With the massive IPO of Roblox’s this month, game developers, brands and investors are wondering are the reasons why the most successful games on this $47 billion platform come out of the enthusiastic projects generated by millions of users. According to Roblox’s S-1 filing, of the nearly 1 million builders of the platform, about 250 developers and creators earned $100,000 or more a year at Robux by September 2020.
Since Gamefam’s first game two years ago, which topped our current portfolio with only 25 million to 3 million daily visitors, our team has learned to develop Roblox hard – by trial and error and by listening better. While all of these entrepreneurs are just starting their journey in developing Roblox games, the most common mistake I’ve seen gaming professionals (including me) make Roblox:
In the F2P mobile games market, it’s about layered game loops: play a match with the hero, level up the hero using resources from the match, buy more heroes to merge with the first hero, open new matches with new winning rules, more resources and more.
This requires a few hours of running player tutorials during the play session. These mechanics keep firing on the Roblox because the players have no ability to tolerate anything other than instant, visual fun. Accordingly, in mobile F2P, a powerful tutorial for new users is often one of the biggest investments in development. However, in our Roblox Game Speed Run Simulator (over 400,000 daily visits), we significantly increased the retention of D1 when we completely removed 1 tutorial and allowed existing players to guide only new players to understand the game. The differences between Roblox and mobile F2P are not only numerous but sometimes profoundly opposite.
The differences between Roblox and mobile F2P are not only numerous but sometimes profoundly opposite.
Roblox players spend because they want something. They will not be spent or forced like mobile games that have limited or slowed progress without buying an app (think Candy Crush).
