This tutorial is going to explain the steps you could take to make a game. There is no proper way to make a game a but there is a few tips and tricks you should follow.
Getting your idea
I know a lot of people have really amazing ideas in their head and then later resize that the game has already been made. This has certainly happened to me multiple times. However there is a few ways to think of a unique game idea.
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Consider who you are designing the game for and what type of games that audience likes. Making your game for a specific audience will allow you to tailor your game for that specific audience. Lets face it you can’t make a game to please everyone, there is always going to be someone that doesn’t like your game.
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Try and think of a unique idea that people may have not thought of before. Remember there is no such thing as a bad idea, it only depends on how you execute that idea. Having a unique game may boost the amount of players playing your game as your game will have that unique feel about it.
You should read over this thread to get a more in depth answer on how to get a unique idea: Creating Unique Game Ideas
Research
Doing research can be very helpful when getting ideas for your game mechanics and planning it later on. You should go and play games similar to your idea or games that are within your target audience to see what these games are doing well with and not so well with. Knowing what a game isn’t doing so well with will give you a clear understanding of features not to add when making your game or features to improve on.
Having some research will allow you to create a game that fits nicely within your target audience and will also allow you to not make a copy of a game. However adapting other games ideas and getting inspiration from a game is a good thing. Lots of games on Roblox and games outside of Roblox have taken inspiration from other games.
Planning
This is the most crucial stage in making any game so try to put a lot of thought into the plan. Almost every game in and outside of Roblox has had some sort of planning behind it so it is super important that you make a plan as well. You may be thinking what should I include in my plan and how I should structure it.
Structure of your plan
There is no right or wrong way to structure a plan as you and your team are going to be the using the plan. My only tip to you is to structure it in a way that you and your team can easily understand what is going on and can easily add ideas. I personally like to bullet point ideas and keep the points short and simple so that I can easily understand the ideas when I read over them. This method may not suit you so I suggest that you use your own method.
What to put in your plan
There is no right or wrong thing to put in a plan but you should put anything in that may be useful. Plans differ depending on the project that you are doing, lets say you are making a social game you should plan out the social element the most. I am going to list a few things that you could include in your plan:
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You should plan out your monetization strategy so that you seamlessly make it part of the game rather than having it as a side thing. Having a good monetization strategy will make the buying of products a much more pleasant experience for players. The hardest part is to get that first purchase from a player so you should think about how you are going to get that player to purchase that first product. Once the player has that first product they may feel more inclined to get another product. Also don’t be afraid to give away items to players for free.
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You should consider who is going to help you make the game. Having someone else help with the planing and the development of the game will make everything a lot easier. Having someone to help you will also help make the game better as you can bounce ideas of each other. The sorts of people that you will need is a programmer, builder and a UI artist. Then you should contract people to make logs, ads, sounds/music and models. However if your game relies heavenly on any of these contracted jobs you should think about giving them a percentage of the game but it really depends on the situation.
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Make sure you plan out roughly what the game is going to be so that everyone on your team understands what needs to be done. Ultimately plan out as much of the game as you want and add new ideas to the plan as you go along. Just make sure you give a bit of thought into the plan before you start developing as it is a lot easier to change ideas in your initial plan than to change them while you are developing the game.
Developing
There isn’t much to say about this stage as it speaks for itself. Just before you start developing you should make sure everyone on your team is familiar with what needs to be done. Once you start developing keep referring back to your initial plan so that you can keep everything consistent. Remember you can always adapt, change and add ideas to you plan now that you have started developing.
Testing
This is when you start to move your game from alpha to beta. Beta basically means your game is in its testing phase and people will expect bugs and issues within your game. Having people test your game that are actually going to play your game is a great way to test it as they are ultimately going to be the one’s playing it.
Testing isn’t just a thing you do before you release your game but a thing you do all the time even once your game has been released. Before you release an update you should test that update throughout for any bugs and issues. You should be testing your game all of the time for bugs and issues as bugs can crop up at anytime. Lots of development teams have a group of testers that help test their game for them. Having a little group of testers will make finding bugs easier as they might find a bug that you may have not spotted yet.
Release
Once you have tested your game and finished designing all of the main game elements from your plan it is time to release the game. This is the time when you start properly advertising your game and promoting it. Now that the game is released make sure you retain and grow your playerbase as best as you can. Here is a few ways that you could increase and retain your playerbase:
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Try to update your game regularly. These updates don’t need to be major game changing updates but enough to keep players engaged. Adding new content to the game is always good to add for updates because it gives players a new thing to try out. As you can see with the top games on Roblox they always promote their updates and notify their playerbase that an update is going to happen. This is a very good idea as it will help draw players back to your game and get people exited for the update.
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If you want to boost your playerbase you should localise your game so that it is available in various different languages. Doing this will increase the amount of people your game appeals to meaning that in theory more people will play it. Having your game available on various platforms is also a really good way to increase your playerbase. Having your game available on mobile will almost double the amount of players that can play your game assuming your game is on PC.
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This may seem stage but you should listen to your playerbase as best you can. Having a good relationship between your playerbase will help you get ideas for updates and maybe find bugs.
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Collecting data about your game is really helpful as it will allow you to make decisions on what needs to be improved on in your game. Lets say you release an update, you should collect data about how the update is effecting the game. Collecting data will also help you make your user experience better because if you are collecting the data correctly should know what players aren’t enjoying about your game and enjoying. The sorts of data that you could collect is: player retention time, what the player does first in the game, how your products are selling and length of time between the first purchase.
Thank you for reading, have a great time making your game
