As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to show off our games and all of their glory in a short 30 second video, especially as the games on Roblox keep getting progressively more and more complex. As a developer you might sometimes find an awesome soundtrack that is too long for a 30 second video, or you might have an idea which just couldn’t be summed up in 30 seconds, which is a shame.
If Roblox would be able to address this issue by increasing the video thumbnail length limit to 60 seconds or more, it would improve the games and the development experience by allowing us to be more creative and express our games to the community in a more clearer, informative and interesting way. Of course, some might argue that the 30 second limit allows more creativity as the developers are more restricted, so they have to figure out short, fast and interesting ways to get the point across to whoever might be interested in their game, but that is not always the case as sometimes short and sweet just might end up being too short to be sweet. I understand that this would increase the work the moderators would have to do, but I don’t think a change from 30 to 60 seconds is all that much since we can already upload audio clips which are up to 420 seconds in length.
If you can’t sell your game in the first 30 seconds, all that extra time probably isn’t going to benefit you. For all the roblox games that have video trailers, I usually watch the first 5-10 seconds without audio - if that can hook me I either hop in or unmute it. That might just be me, but I don’t think this would be as beneficial as you may think.
Maybe it’s the way it’s presented? On Steam I’ll happily watch the minute and a half trailers they have showcasing their games. That being said, I’m probably more willing to do so because I know I have $30 on the line for said game.
I have a theory that a fullscreen button within the player would help out somewhat. You have to go to youtube which is extra time investment. I’m curious to see if these would be viewed more if there was an ability to fullscreen or if it’s just me.
I understand, it would still be useful to have more time to show off your game even if people don’t watch all of it. In the end we are paying money to put the videos up there and I wouldn’t mind if the cost to put up a 1 minute long video would be higher.
I’m only a clothing designer, so I may not have any say in this, but this is what I think (as a player):
I really only take about 15 seconds – jumping around most of the time through the video, to decide if I want to play the game or not. For me, it’s all about the hype displayed in the short video; key points in the game, some sort of music to go with it, anything that draws my attention. I would really only sit through a one minute video if it were for a steam game (like ScriptOn said) that I had to pay a good chunk of change for.
I guess I really appreciate the short and sweet aspect of the videos for games. It pushes the creators to really showcase their best work.
When I went to add the video thumbnail, I was greeted with this:
Obviously, the video’s longer than 32 seconds. However, I was not aware that video thumbnails had that time constraint, as I only found out after completing the video and adding it as a thumbnail.
Looking at the wiki page for Thumbnails, nowhere does it say that trailers have a limit of 32 seconds. Same thing goes for the Place page. There isn’t a mention of a limit when you actually go to upload the video, either.
My point is that, while longer video thumbnails would be nice, I think it should be made more obvious that video thumbnails have a limit of 32 seconds, so that amateur developers making trailers like me can spend their time making a video that better fits the time constraint.
I believe that the video time limit should be raised to one minute max since having video thumbnails, especially good ones, extra if they’re informative, would be good for paid access games. They would be able to display the game in more depth.
2 Minutes is the sweet spot, we are the only relevant platform that has 30-second limits. It’s really annoying. You can trigger relatively little emotional response in that time.
On the contrary, 30 seconds is optimal for little kids (our largest audience). If we want to expand Roblox’s older player base I suggest longer videos, otherwise meaningless 30-second game clips with NCS music should do the trick.
Although 30 seconds might show kids a brief experience of the game, there’s no guarentee that the thumbnail would be concise because there might be more gameplay than a developer can pack into that short amount of time. Who says all little kids don’t want see lengthier but engaging clips before they jump into the game?
I think the developer should be able to decide whether or not they want to limit their thumbnail’s duration for kids.
