This sort of continues on many of my previous posts that led up to the position I am in currently. Growing a game on roblox is borderline impossible if you are not lucky. In fact, after working on a commission for 3 weeks and getting a notable amount for it and investing it into ads, I found out that being able to invest money into advertising a game still does not mean that you will have any success with connecting to your target audience.
Roblox ads have no age group targetting, despite all the “”“”“AI”“”“” buzz that they are wrapped into. As a result, they produce users that are neither able to complete a tutorial, nor to figure out how to play the game on their own. At the disgusting cost of about 3-4 robux per user, it is unacceptable to have kids join, play for 50 seconds and leave, taking my money and giving me no return, turning my horrible ARPDAY of 0.3 into a ridiculous 0.03 (!) overnight. Prior to getting roblox ads, I would usually have 3-6 new users per day with about a 7-9% retention. As I get the retention stats from the ads, I am seeing a whopping 2.7% D1 retention.
To fellow creators - learn on my mistakes. If you have a passion project that is made to be fun to play, not to milk money from 3 year olds, stay away from roblox ads. I do not intend on getting another campaign of roblox ads and I urge you to avoid them too.
Gave your game a try and have to say that it gives off an impression of being unfinished due to its, let’s say informal look and nonchalance in terms of visuals. The tutorial drags on for a bit too long and I find the typewriting effect a bit unreadable because the text scales constantly in size. I play on low graphics and it was pretty confusing as to where the enemy team base is (I just flew forwards), even having dragged it onto a higher level and I was pretty lost. I’m aware aerial combat is supposed to drag on for a long time, but it’s a Roblox game at the end of the day.
Even if you made nice visuals for the hangars, plane spawners and UI, the people (typically children) who click on sponsored game ads don’t have the patience for this. This even includes people like me who are over 18 but just lack patience when there is no clear objective/guidance.
Made a similar mistake when the new sponsor system released, and can double down on what you’re saying that it’s not worth it if you’re making a game that isn’t a tycoon or clicker simulator. That at least until they add age group targeting, but even then the success rate is extremely low. In the future I am hoping to see something where an algorithm looks at your most played games and takes their genre and/or subgenres in order to better suit sponsored ad impressions to every player.
You might be thinking of Biplane Dogfight. I like that game and I got inspired by it, but no, I did not republish an uncopylocked game, and you can look through my post history, my youtube channel, my discord server and the other games by my group if you are sceptical about it.
Sounds to me that you are targeting inefficiently. Are you advertising for all platforms, all countries, all ages and all genders? Try A/B testing which audience set works best for you, and you can also use the Audience tab in Creator Hub to see which players tend to stick the longest.
If you don’t want to advertise, there are still other methods to get your game in the picture. If you can make engaging content on social media, you can attract interested players there.
But still the most important metric to optimize is the Qualified Playthrough Rate. You can find this on Acquisition → Home Recommendations. Get engaging thumbnails, good titles and make your game page interesting enough to get people to press the Play button.
It’s partially a game of luck, as you mentioned, but that’s the case with any kind of marketing. It’s also a game of strategy; keep trying different things to see what works best for you.
Played the game lol was fun, sorry to hear this, but have you considered your competition?
In my opinion these games are more polished right from the thumbnail and videos and even then they only have 100 active players. These players are probably dedicated however as there is not much plane games around on Roblox.
I will heed your advice which is why my passion project is made for me and my dev partner as a priority.
Also the map gen was confusing the base was like 5 tiles away while the map goes out 1000 in either direction, consider armored patrol and make it as small as possible in order to promote the fun part (shooting people)
In short it’s the complexity controls of simulator planes and not the fun ease control like naval warfare. I think your game 1000x suffers from lack of players as naval warfare will do as well.
Ah, I see, the new ad manager tries to figure out audience settings automatically.
Personally, I prefer being in control of these settings, especially when multiple audience sets are highly converting, and to carry out tests simultaneously.
You could try out the classic ad manager, but keep in mind that Roblox ads are overall the more expensive acquisition method. It helps attracting players, but you’ll likely end up with less profit than expenses.
It’s best to invest in converting marketing materials first (thumbnails, icon) and build a strong core loop that maximizes playtime. If your genre allows for it, building a community around your game & emphasizing playing with friends also increases loyalty and word-of-mouth growth.
I decided to add a top bar compass to show where the bases are so that the enemy base is easier to locate, especially since people who don’t have graphics on 10 don’t have the render distance to see the enemy base. Thanks for the feedback.
Check your Analytics > Engagement > New user first session retention
you want 50%+ for 5 mins mark.
Implement onboarding funnel to have a more informed idea why and where (steps of tutorial) do they leave the game.
3-6 new users per day is too few of samples to draw conclusions from. and if you check their source, they might be coming from friends or search, which naturally have higher retention than the other sources such as ads or home recommendations.
New user first session retention is at 30%. Didn’t change a lot, since previously users would join and leave when there was no one online.
I am using funnels, and there is a disturbing 90% churn at the step of starting the plane engine, which the game explicitly tells the player to do in the controls menu, in the tutorial and again last time when the player just enters the plane seat. The only conclusion that I am able to draw from this is that ads bring users that can’t read.