Looking back at this I can already tell I’m most likely not qualified as some of these terms such as KPIs I do not know/understand and the fact my game plan is fully written out but only has code with no visuals/builds.
Unfortunately I am still 3 years too young to apply , which is a huge bummer since I really feel like I can push the boundaries of Roblox’s engine…
Last but not least, I’d like to ask you a question. When is the best time to submit an application? Also, when will the application form be closed? Are you going to close the form first and then read the applications, or are these applications going to be read 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Are there any Zoom calls involved as well?
@Kareemheim We will keep the application form open for some time and will be reviewing applications periodically throughout the year, so you don’t need to rush and submit right away. Most communications would likely be through email, but there could be voice or video calls as well during the review process and going forward to meet the team and discuss the project proposal and deliverables. Let me know if you have any other questions.
So, voice and video calls are going to be exclusive to the Founders?
If I may ask, how serious is the application? from my previous reply, you can tell I don’t fully grasp some of the concepts (mainly KPIs), I understand 500k USD is a lot of money and it should be dealt with properly.
Minimum of $500,000?!?! That’s so much money. Looks like roblox is looking for professionals to create games on this platform. Awesome idea!
I learned about KPI in highschool, it’s basically like this
“KPI stands for key performance indicator, a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective.”
It’s like, how many players do you want to reach each milestone with?
Example,
Are you planning on having monthly sales, for example? How many are you going for
Players on a monthly basis, for example? How many are you going for
This is a simple illustration not detailed.
“Good KPIs: Provide objective evidence of progress towards achieving a desired result. Measure what is intended to be measured to help inform better decision making. Offer a comparison that gauges the degree of performance change over time.”
Do you have any game development examples, due to the game not being released how would someone make a KPI for it?
I assume you have to measure how many players/sales you want per milestone in this context of game funding. How many players do you expect to get in the first month or first milestone,
oh so like how many players in alpha (alpha release being a milestone) and stuff like that? also is there an initial funding when you get accepted or do you have to work with no funding till the first milestone?
Nah you got 3 years to prep your pitch and build your portfolio!
This is an incredible opportunity! It’s amazing how Roblox is able to fulfill a lot of developer’s dreams to be funded and work full time on crafting the perfect game they in vision.
I just have a few questions though.
-
Can you opt-out of the program? Also if so what would happen?
-
Will there be deadlines? And if so what would happen if you didn’t meet them?
-
How much say would Roblox have on your game? I know they mentioned a few things they are prioritizing but what else would they be expecting?
Im really hoping this brings in some full scale companies (EA, Activision, etc) And larger indie studios, Then roblox might finally get the respect it deserves, Even with all its flaws.
This is a remarkable opportunity for developers and a step in the right direction - it isn’t even the amount of money that is being offered that brings a smile to my face, but ROBLOX promoting ambitious and innovative creations on this platform and supporting them to such a massive degree.
Thank you to those who made this happen, I look forward to seeing what ROBLOX will become in the next few years - something of this magnitude can go a long way to changing the platform immensely and ensuring people don’t simply just do the bare minimum, but let their imaginations run wild.
Wonderful idea! It’s honestly quite mesmerizing to see such initiatives underway to make Roblox home to bigger home-grown titles. $500,000 to start is no small amount either, so it’s clear Roblox is going for Triple-A experiences here. Best wishes to everyone who goes this route!
I might have to see what my team leader thinks of this
The problem here is that performance is terrible (especially on lower-end devices) and developers are EXTREMELY limited by the assets they use and how they use them. A place with about 50k parts (or an even lesser amount of meshes) will lag pretty much any computer, assets you import will also lag the game out a bunch (especially custom textures/images) and most assets you’ll use are going to be limited in some aspect. For example, let’s look at Unity’s textures. Base Unity gives you the ability to add multiple different material maps on top of a base texture (for lightness, metalics, etc.). Or you could download an entire custom shader engine one of the thousands of developers have made and make your game look like it’s real life.
The only advantage Roblox Studio has is simplicity - like I said, it’s made for children to use. If Roblox wants their platform to not be made for children, they also need to make their development tools more complex to allow real development ventures that could make actually games and not simple places. I’ve been a developer on Roblox for three years now and my entire goal while developing has been to create the most impressive builds possible - it takes many, many hours to do that in Studio, whereas with Unreal Engine I import a few free assets, enable their graphics engine, and then have a game that looks like it’s real life.
If you’re going for a retro look, or you want to do low-poly stuff Roblox Studio is perfect. The problem is that Roblox doesn’t want to only be known for this style (which - generally, of course - is more suited towards younger audiences) and they want to expand their reach for all audiences. This isn’t to say Roblox can’t be played by all audiences, but it’s very clear that Roblox is a game made for children. If they want it to not be made for children, they need to allow developers to do complex development instead of the simple single buttons with one customization option.
I’m not saying Studio needs to be the same complexity as Unity. There are ways to make studio MUCH better whilst not being complex. Allow plugin developers to modify aspects of studio (adding more tabs and options, modifying graphics, etc.) Give more customizability to things like textures. Give us the ability to cull our models and objects if you won’t give us the ability to make our own graphics engines. Culling is a massive part of performance management and so far I’ve seen very little use of culling or the ability for developers to configure culling themselves. Making things like surfaceapperances have more options is key. Heck, I’d even settle for a toggle between “advanced” and “simple” mode.
My point is that Roblox can’t complain about their platform being childish if their dev tools are childish too. Simplicity isn’t always a good thing.
I hate to break it to you, but in the pictures I gave, the game has no lag on very low end mobile devices. We have no issues running it on computers/mobile or anything so far. I’d say our project’s graphics are on the higher end of Roblox games yet it runs just fine. We use almost all imported assets and use surface textures for all of them, so they have normal maps, color maps, and sometimes even metallic maps. Unity and Unreal are nice and all for graphics, but Unity needs insane optimization if you want to be able to run it. We haven’t really had to do any optimization tricks or anything for our Roblox project and it runs just fine. Unreal out of the box has a lot better optimization than Unity, but they have their quirks as well.
I don’t think it would be a bad thing for Roblox to update studio even more, but I wouldn’t agree that the games can’t be made with much higher quality and standards. The updates that we have been getting are simply amazing for the studio. Roblox has really come a long way in the past 2 years since I’ve been learning their studio. I also don’t really think that Roblox is complaining that their platform is childish, as they’re showing with funding that people can make really good games on their platform. It takes a lot of money to make something really high quality because of the hours you have to put into a game. Not to mention, high quality assets and such. Having really good game art costs money, even if you have someone that can make that art for you. Their time is worth money.
what were the specs if I may ask?