So, I was naive to assume roblox would push a game if it had good enough stats, like, at least a tiny little bit, but it literally does not care if you have amazing engagement if you don’t pull in your own audience to the platform.
It’s depressing how you can waste 6 month making a genuenly good and unique game and it will go to 0 if you don’t go market it full time instead of working on making it better.
Any help \ feedback is appreciated.
How did you find an audience for your game if you have one?
As the market grows, that’s probably going to be a more prominent thing. I see that as both good and bad, the need for marketing to consumers. It could be seen as more production quality, but indie devs shouldn’t be pushed out because of that.
I think something that would help is Roblox investing more into the Discovery system. I’ve spoke about that subject quite a bit on other posts so I won’t delve into that here.
I’d say research YouTubers to play the game. The forum is good for short engagement with a developer-specific audience. Feedback on your game can help find areas to improve, maybe there’s something specific stopping growth.
Sure I just didn’t want it to seem like I’m just farming visits here, not like it would help in getting a long lasting player base anyway)
It’s a wave survival colony builder
It seems my only options are to go viral on tiktok or to find an investor, I honestly think that’s all I can do at this point, my stats look extremely solid but i’m no longer motivated to improve the game if it gets me 0 players
Off the bat, I noticed the lobby system is not at the spawn. I’d make it in that same room at spawn, like how Doors does it. That way players can navigate to that area easier.
From my short time playing the game, it seems to be a more long-form kind of game. There could be better direction and polish, but I’ll have to look into the game more. I can DM that feedback when I get the time.
Relating to what I mentioned about longer-form content, I think YouTubers that do Let’s Plays would fit well. I’m not sure what 40 YouTubers you reached out to, maybe their audience didn’t match the game you made in some way.
I assume you emailed them, which I’d say is most effective compared to Twitter or another form of contact. In that email, I’d say why my game is relevant to that persons audience. If it’s not relevant, I wouldn’t email that person. I’d also go with smaller YouTubers, researching videos they’ve done. Does it match something like what I made?
I haven’t tested emailing YouTubers based on relevancy yet, but am planning on it in the future. Having a press kit and reaching out effectively wouldn’t hurt. (Other than time I guess.)
The motivation thing hits, yeah. I’d try to get into a schedule that’s easy to do. Maybe once a month making a post somewhere.
hm yeah good point about the lobby, some kids actually can’t navigate a 2 room lobby fr, I’ll adjust it
And yeah I emailed them, mostly those who play td and yes, mostly small ones
Your sample size is extremely small. A single player can join your game and play it for an hour, and your average session time would be in the top 1%. It might seem like your game should be pushed to the front age, but, in reality, it’s nothing close to front page material (in terms of statistics). Yes, the algorithm will see that your game has high engagement, however, it will also see that your game doesn’t have a lot of players and is also lacking in other algorithm-promoting material.
I mean, I had sample sizes of a few hundred people when testing sponsors, the play time is pretty much correct here.
Do you mean my player count or do you think my other statistics are “not front page material” because while play time is the stat I’m proud of, everything else is pretty alright too, in the top 50%…
Its not like I can control the player count
I’m glad you’re proud of your achievements! It’s important to be able to stand back and admire what you’ve done as it helps motivate you to improve further. Having hundreds of visits is a milestone for any newer developers!
Front-page games have insanely high statistics. Though your average playtime is quite high, it’s due to a small sample size that drastically increases the margin of error (i.e., it skews the data). The algorithm takes note of this. Front-page games do have high engagement, as well as tens of millions of visits a day (for the more popular ones). Even with the less popular front-page games, they are approaching one million visits daily.
In your case, hundreds of visits daily may put you up within the search results, but it wouldn’t be actively shown to players on front-page sorts or recommendations. The game development industry is very competitive, so the people with better financial opportunities have an advantage due to their ability to pay for advertisements. There are limited things that Roblox can do to help individuals without that level of money, but, it’s not as easy as “handpicking high-quality games”.
Hey just wanted to let you know that I got proof you were incorrect about sample size, turns out it was 100% accurate, and your argument did make sense to me logically! but it seems that no, sample size didn’t affect the play time in this case! no hate, just sharing info I find useful.
I have had 2000 daily active users for a few days now after a youtuber gave me a boost
and the average play time is even a little bit higher than before!
However, the sample size is still way too small. Your retention rate has a fluctuation of 50%. That is a massive fluctuation. For larger games, their fluctuations in this metric is minimal. Large fluctuations aren’t suited for deriving and trends from.
I don’t think having others assets (unless it is a universal/starter asset, like a sword) is going to attract users to your game. Plus it can lead to DMCA takedowns by LSPLASH.
if you truly have a good game it may just take time to get the ball rolling. for example, steep steps used to have a few players, until they updated their thumbnail and suddenly went viral. or a more recent example is combat initiation, that game literally had 3 or 4 players a week ago and now has 1.1k
i havent tried the game but from the pictures maybe you could improve the look of a game a bit? i feel like that could help a bit
