sheer lack of genres and sub-genres given how long this rework has been in progress for.

Please also ensure that genre filtering is implemented into the search engine, also ensuring we can choose multiple genres, set genres to strict (they must include them, and not just one of any selected), as well as the ability to exclude genres from search results.

there should be an “other” subgenre for all main genres, especially if the way to choose a genre is only to choose subgenres, otherwise if we can choose the main genre and no subgenres within it, other would not be needed.

84 Likes
#8

From all the difficulty chart obbies I’ve played, they all seem to follow the classic obby style of just going checkpoint by checkpoint. What makes them different?

21 Likes
#9

The difficulty in the jumps get harder as you get further.

11 Likes
#10

Most games get more difficult as you progress, obbies have never been any different.

13 Likes
#11

I believe a horror genre with subgenres of Voice Over/Voice Acting (VO/VA), Realistic, Retro (Like PS2/Retro game art styles), and Whimsical or similar names of that for example, would be a nice addition.

There are a lot of horror experiences on Roblox and i believe it’ll be easier to discover such experiences with these genres and make it more diverse and easily discoverable.

Edit: I’ve realized there’s a section dedicated about Horror experiences in the initial posts FAQ:

While the question is seemly answered, I’d still love parts of what i suggested to be introduced as part of the selections for Horror experiences as it brings specific types of horror “experiences/genres” to be discovered.

28 Likes
#12

Right but the difference is difficulty chart obbies slowly rise to harder and harder jumps where as a different game would have the difficulty slightly fluctuate for the player to have breaks and not overwhelm them.

9 Likes
#13

Could just be me, but this seems redundant…
The 2 subgenres are the category’s name.

Why not leave it blank like the others? \/

Edit: What even is utility & other?? answered by PezzoGuy

Edit 2: On the topic of missing genres & subgenres… the lack is surprising… a great number of top games don’t even fit the vague genres & subgenres provided.
& on the topic of multiple, a lot of top games also fit multiple genres… and subgenres…

Edit 3: Honestly, imo, it’d be better to scrap the entire thing and just do tags.
Take steam for example, games don’t fit just 1 category. Steam sorts games by tags, you can add a variety of different tags to fit your game & can still sort and discover as you wish.

20 Likes
#14

There needs to still be a Creation / Building genre for building or drawing games. I currently use the Building genre already and this list doesn’t seem to include a good replacement. Party / casual does not embody these games at all, especially for games where you make your own levels / mini games.

24 Likes
#15

Out of the genres, I find “Coloring & Drawing” among the most interesting. These games have historically been moderation hell. Now the genres will make them front-and-center.

24 Likes
#16

Great update! Can’t wait to finally sort experiences by genre again. Also, I wonder what genre Climb Mt. Alimajed would fall in :thinking:

9 Likes
#17

Something like Better Discovery, which is an experience that serves as a hub to review and find other experiences.

I think it would be cool if we could filter genres much like how we can for the Marketplace.

18 Likes
#18

It would be good for a horror one? It’s getting mkre and more difficult to find those and some are really impressive to play

8 Likes
#19

Makes sense i guess, but that seems like it’d be such a small genre. :thinking:

8 Likes
#20

I’m sceptical about the application of multiple genres/sub-genres, I think it should still be limited but at a max of 3 possible genres rather than 1 at most, assuming that there’ll be no additional system like game tags added (that identify more things like if game is single player, multiplayer, co-op, etc). I understand some games may be even more diverse outside of this but I feel like there’d be at most mainly 3 genres at play without the game being a mess.

I wholeheartedly agree with the ability to search for multiple genres at once, as well as the ability to exclude genres in searches though. If I’m just looking for something to play generally, but don’t want to see anything such as horror games then I’d be kind of annoyed if I had to do many searches through each genre separately to find a single game.

17 Likes