I’m a solo dev (meaning I don’t plan on ever commissioning someone else for their work) and I’ve been thinking about monetization recently, as well as just general convenience. Between weighing the options, I’ve come up with a couple of aspects about group games that are making me feel partial to creating a group. Can you guys tell me any more?:
BENEFITS
You can create ranks for moderators.
It’s easier to give gifts to your friends through group funds.
No matter if the owner has BC, the tax rate for products purchased is BC (someone confirm this?) 4. Less clutter on the games tab, since I can just develop and test games on my profile and publish them to the group when I’m done.
DETRIMENTS
People may think that, rather than an individual creator, the game is created by a team of people.
There may be spam bots on group comments, although the spam issue seems to have died down.
I won’t get credit for place visits.
Groups allow invisible characters in their titles, so this may lead to impersonation.
So I’m still stuck in the middle, and I don’t really know which way to go. If you guys can provide, in your opinion, the best reasons for making a group game instead of self-publishing, it would really help me with my development career.
You mean in the group? Yes only the owner can.
But I mostly think you should get people who you can trust and make sure you are the only person who spend funds.
Well, for me I see that has a little bite unfair because your “friends” might just use you for your robux. If you really want to give your friends robux then ask then to help you to get the robux.
I have been owner of 10 differnt groups and when making a game if you have to have a idea then what’s your done run ad’s.
I mean like if you do make the game and all of it’s done by you then just put building done by (Yourname) and so on.
I mostly think that having a team of people working on a game is good because more idea’s and you get more help.
You shouldn’t really have to think about that because it’s your group and I do think that it does give you credit for the place visits because you are the owner of that group. (I might be wrong idk)
Now if you do have a group you get members and I think having members are good because it shows how many people like your game and want to see update’s on it.
For the spam bots just try your best to delete them if you can’t shutdown the group all and make a discord for it. (I really hate spam bots also to get spam bots someone has to be in your group to do so.)
This is my point of view on this. I hope this helped you.
All the Detriments mentionned are just visual parts, all of them, while owning a group give benefits you can’t have otherwise (at best, you add mods manually in-game)
Also, if “groups” make people thinks it’s a whole team working on the game but it’s not, then you just have to specify it ingame, i don’t even know why you’d be bothered by it, perhaps thinking it’s a valid reasons that progress are slow or the sort ? in any case, there are many way to tell this to the players.
Personally i like publishing things on a profile unless you are trying to build up a group or a community. Publishing things on your profile gets your name more out there imo. Gives you the place visits and followers among other things. When it comes to moderators and stuff you can just do that anyway. I guess the only real benefit of publishing it to a group is being able to spend the funds as you mentioned aswell as creating a hub for all your future games. However, if you are a solo dev then that might only be once in a blue moon unless you are paying for commissioned assets or something.
Before worrying about your monetization strategy focus on how you’ll market your product. You could rely off of free strategies whether it be networking through social media preferably twitter’s #robloxdev or trying to qualify for dev ops which isn’t 100% guaranteed as the system is flawed. Developers follow this pattern:
Featured > Dev ops > repeat meaning your chances of getting accepted isn’t high.
Paid marketing strategies tend to have a higher success rate over free strategies.
I highly advise not doing this, it’s a common red flag that moderation falsely strikes nor is it reversible. If you’re going to donate than do so on an alternative account preferably under a vpn, different email.
I would say having your game under a group has a few more advantages than having it under your profile mainly for the future. Here is a little rundown of some of the benefits:
One of the biggest benefits is scalability. Having a group allows you to easily hire developers and contractors if you ever decide to in the future.
If you ever need to pay someone to do something in your game it will be a lot easier process because of the ability to do group payouts.
Having a group allows you to build a fan base/on site community. This means if you ever decide to make another game and put it under the group you should already have a good fanbase and it should help promote the other game.
Having a group doesn’t have that many advantages for solo developers that plan on always being solo developers. However I would put your games under a group anyway as there is no harm in doing so and you are setting yourself up for the future.
Yes, put your game in a group! All of your concerns are ultimately small and, frankly, aren’t really valid.
Just give your group your username. That being said, this is a pointless detriment— players honestly don’t care if one person made it or a bunch of people.
You can turn off the comments or turn on manual approval if it bothers you that much. Some dev groups don’t let anyone join (and therefore comment) at all.
It’s 2019. Nobody cares; this stat is irrelevant. You should worry about place visits on the game’s page. If you want to see all your visits, add them up manually.
This will happen no matter what.
Also yes, groups always have the 30% marketplace fee, not the outrageous 90% one.
As someone who used to just make games and put them on my profile, I can vouch for groups. It’s a way better experience. Good luck
You should for the sole benefit that if you release any new games, your fans will know immediately. This is partly the same reason why you want to incentivize players to join your groups so badly, and why you shouldn’t really create groups for individual projects.
I wish this was the case. I’m in a project where the owner of the group is basically a shell account and I’m the one that did the majority of the work–yet everyone just assumes the owner of the group made the entire game. Ultimately, outside of a little grumbling, it doesn’t matter.
On the opposite side, you’re going to have a lot of encouraging group comments from fans. Removing bot comments, even when it was at the peak of its annoyance, was not very time consuming.
I’m not sure what the relevance of this is?
I’ve never really seen this as a problem–players generally find groups from games, not by searching them up.
I don’t think any of these are appropriate replies. Even if they are, it’s of established information or isn’t particularly helpful to the OP.
Group members cannot spend group funds without owner approval and that only goes for asset creation. Anything further is locked to group owners alone (e.g. payouts).
How OP spends their money isn’t any of your business. As far as the post is concerned, the group is merely a publishing hub which makes the assets (including monetary) their own. They can spend their own currency however they like.
Putting your own name down doesn’t exactly do much because there are those who don’t read your descriptions or skim over them. Using a group at all gives the perception of non-solo development, as groups are typically used to work in teams. OP clarified that they don’t want to work in a team either.
Thanks for all of your answers. Once I’m ready to release my game, I’ll be creating a group. I’ve marked Intended_Pun’s answer as correct since it was first, but Kampfkarren’s answer was also really helpful. Cheers :3
