Stop Releasing your Games like this...

Well, after a long time… we’re here. Our first newsletter post! Thanks to the crazy 250 of you that subscribed before we sent an email!

Let’s talk about one of the biggest myths and mistakes I see Roblox developers make: The Big Release.

The amount of developers that have this toxic AAA mindset in which their game should spend months in marketing before this massive release where thousands of players join don’t realize how flawed this approach is.

When your game has a “big release”, you are betting all of your chips on your game being perfect and enjoyable at that very moment. You are letting the WORLD into your game and praying they’re going to like it.

If there’s anything you need to understand about Roblox, it’s that your game usually doesn’t work like that. Development on Roblox is a RAPID cycle of iterating based on more and more user data. Players will like your game idea, but your execution is almost always flawed on release and you need to make daily changes for weeks to find your end product.

It is simply impossible to make that end product before it’s released to the public.

“But Jake! I have 200 testers that give me feedback!” Be quiet.

Testers on Roblox fit within your niche and are usually fans. They will provide feedback on bugs but nothing worthwhile beyond that. What truly matters is the public and the numbers their time in the game reveals.

Do they play for 12 minutes? Do they come back after their first time playing? Do they spend money?

These 3 questions are not going to be answered by your team of testers.

Scenario: 3 months before your game releases you tell your community it’ll be out on February 21st. February 21st hits and your game is just about done… but also not really.

You are now stuck with 2 options:

1. Delay and get an angry community

2. Release an unfinished game and watch your community move on when they realize the game wasn’t as good as they thought

Both options are kind of lose-lose. This big release exposes your game to the majority of its future players. If your game was perfect that’d be great.

But it’s not.

Instead everyone in your community already has judged your game before the essential changes you made and you’re lucky to retain a fraction of them 7 days later.

Let’s imagine a different scenario.

Your team works on the game at their own pace in private. The game becomes DONE. You spend around 2 weeks building social media and putting the word out for your game just enough to build a FOUNDATION to work off of when your game is perfected.

You release your game and only have 50 CCU on release. You notice those players left after 6 minutes and never came back. You add daily rewards, you simplify the game, and the next 50 players stay for 10 minutes and 20% of them even came back. You make a few more changes and now players are sticking. Your game slowly grows as people join but your homepage conversion kinda sucks... You change your icon and now more players are joining. Your game proves itself and holds players + makes some money.

 Now you can go big: you can push on social media, run sponsors and watch things take off from a GREAT foundation.

You didn’t fall victim to the big release scam and as a result, you reap the rewards. It’s hard not to chase the dopamine rush of having 100k CCU right away, but they’ll be gone 48 hours later.

Moral of the story: build a great product, focus on the data, then think about acquiring users. “It just needs more user acquisition to grow” is not always the solution.

Build it and they will come.

I hope you enjoyed the first issue of my newsletter. Enjoy watching my writing hopefully improve each week as I produce more of this long form content.

If you’re a brand or developer in need of a consultant to help your game improve, send an email to [email protected] and we can work together.