Roblox 2019 Events: Updates, Calendar & More

Updates Announcements
#65

People were asking for data. Here are two Custom Roblox event opportunity (not to be confused with Roblox event opportunity where the event comes to your existing game). The first one was monetized well, the second one was not. They both lasted for about a month. This was in addition to Roblox paying us USD $20k divided across the team (excluding contracted people coming onto the team).

Monetized well
image
18.5 million plays

Not monetized well
image
28.6 million plays

My point is, if you do get these unique event contracts, understand that the development process is a massive work load and that things like the shop should not be thrown to the side. We all remember how the 2018 Egg Hunt only had one or two shop items on launch which happened because some of our team was moved to RPO, making a team shortage around two months before launch and the shop was put on the back-burner for polish and features.

Do not let sponsors or project leaders do this, you’re the developers, you can put your foot down and say “no we’re going to halt on these new features until we have a shop ready.” Then you meet the quick deadlines and carry on your merry way.

As for the sponsorship games, the only concern I have would be that we will eventually see more and more of the missions inside the existing games becomes super simple. The opportunity cost would be too high to make some complex game mechanic that’s short lived instead of investing time and money into an evergreen feature that can actually have a larger long term pay off.

Or maybe we won’t see that? It’s just something to keep in mind I guess.

Edit: If supplying this info is a contract breach, I think it’s best to have this data open and transparent since this was a major concern for some. I’ll take the slap on the hand.

21 Likes
#66

It could be that they don’t have listed the events that they’re partnering up with movies to do. At the same time, they could’ve gotten rid of that overall…

#68

Some terminology from my experience working with events, these variants have existed so far:

  • Custom sponsored game opportunity: Game created specifically for a third-party sponsor (i.e. a movie partnering up with Roblox to make a game). These will probably still be happening and still be paid.
  • Sponsored game opportunity: Existing games that are sponsored by a third-party to add some content into the game. These will probably be arranged by you as a developer in the future rather than through Roblox.
  • Custom Roblox event opportunity: Egg Hunt, Hallow’s Eve, Bloxy’s, event lobbies, etc. Custom projects issued by Roblox that are still paid, without sponsor, and will still be a thing going forward.
  • Roblox event opportunity: Existing games with some event components added, where Roblox makes the prizes for you and highlights your game in return.

This post is about Roblox event opportunities. Not about any of the others.

I hope that clears it up for some people…

I don’t see the problem with dropping pay for “Roblox event opportunity” games, maybe this can be used to pad the budgets for custom games instead. The small amount of effort that has to go into the “Roblox event opportunity” games is nothing compared to the workload of a Custom Roblox event opportunity or Custom sponsored game opportunity. The extra pay isn’t needed. They’ll pick another game to sponsor if you don’t think it’s a fair deal. You don’t have to do them.

If you think the workload between adding an event to an existing game and making a whole custom event from scratch is comparable or only a factor 2-3 of work different, you are sorely mistaken and it’s clear you don’t know what you’re talking about. Custom event games are where the real effort is at. Developers put in hundreds of hours of passion/hard work to make these happen and that towers above the effort needed for a small event in an existing place.

Arguing about not getting X thousand dollars thrown at you anymore for adding a small portion of content to your existing game is entitled as heck. This was ridiculous and not fair to begin with. This is a good change.

21 Likes
#69

Honestly my hope is that because it’s “only exposure” that games with a decent amount of exposure will give up on the opportunity. I’d really like to see the events start featuring games that haven’t really been seen before.

#71

I’ve never worked on an event game so I’m sure I’m the target for this change. Here’s my thoughts:

  1. These themes are terrible. Literally the first theme talks about being a Roblox toy which 99% (but really 100%) of up-and-coming developers aren’t. None of the themes are vast enough to give devs any creativity. There’s no way I would even attempt to make a pizza game when Work At A Pizza Place is so huge. Why should we be forced to make games revolving around pizza in the first place? I think you should stick with genres like “Royale”. Also, I’m not really gaining anything by getting exposure on some random game I made for an event and not my actual projects my heart and soul goes into.

