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Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

mandeepbhutani.com

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Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#11

Post by KronisLV »

cialowicz wrote: post #10
npinsker wrote: post #6

> It’s better to spend more time on a game to ensure everything is feature complete, rather than releasing something sooner and iterating on it over time. This element differentiates the work of Technical Artists and Software Engineers, and it seems to apply to games as well. Every part of this is completely opposite my experience. I’m totally baffled how this was a take-away lesson.

I think it’s a good takeaway for something that’s sold once on an app store. If it’s junk, the rankings will tank it, and it may never recover from that. There are a few instances of games that have turned things around after the initial launch, like “No Man’s Sky”, but that’s quite rare. Take Half-Life as an example. The team realized it wasn’t great after multiple years of development, and ended up essentially rebu…

> "Late is just for a little while."

Or until corporate pulls the plug since it didn't meet the expectations that they had, or you just run out of money if you're on your own, since neither money nor patience are infinite. At least in part, that seemed to happen to: StarCraft: Ghost, Prey 2 (we did get the 2017 release), Half-Life 2: Episode Three, Duke Nukem Forever (the original version), Silent Hills, TimeSplitters 4 and some others.

Edit: to some degree, it seems like the recent KSP2 situation was a case where being late would have definitely been preferable, if not for corporate: https://youtu.be/NtMA594am4M

Also, sometimes you'll do good development work, just for things to go wrong anyways in ways you didn't anticipate, as happened to the launch of Brigador: https://youtu.be/qUsuusNLxik

On the opposite end, since we have early access, many will release the first presentable version of whatever it is that they're working on. The good news is that sometimes customer feedback will shape the final product (as long as the developers actually care). The bad news is that many will buy into the "promise" of the final product, as opposed to what they're actually getting at the time of making the payment and then be disappointed if it doesn't pan out.

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#12

Post by deliveryboyman »

jncfhnb wrote: post #2

Odd mix of business, design, and technical implementation details here. I feel kind of lost as to what the goal of the game was. Spending money for advertisement for a free game that you think people should play for 20 minutes and also looking at things like retention. Why?

What is odd about the mix? I wanted to include a little bit of everything to show what one may need to think about when developing their first game on Roblox.

Thanks for bringing up the other points. I should add clarification on that in the post.

I had to pay for advertising because after 1-2 months there were still 0 players. I thought Roblox would push games to discovery with an algorithm, however this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Roblox provides analytics so I leaned into them to see if my changes were making a positive impact.

I had no intention of creating a hit game. It was just a way to have fun and see what happens. I really enjoyed the process and loved to see how many players had fun playing the game.

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#13

Post by [deleted] »

cialowicz wrote: post #10
npinsker wrote: post #6

> It’s better to spend more time on a game to ensure everything is feature complete, rather than releasing something sooner and iterating on it over time. This element differentiates the work of Technical Artists and Software Engineers, and it seems to apply to games as well. Every part of this is completely opposite my experience. I’m totally baffled how this was a take-away lesson.

I think it’s a good takeaway for something that’s sold once on an app store. If it’s junk, the rankings will tank it, and it may never recover from that. There are a few instances of games that have turned things around after the initial launch, like “No Man’s Sky”, but that’s quite rare. Take Half-Life as an example. The team realized it wasn’t great after multiple years of development, and ended up essentially rebu…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#14

Post by password4321 »

cr125rider wrote: post #3
jncfhnb wrote: post #2

Odd mix of business, design, and technical implementation details here. I feel kind of lost as to what the goal of the game was. Spending money for advertisement for a free game that you think people should play for 20 minutes and also looking at things like retention. Why?

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

I didn't find much good about Roblox in the past few years here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=roblox%20comments%3E10&sort=by...

--

2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 "Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is 'a gift'"

>Arguing that it's a "gift" when they're taking a 75% cut is just offensive.

2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36812765 "Data breach exposes personal information of 4k Roblox developers"

>who was hiding the incident for 2 years?

2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 "Problems at Roblox"

>It is as dangerous as any dark corner of the Internet, except that it appears child-friendly to parents.

2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 "Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers"

>to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux [...] That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it

--

Personally I recommend disabling chat and creating on some other platform (I'm going to try Godot first).

FWIW Roblox open-sourced their "Luau" scripting language and there is even VS Code support. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962711

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#15

Post by Aeolun »

waltbosz wrote: post #9
cr125rider wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

This is my take as a parent who was very hesitant to let my kids play roblox for this same fear. The exploitiveness of an individual Roblox game really depends on that game's developer. They get to decide how to extract money from their players. I've seen a lot of different sales techniques used. Most common are pay to get an overpowered weapon or ability or to skip levels. The ones that annoy me the most are the art…

I have a really hard time convincing my child that paying for 10M experience wouldn’t immediately end up with him doing exactly the same thing he was already doing.

I’m really tempted to show him by purchasing it once, but I very much doubt it would help, and just exacerbates the problem.

I do enjoy a bunch of roblox games though, even the ones designed to extract money. You don’t stick with them very long, but kicking soccer balls off the moon all the way to earth is fun.

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#17

Post by yareal »

egypturnash wrote: post #16

Today I learnt that “obstacle course” is so common as a game mode on Roblox that it is regularly shortened to “obby”, a word I have never heard before in the fifty-two years I have been speaking English.

First syllable plus diminutive is a super, super common English construction though. Beverage to bevy, for a sort of contrived example. Sometimes these take a bit of work to go from the shortened version to the long one.

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#18

Post by pandemic_region »

cr125rider wrote: post #3
jncfhnb wrote: post #2

Odd mix of business, design, and technical implementation details here. I feel kind of lost as to what the goal of the game was. Spending money for advertisement for a free game that you think people should play for 20 minutes and also looking at things like retention. Why?

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

Came here to make this remark. As a society we've really evolved in hooking our kids onto things that they cannot resist as early as possible in their life, building a future customer base i guess?

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#19

Post by devjab »

waltbosz wrote: post #9
cr125rider wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

This is my take as a parent who was very hesitant to let my kids play roblox for this same fear. The exploitiveness of an individual Roblox game really depends on that game's developer. They get to decide how to extract money from their players. I've seen a lot of different sales techniques used. Most common are pay to get an overpowered weapon or ability or to skip levels. The ones that annoy me the most are the art…

What convinced you to let them play? I’m genuinely curious as I’ll never allow any my kids to play these sort of exploitive games (or in this case platforms since not every Roblox game is exploiting).

I’m not preaching by the way. Exposure may be a better strategy to teach about the dangers of these digital garbage cans. I just don’t want my kids to grow up having even experienced any of these things that I consider terrible consumption patterns. Similarly they don’t get on YouTube or any form of SoMe until they are at least 13. I am a little undecided when it comes to actually creating something… I’m not sure how I would handle it if my daughter wanted to make a YouTube channel about her gardening as an example. Or in the case of Roblox create a game.

Re: Lessons Learned from My First Roblox Game

#20

Post by teddyh »

jncfhnb wrote: post #8
teddyh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one being exploited is the developer. From the article: > I spent $100 on advertising after publishing the game More information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ >

Shrug. The developer seems to be enjoying their experience and is not profit motivated (at least as far as the article indicated).

In this case, the developer is an adult seasoned game developer. But if you know Roblox, you know how this is not the case for most developers on that platform.
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