Ive been struggling desperately to understand whats wrong with my game’s monetization pattern. I enable users well enough to purchase gamepasses without seeming offputting or P2W. Ive been contemplating if the player audience is the problem, or im just very bad at monetizing my game.
Then you may say premium payouts would fix this issue, it only triples the amount gained, making my total yearly revenue ~75K robux, which is 235$ a year.
i think the monetization products specifically could use some more creativity. you have some weapons, and then there’s the classic VIP, and currency purchases.
some new product ideas could be little one-time events, maybe a rain of fire, or something like that. but whatever it is, it should bring attention to other players.
maybe you can also implement a benefit for inviting friends into the game. i was in the game for a solid 15 minutes and not a single word was spoken.
still though, i was having fun with my flamethrower and all of your other miscellaneous weapons, it’s a great game! hope you can implement PVP soon, because i think a multiplayer scenario in this game could be really fun. good luck!
P.S. i left a slightly chonker donation, keep it up.
Ill see what i can do, im getting advice from my fellow developer friends and the forum to see how to maximize my earnings to a safe amount, ill work on a more cleaner gamepass shop.
Nothing significant has changed. I dont know how my rates are horrible. I have done multiple things to make my shop more visible and vibrant and there are days multiple times a month where nobody buys anything from my game. Ive added multiple clear use gamepasses like rocket launchers and even meme references to get the player a hook to buy something. I dont need to push popups and adverts in peoples faces, right?
Is it my audience? Just look at the server list! I have had multiple people say my game is botted because my players havent changed their avatar since creation.
Where do the rest of your monetization statistics stand? What is your ARPDAU? What is your ARPPU? What is your player conversion rate? Are you getting any sales from your gamepasses / dev products? There’s not much we can say to help from just the revenue overview. If you’re not comfortable with sharing that, you can see which ones are low and read the Roblox documentation for suggestions for fixes: Monetization | Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub
Players with “noob”-ish avatars don’t necessarily mean that the game is botted.
Some players hide their avatar preview to remain anonymous (it’s a Roblox privacy setting), so it turns their portraits into new players
Consider the age range for your game’s audience. A mature audience will likely have varied avatars, while a younger audience might not be too familiar with avatars or have the Robux to change their looks.
If you’re suspicious, I recommend you join a server and observe your players.
I don’t see any major issues with monetization. Obviously, you can improve some metrics, but I don’t see any major issues with your game.
Your genre’s 50th and 90th percentiles are really low. For reference, my genre’s 50th and 90th are 0.68% and 1.94% (PCR) and 187 and 600 (ARPPU).
I also gave your game a quick 5-minute play.
There are a couple of explanations for your case:
It is likely that your game isn’t in a genre where users are paying (you did physics sim)
There is a lack of social interactions, and players might not be incentivized to spend money for that reason
Your engagement and retention stats might not be good (speculative, we don’t know your stats), which means that the first impression isn’t good
If you have bad retention and engagement, you shouldn’t be worried about monetization right now; instead, you should focus on fixing that. Otherwise, improve social interactions, improve the presentation, or remake the game for a different genre.
If you’ve put a year into the project already and are not happy with where it is, I recommend you move on to doing another game and using what you learned from this one.
The thing is, physics simulators do get payed well. ive talked to one of my developer friends, he says he gets paid around 150K-200K robux a MONTH. I get paid 40% of that a year.
I also HAVE BEEN doing everything to improve social interactions, bad retention and engagement. A long time ago, my game was bare bones. The only gamepass was VIP. I got paid almost equally as then to now. Ive added free build, a functioning tutorial, a functioning quest backend, more weapons, and like many other things i can list off. Nothing has changed with my stats except playercount and day 7 retention.
If you think my game needs improvement, act like these games are asking you for help if they had stats like mine: Burn the World🔥 - Roblox; Destroy a City - Roblox. You could have many things to point out; yet these games probably have great retention, and destroy a city has amazing community diversity, even though theres no content other than various detailed cities, theres no good reason to give up.
Of course, I do agree my game has imperfections, I’m not saying my game is the perfect round sphere out there; im constantly improving game ideas and mechanics, i plan to add PVP, a questline, trading (with a trading hub to further improve social interaction) and much more. Im only saying my game has so much content as of now, but why is it practically failing?
Sometimes, it comes down to luck, sometimes to who did it first, sometimes to how well you present your game, and sometimes to whether the game is fun or not (note that 3/4 of these are based on your experience). Maybe your game attracts a lot of players, or maybe it doesn’t. There’s always a bit of luck in game development, which is frustrating, but with experience, you can mitigate some risk.
First of all, pat yourself on the back. Many game developers do not even have regular players like your game. I don’t want to downplay your efforts. 3M visits isn’t small.
Second, maybe take this “failure” and compare your game to others. What did they add? What didn’t they add? etc. You’ve mentioned that other games succeed, but you don’t mention why they succeed.
This isn’t very useful indicator to compare yourself to. Do you have the same CCUs? Is their game older than yours (the first game that introduces something new tends to have the most players)? How often do they update the game? etc. etc.
You need to be realistic with yourself. Take the 50 percentile and estimate revenue based on that (for example, multiple the 50th percentile ARPDAU by the visits you have). That’s how much games in your genre make compared to your game if visits are the same. If you’re not happy where the revenue is, maybe it’s time to make a new game and move genres.
Either your game isn’t interesting to younger audiences, or your solutions aren’t effective. I don’t think my answer will be satisfying, so it boils down to trying some other things and seeing if they stick.
In my experience, adding additional polishing/“decorations” to your game likely won’t improve your CCU (for example, people play your game to light stuff on fire; new players will not join your game to trade).
Also, what did you do to improve your social interaction? Another user here responded saying the same thing I said. The gameplay itself isn’t designed to play with friends at all.
We don’t know that until we see their stats.
How do you know this?
These are good ideas. You could turn them into new games or incorporate them into your current one.
social interaction in my game is a wasteland considering my playerbase; the algorithm is either messing with me or possibly there is something wrong with my entire game; which would be if all research goes wrong.