  2. As a player, I already never participate in events. At this point there’s a new event way too often (in my opinion) and the items you get are lackluster at best. Why should I work on an event game when I personally don’t find events fun or worth it to play? I think that while allowing us up-and-coming devs an opportunity to get visible is awesome, players aren’t going to care about events anymore when there’s a new one every other week. You should make events really feel like an event and not just a monthly occurrence.

  3. Not getting payment seems fair, but I suspect the quality of the games will go down. If an event game is flooded with micro transactions, it’s going to just annoy the players and make Roblox look bad. Especially if people do care about events every other week and I’m wrong in that regard. This will make events feel even more pointless.

I love that Roblox is giving new devs a chance to get seen, but I think this could be changed a bit to benefit everybody. :slight_smile:

9 Likes
#72

What about the themes marked with “new game” on the table? Doesn’t that mean it’s a “Custom Roblox event opportunity”? I didn’t see any explanation regarding what that marking means, my apologies if it’s been clarified already.

#73

They have a custom lobby game that is a paid opportunity, and then some event games attached to that that are not paid. Similar to Hallow’s Eve this year / Egg Hunt next year.

2 Likes
#74

Is there a chance of the money that would normally be distributed towards smaller event contracts to potentially land in the pocket of people who work on custom event games or at least raise the amount given for such contracts? As I’m sure we can all agree, people who end up spending months building a game from the ground up which will only be in the light for two to three weeks… The amount offered at the current time is not enough for a team with more than five developers.

2 Likes
#75

This is wrong and exploitive.

1 Like
#76

Please scroll up and read what @buildthomas posted. He explains this situation well and has enough experience to have a significantly informed opinion on the matter.

2 Likes
#77

Nobody’s arguing this. Have a little more faith in the development community’s understanding of how much effort it takes to make content. If some form of Roblox development is more valuable then another, then a commission price should reflect that. This is a commission price of $0 by definition.

OK, but it is some portion of content nonetheless that takes some amount of development. Time that ought to be paid for; not necessarily for thousands of dollars but definitely not $0 at all. This is a scary and dangerous precedent Roblox is setting. It is entitled for Roblox to think that a developer’s time is not worth money. That’s what people have a problem with, and that’s why this “for exposure” thing doesn’t sit well with people.

We understand the “for exposure” thing in this case is working a little differently than for, say, digital art commissions (what the “for exposure” taboo is mostly associated with). Garnering attention for our work clearly means more players, a more fun game, and hopefully more monetizing players. Thing is, such revenue is still behind DevEx restrictions and taxed by Roblox. It’s not guaranteed, either.

Lastly, I’m sure the community would like to hear these clarifications from Roblox themselves, as well as their response to the community.

5 Likes
#78

Good use of reading comprehension. :+1:

#79

You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you want the highlight and extra traffic, you have to put in effort. It’s not Roblox’s job to babysit and spoonfeed people with money/highlights, if you want it and added revenue/traffic then you have to do the work.

For the small amount of effort of putting a custom mission in your event, Roblox gives you for free:

  • Time of their marketing/art department customizing a virtual item for your game.
  • Putting that item in the catalog and having it be awardable in your game.
  • Time of their production managers/assistants assisting you with implementing the mission.
  • Time of the QA folks and priority access to the QA testers to have the content tested.
  • Highlight on the event page on the website.
  • Marketing time needed to customize content of the event page to fit your game, description of your game, description of mission, etc.
  • Time of marketing/QA teams making a trailer for the event showcasing gameplay of the events.
  • You are provided with assets like the intro screen with the mission description, the event label to put on your game icon, etc.
  • Probably a bunch of other things I don’t have vision on.

