So your game died... (A thread on game design and the market)

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#1

You’ve finally done it.

Thousands of robux invested into your dev team, tens of hours toiling away making sure your scripts are just right- your builds are perfectly arranged. Your ads are ready to launch, and your game is ready to launch. You’ve waited months for this, and you’re about to realize your front page dreams.

It goes terribly.

Your ads? No one cares about them. You get a few dozen players who all leave after a few hours; no one comes to replace them. You pay your developers (as you should), thus losing a ton of robux and/or actual money on this project. Your game is swiftly forgotten.

Or your game gets a few hundred players who stay for a while. You make a little more this time; but even then, after a few weeks, the player count dwindles into oblivion, never to recover.

This experience is near universal, especially for first time developers. But why do our games fail while other games soar to the top? Why are we trapped in the purgatory of irrelevance while we watch others rise to claim their fame and fortune?

Most of these developers never make it. They never reflect and never learn, and go right back to making the same mistakes that got them stuck in the first place.

But you, you’re different. And by understanding some truths about game design and the Roblox market, you have just a small chance of clawing your way out.

1. WHY DO WE PLAY GAMES?

I can hear your laughter, but don’t dismiss the basics. Every artist starts with squares and circles; every musician starts with basic notes. Just like them, every game designer must start with this fundamental question; why do we play games?

Take an effort to think about this. Wrap it in your mind, analyze it, reflect on your experiences. Why did you bother coming back on a game for the first time? When you were tiny, barely old enough to hold a controller, why did you glue yourself to that one console game for hours at a time?

The answer I suspect all of you have come to is simple; Because they’re fun.

In this lies the key to everything. Before anything else, any other decision, any design choice, you must think about fun.

If you genuinely can’t grasp this concept, you should put down the keyboard and play a game or two. Reignite your love for games and understand, really understand, why you played games in the first place.

This concept of fun above everything else translates directly and universally into game development. Before anything, you must think about if your game’s concept is fun.

2. WHAT IS MY NICHE?

“But my game was fun!” You cry. “And people still abandoned it!”

A game being fun is essential to it succeeding, yes, but it isn’t the only factor. And while the basic concept may be easy to understand, it’s at the other hurdles where 90% of developers fail.

So far we’ve established that for your game to succeed, it needs to be fun. But fun isn’t enough. It needs to be unique.

Before I talk more in depth about this, let’s imagine a scenario. (This is directly taken from a YouTube video by the way).

Imagine you’re making a YouTube channel and you wanna play Minecraft. Playing Minecraft has proven that it’s fun to watch, right? And look at these guys who play it all day and get millions of subs! You can clearly do this too, right?

No one ever tells you that there’s tens of thousands of people doing the exact same thing as you. It isn’t like you’d figure that out on your own; all you see is the three or so channels that made it big. You never see the literal tens of thousands of channels doing the exact same thing, playing the exact same game, and never making it.

The exact same rule applies to game development, especially on a market like Roblox’s. All you see are the front page simulators, tycoons, donation games, etc. You never see the thousands of simulators that never get players because they’re literally all the same. You just see your own game and the guys at top, and you think it’s this easy to be one of them.

This is the perspective that 90% of devs never realize. This is most likely the reason your game failed. So how do you make your game succeed? You find a niche.

For those who are unaware, a niche is a unique role in an environment that a creature adapts itself for to survive. Using our analogy, this would mean specializing your Youtube channel and finding a unique branch of content to make. It’s difficult and hard and risky, but it’s worth it.

Cloning popular games may have worked 10 years ago, but Roblox has grown exponentially since then. Now, when you see a game like Pet Simulator X dominating the front page, you have to know that there isn’t just a thousand clones, there’s tens of thousands. You can’t get away with unoriginality in the market anymore, you have to be unique.

So ask yourself; What makes my game unique? What makes it unlike any other game of my genre? When you know this, you can move onto the next step.

3. HOW CAN I SHARE MY VISION?

When you have a vision, you need to market it. Not just with basic, generic ads either. You need to sell it.

The first step is hiring people that meet your vision. You should be as selective with developers as law firms are with lawyers, and I’m not kidding. Offer high pay, invest the money you need to, and comb through the applications and candidates. Do interview after interview and never settle for a developer that you know in your gut isn’t right. When you have a vision, you need the right devs for the job. You’ll know them when you find them.

