This is nice and all, and I’m glad that genres are back, but Roblox needs a whole rework on how game discovery works, and a huge improvement on experience pages.
Improving Roblox Game Discovery
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Genre Tags – Not just picking a single genre from a (relatively small) genre list. Games should be allowed multiple tags that accurately represent their mechanics, themes, and style, similar to Steam.
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User-Defined Tags & Community Voting – This could be done a variety of ways, such as user voted tags, but the introduction of game review comments may help with this as well.
(This isn’t as important as the previous point.) -
Advanced Search & Filters – Players should be able to search by tags, features, release date, rating, age range, or perhaps even monetization type (e.g., free-to-play, subscriptions, Premium benefits, paid access, in-experience purchases).
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Curated & Rotating Front Page – The homepage should showcase a diverse rotation of genres, indie titles, experimental projects, and age-appropriate games tailored for the individual user, rather than experiences targeting <13 users (the largest demographic on Roblox).
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- This is probably the worst part about Roblox, that the front page almost exclusively focuses on the most popular of experiences, which are almost all targeting the primary demographic of Roblox. While this is understandable, this basically kills any other type of experience from ever reaching the front page for any relevant amount of time. Most players don’t search for experiences and may only see what’s shown to them via either the front page or the home page. 99% of Roblox players do not need to be in the same single experience.
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Personalized Recommendations – Recommendation algorithms should prioritize showing players games that fit their interests and play history, not just what is globally or regionally popular. This already happens somewhat, but it’s hardly prioritized compared to the latter.
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Trending by Niche or Newly Released – Highlight trending games within specific genres or tags so that smaller but high-quality projects can gain visibility without competing directly against the largest titles, and give a temporary boost to newer experiences that have reached a certain minimum requirement.
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User Reviews & Ratings – Implement a real review system (again, similar to Steam) that allows players to leave feedback, ratings, and filter reviews by “most helpful,” “recent,” or “positive/negative.” I’ve seen that part of this is already in-the-works, but I hope that this is the end-goal for it.
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Editorial & Curated Lists – Introduce official or community-curated collections (e.g., “Best Horror Games,” “Top 10 Simulators,” “Retro Classic Collection”) to guide players to quality content they prefer.
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Age-Appropriate Discovery – Discovery feeds should adapt based on the player’s age group, ensuring older players aren’t only shown children’s games just because they’re popular. Again, this is also something that’s somewhat done, but it’s lower priority compared to other flags like popularity.
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Event Spotlights & Seasonal Features – Promote experiences tied to holidays, themes, or platform-wide events, giving smaller developers a chance to surface alongside bigger names. This kind of already happens with how events have been going lately, but this should be handled via game discovery rather than hidden behind an event experience. (That and players really just want Roblox events to be a single quality experience, this is more about promoting seasonal sales and events.)
Improving Experience Pages
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RichText (or Markdown) Descriptions with Formatting – Allow developers to use basic formatting (bold, italics, bulletpoints, headers, etc) to make their descriptions more readable and professional, instead of being limited to raw text. This would include an increased description size.
(This should be expanded to all developer store asset descriptions as well.) -
Feature Highlights – Include sections for key gameplay features, supported devices, multiplayer information, and monetization model (e.g., free, premium, in-app purchases).
(Optional, but nice.) -
Improved Media Support – Beyond the simple thumbnail/video slideshow, allow developers to showcase embedded images, GIFs, or videos, within the description, to better present gameplay.
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Community Reviews & Ratings – Give players a space to share feedback on the experience page, making it easier for new players to judge quality before joining. This is a duplicate point, but important enough to restate here. Read the original point for more detail.
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Update & Patch Notes Section – Developers should be able to post version updates, changelogs, and announcements in a dedicated section, visible directly on the experience page.
(However, this could still be done with an improved description, but having tabs for it would help clean things up and reduce scrolling.) -
Improve Communities – I won’t go more into this right now as that is outside the scope of this post, and we’re already seeing improvements in that area.
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Improved Recommended Similar Experiences – Suggest related experiences based on tags, style, or community overlap, similar to how Steam shows “More Like This.” The current system barely works, obviously due to the lack of data that Roblox’s algorithms are currently working with, as well as prioritizing the wrong things (in my opinion). This section could also be moved to the side and have its size reduced, that way it can be visible outside of a tab, but still be out of the way.
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Event & Seasonal Highlights – If an experience has a special event or update, the page should prominently display this (like Steam’s event banners). This is also starting to happen, so this point may not be needed, but I thought I’d include it anyway. I’d also like further support for events that are over a longer period of time, rather than a single event that’s set for a specific time.
TL;DR
Make game discovery and experience pages good. Use Steam as a reference, no company or platform has done anything anywhere near as good as they have.