This is no different from when you want your game on the Featured sort, apart from a bit more effort. For the Featured sort your game has to also meet certain guidelines. Maybe you also need to localize it in the future as well which would increase that effort. Are we going to expect Roblox to also pay you for you putting in effort to get your game featured? This seems silly at best.

EDIT: This should be seen more as a partnership than as a contract. You do something for them, you get a benefit back in return. Custom games are more like contracts.

6 Likes
#80

At the same time, popularity of a game after the event is never reliant on Roblox, it’s reliant on the players and what they are looking for in the game. That being said, a lot of what attracts younger players (the biggest demographic on ROBLOX rn) to play the game in the first place will be the free items that are awarded in the event.

You are right, Roblox provide alot of support, but they are a business, and a lot of their “support” is meant to return them an event that will give them some form of turnover.

For example, The ingame UI given to the maker of the game is almost definetly related to the theme, but usually it is directly going to direct you to the free item, given it is one of the incentives of partaking in the event.
Another example might be as you said, the production/marketing managers helping in implementation. While this is useful at times, other times it might not. (And in the past, i think we’ve all seen atleast one event that is implemented in a way that is ambiguous (although that might be intentional), or buggy because they’ve had to restrict their creative ability to the theme and ideas before them, (that being said, QA has and probably will pick up on things needing fixed before hand hehe)).

That being said, your right. It is quite similar to featured games. Except now, the only difference between featured games and events , is that one of them you actually have to put in effort to make sure it fits even more of Roblox’s Requirements than the other.

Featured games:

  • Usually themed selection but sometimes isn’t
  • Game is relevant and adjustments have been made to the game to fit that criteria
  • Free indirect promotion through placing the game on front page
  • You can make adjustments to the theme as you go on, and you aren’t restricted to leaving something in the game till the event has ended.
  • Targeted at upcoming developers

Events

  • Roblox provide you marketing specific to the game in the event, and specific to the item,
  • Roblox provide “guaranteed” promotion onto games by putting games that have been selected onto their event page, for that period of the month.
  • Usually, you can’t make adjustments to the mission that gives you the hat once it’s released, only bug fixes (though I am eyeballing this and this is an assumption, correct me if I’m wrong)
  • Game has been adjusted to specific theme
  • Now targeted at upcoming developers

If anything, Roblox are merely redesigning events to be exactly like featured sort, just with more market input by the company, which when it comes down to it, can actually restricts the developer’s potential to gain a ongoing audience for their game. If normal events are going to be a thing that you are not paid for, then what is the point of doing events if you can just get Featured and actually build an audience based off your original ideas and content.

(I’m not very certain of how much input Roblox has on an event game, as really we haven’t had something of this scale before. Though I am assuming there will be a considerable amount. Let me know if I’m wrong and I’ll correct my statement appropriately :D)

4 Likes
#81

So your job as a game developer is to make sure that you monetize your game really well and that you engage the biggest portion of players that you can into coming back to play your game after the event.

You get a customized catalog price in your game and active highlights rather than just passively sitting on a sort. Featured just means you get a slot on the featured sort and that’s that.

Again, you can’t have your cake and eat it. If you’re doing one of these events then you will need to collaborate with staff and work with the input they have on your pitch for the quest in your game. If that’s not something you’re interested in then sure, go for the Featured games program instead.

PS: They give you a quite a bit of creative freedom. It’s not like they dictate to you what they want, you usually pitch something yourself.

1 Like
#82

Halloween seems to be very underrated…
People always seem to be excited about it, so it’d be cool if this gained some more attention!

5 Likes
#83

cheers for the clarity. in that case, I’m alot less concerned about the changes made now :smiley:

#84

image
:eyes: :eyes: :eyes: HEAVY BREATHING

6 Likes
#85

Really appreciate you guys letting us know what’s going to happen in advance.

1 Like
#86

I’m actually excited about these events. I like the events 3.0 plan! I’m considering participating in at least one event.

1 Like