When it comes to marketing, you need to be focused and aggressive. Find tiktok creators who make videos on similar games, reach out to them. Design ads specifically for your niche, find your style. Find a good GFX artist who shares your vision. Brand yourself and your group for your vision; don’t make [Generic Dev Studio #2000] like the rest of them. Be different. Stand out.

There’s more specific advice I could give, but that’s really the essence. If you understand that concept and have a clear, focused vision then the rest falls into place. You need to make something you’re genuinely proud of, not just another simulator or donation game. The market is so saturated that innovation is not just a choice, but a necessity.

Finally, remember that trends die fast, but communities last a lot longer. A small but consistent and loyal playerbase is infinitely better than a flash of success and subsequent nothingness.

With that advice, even if it isn’t guaranteed, you have a solid chance of winning the lottery. Take charge of your own design, take responsibility for your failure, and make a game you can be proud to share.

fin.

88 Likes
#2

Absolutely beautifully said. Thank you. This means a lot, and especially for smaller developers who aren’t there yet, being successful, it helps out a ton.

11 Likes
#3

This topic is actually very important for beginner developers, so I’d like to include my personal experience as an example.

I’m the sole creator of Chaos at the Bistro.

Context

I spent around a year and a half working on this game by myself, meaning map design, game design, scripting, animations, sound design, and even music composition.

The game was essentially complete by early 2023, and I was discouraged by the impossibility of advertising the game.

After a few months of not touching it, I met someone who was talented with marketing and media management, and somehow with an advertising campaign, the game blew up.

In the first day of the spike, the game reached 50 players, more than it has had in it’s entire life time.
By the second day, it was at 100-120 players.
In the first week, it spiked at 2.7 thousand players.

Obviously I tirelessly worked at updates to keep engagement up and released two semi-major updates over the course of two weeks. The game dwindled in player count, however, and after about a month of activity the average player count stayed at 200-300. Long story short, now it’s at about 30-60 players on average.

Obviously mistakes were made, and the game could’ve been designed better to hold players. Here’s a bullet-point analysis of what went right and wrong:

– The good –

  • The game has a mostly unique concept
  • Mechanics are fun to play with and satisfying
  • Basic in-game shop and daily shop cycle to motivate coming back
  • Game modes to spice up gameplay

– The bad – (so far as I know)

  • There were bugs and issues as the game was never tested for such a load
  • Exploiters were a real issue and there was no moderation team prepared for this
  • The shop was too basic, and the selection was limited at about 40 items. The economy was unbalanced and currency was too easy to make, things were too cheap.
  • Only one map in the game, which I was very attached to. I couldn’t comprehend the idea of designing an entire new map, but in the case of a game like this, it seems to be very necessary.

And of course, maybe the most painful mistake:

The game got boring to play. It had a basic core loop, but it was too easy to reach a mid-high level, eventually shop items aren’t worth saving up for and the gameplay got repetitive after 10 minutes.

If I can make one overarching suggestion for all future game developers reading this, it would be: Make sure the game is fun. Make sure players have a reason to come back, and that they don’t notice how the time flies while they’re playing (in a good way).

Thank you to anyone who read through all this, and I hope you can make some truly unique games.

29 Likes
#4

Hello what advertisement strategies did the person do to make your game have that many players?

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#5

Excellently said. It really does come down to it though; making it fun and unique. And unique doesn’t have to mean making a whole new genre, it can just mean putting your own original spin on a trope previously done. The vision is what counts.

5 Likes
#6

My guy I visit the talent hub now and then and there are so many tycoon, simulator, donation, roleplay game clones “in development”; and sometimes I’ll see a “This game is guaranteed to have X number of players” meanwhile nobody’s even heard of it.

I agree that too many people are attempting to make it big using the same boring idea.

9 Likes
#7

Im making a unique game but even then I am having a hard time advertising it to other players

And no its not any of the game ideas you mentioned

3 Likes
#8

I have been working on a game for a good while (my first game too). The game currently has under 8k visits, and only rarely sees some players. However, the game has a rating of 98% (82 likes, 1 dislike), and the feedback I am getting is very good. I got a very small but strong community that follows the progress of the game and plays from time to time.
This might also be represented by the very good Stickiness stats and good Session Times. However the game doesn’t have good retention stats. I don’t care if new players don’t stick, if existing players stay, but I wonder if that affects the game’s discoverability negatively.
The game doesn’t have a core loop, it relies on user generated worlds and, well, building, like Minecraft

I have yet to market the game. However, I am afraid of that failing, and if it does, I’ll abandon the game even after all the work I put into it. I have a limited amount funds… Do you think that the game has a good chance of succeeding in getting a solid player base? (just a consistent ccu and I’ll be happy)

The game

The game is a building game in which players can create their own worlds, or play someone else’s world. The building system is feature rich, with a rotate mode, scaling, the ability to build on rotated parts and a configure mode that allows to put interactive objects into a game, such as teleporters, health, part spawners, trigger blocks (moving blocks that make possible a lot of cool systems), and much more.

The game takes inspiration from Blockate

BloxBox [Experimental 0.06.P] - Roblox

7 Likes
#9

This is exactly the problem with most devs. When you don’t have perspective and don’t care enough to gain it, you’re blind to the 10,000 other devs trying to do the exact same thing as you.

It takes passion and creativity to have a genuinely unique vision, a real idea instead of a clone. Those are traits that many devs haven’t learned to cultivate.

4 Likes
#10

Read section 3 of the post. A great game without the right marketing may as well be nothing.

2 Likes
#11

I have always found it easier to do Game Design, mainly cause I have been working at it for so long, and moved from professional Game Development to Roblox Development. But also because I have realized that it is so important to listen to others and get feedback before development, during development, and after development, but always remember to not lose your liking.

“Game design isn’t just a technological craft. It’s a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading.”
~ Jane McGonigal

It took me almost 4 years to finally realize how to make a game, I watched so many tutorials and did so many lessons, but all it took was realizing that I can’t make a perfect game, and from there I made MY perfect game. Not everyone is gonna like your game, that’s why Roblox has 66.1 million daily users, and only slightly less than a million are playing the top three games combined, everyone has their taste, make your game and find those who like it.

You may not be able to make a perfect game in other peoples eyes, but you can always make YOUR perfect game. And that’s just awesome.

2 Likes
#12

This is why finding that niche is so important. Without it your product is just expendable and ends up losing to its more popular predecessors that it cloned.

#13

I’m currently working on a huge project, and this is super motivating, lol. The main interesting part about the project is that it’s an attempt to make an already existing idea that many consider convoluted or hard to understand (Plates of Fate) more palatable while still having its own twist. It’s a relatively rare subgenre so it really seems like its success or failure will be a surprise since there isn’t much to base it on. We’ll just have to see what happens, lol

2 Likes
#14

Best of luck! If you have a solid and unique concept and you stick with your gut on it, I’m sure you can realize its potential. Game development isn’t easy, but the resulting harvest is more than worth the frustration.

2 Likes
#15

Yeah it’s definitely been a pain to make. As fun as it’s been poor code practices and concepts led me to rewrite the whole game, and I’m still not where I was before in some areas. A somewhat lack of communication has led some of the map to be delayed until we actually know what we’re gonna do. It’s such a cool game idea but it’s definitely making us work for it, XD

2 Likes
#16

I feel you. Never be afraid to take the decisions that you know are necessary, but that come with sacrifice.

1 Like
#17

I mean this post is good but theres so many games which are dead that fit whatever you said

How am I supposed to advertise my game? And how can I hit the algorithm to maximize the amount of players I get? Does anyone have any advice?

1 Like
#18

Read section 3. You need to tailor your own advertising strategy to your game’s vision and selling point. If you aren’t good at that, find a marketing specialist who is.

#19

Been getting alot of Ideas lately, But always feared the idea of it dying, recently got this game idea and it seemed so good that already started working on it with my partner, the only problem I have is Section 2, The game idea combines two different common niches, Rng and Battleground, does this mean that this is just another clone or a Brand new concept?

1 Like
#20

This is a great resource! There is so much more even than what you said that goes into game design and that’s why I love researching it! Another thing is that game design is just like creating a business. Pretty much all of the steps that you’re going to need to take to make a business, are the same steps you’ll take when you’re making a video game (because you are making a business). And with that, I would like to add a very nice YouTube video about business that could pay dividends even for game design; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VlvbpXwLJs&t=4781s

1 Like