Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
ROBLOX: ALGORITHM IS KING - The End of "AAA" and the Rise of the Viral Dev
0 Playsin 14 hours
Episode Summary
Forget the old ways of game development. The Roblox platform isn't a sandbox—it's a brutal, high-frequency, algorithmic battleground.
In this deep dive, we break down why traditional "AAA" development strategies are being crushed by low-fidelity, quick-to-market viral hits. We analyze the metrics that Roblox’s discovery algorithm actually cares about (it’s not just downloads), the new pressure on developers, and the commercial gold rush driving this new age of digital product. If you're building software, an app, or a game, this is a masterclass in platform leverage and virality.
Key Takeaways for the Tech Professional
- The Algorithm as a Gatekeeper: Understand the core metrics that determine success on Roblox (Retention, Monetization, and Engagement) and how they reflect the priorities of any major platform (Apple App Store, Google Play, YouTube).
- The Two-Tiered Development Strategy: Contrasting the high-budget, polished approach with the fast, data-driven methodology of viral developers—and why the latter often wins.
- Minimal Viable Fun (MVF) > Minimum Viable Product (MVP): How the "low-poly, high-concept" trend proves that speed and novelty often beat engineering polish when facing a discovery-focused algorithm.
- Monetization as a Discovery Signal: Why high-ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) games are disproportionately rewarded by the algorithm and what that means for your product's design.
Chapter Markers (Jump to the insights you need)
- 01:30 The 'Gold Rush' Archetype: Why Roblox is the Wild West of modern game dev.
- 05:45 The Core Algorithm: What Roblox's discovery engine actually measures. (Hint: It’s all about the money flow).
- 12:10 Case Study: Viral Low-Fi vs. AAA Polish—The data behind the death of the polished demo.
- 18:05 Designing for the Metrics: The blueprint for building a game that the algorithm will push.
- 24:45 Takeaways for SaaS/App Developers: Applying the Roblox virality playbook to enterprise and consumer products.
🙏 Call to Action
Did the Algorithm reward this episode? Hit Subscribe and leave us a 5-star review on your favorite podcast app!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview of Roblox as a Strategic Growth Platform
00:00:00
Speaker
Good afternoon. Welcome to Player Driven. Greg here. Today I'm excited to be able to dive into Roblox and look at a report that Newzoo released a few weeks ago called Roblox as a Strategic Growth Platform.
Meet the Guests: Tiani Gu and Joe Ferenz
00:00:11
Speaker
We have two people who helped contribute to this report. Tiani Gu, who's the marketing manager and analyst at Newzoo, and Joe Ferenz. He's the CEO of GameFam, who helped work on this report.
00:00:24
Speaker
Tiani, would you like to say hi and introduce yourself? Yeah, of course. And thank you, ah Greg, for having me on this podcast. So, yeah, I'm from NewZoo and from the market intelligence team. And so I work on a lot of the market analysis for the gaming industry. And of course, you know, as a market analyst for the gaming industry, one of the biggest trends, if not the biggest, these days it's definitely Roblox.
Analyzing Roblox and its Comparison with Traditional Platforms
00:00:50
Speaker
So I had a great opportunity to work with GameFam and Joe and Joe's team on the yeah analysis piece about the Roblox robblox platform for the 2025 New Zeus Global market report Games Market Report. And then in there, we really looked deep into you know the Roblox platform, which genres perform well, and then how
00:01:17
Speaker
They are different or like similar to traditional gaming platforms like a PC, console, and mobile. So very glad to be ah joining the podcast today to talk deeper about the Roblox platform.
00:01:31
Speaker
Awesome. We're excited to dive into it and and really hear more about the insights that you've pulled out from Roblox. Joe, thank you so much as well for joining us. You want to let us little know a
GameFam's Success Stories on Roblox
00:01:40
Speaker
little bit about yourself and also who GameFam is.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, great. So I've been working in the pop culture space for my entire career, so over 20 years and in gaming since 2009. And i have worked across many different parts of the gaming business, including stints at Nintendo, Ubisoft, and Mattel in gaming product leadership roles and strategy roles. And i started GameFam going on, it'll be seven years in January. We were the first ever professional Roblox studio. We built the company by both making games and acquiring games. And so, you know, some of our biggest franchises right now are War Tycoon, the number one military game on Roblox and Sonic Speed Simulator, the number one all-time IP game on Roblox and Super League Soccer, which is a huge soccer game.
Roblox's Demographic Evolution and Audience Growth
00:02:32
Speaker
i'm sure we'll talk more about those during the course of the day or the session here. And
00:02:38
Speaker
We currently run a huge network of games across the Roblox platform, as well Roblox's largest third party ad network as well. Oh, and I should add, we own Row Monitor, which is the data service that provides a huge amount of data to the Roblox community.
00:02:57
Speaker
I've loved it. maybe this is a conversation for another time. Right. But your history from Ubisoft and Nintendo, then you went to Mattel and it was super cool. And how you you've decided to start investigating those analytics on Roblox and why is it something that kind of you saw value in?
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah. So. Great question. So I was the consulting executive producer for Hot Wheels video games from 2015 to 2020. It was a two day a week, give or take gig. And it was an incredibly fun and worked with great people on a great brand. And and we were putting Hot Wheels into So many different gaming franchises, the highlights of which probably were our own mobile game with over 100 million downloads, as well as the two
Creation and Development of GameFam
00:03:50
Speaker
standalone Forza Horizon expansion packs that we worked on in Hot Wheels' own
00:03:54
Speaker
console franchise Hot Wheels Unleashed and among many other great projects. And it was during those years where i was getting these different trend reports on my desk and one of them was mentioning Roblox consistently. This was back in 2016.
00:04:10
Speaker
So I believe that's like nine years ago, which is which is crazy. And i looked it up and I said, what the heck is this? Roblox at that time, back in 2016, I believe had about 30 million MAU.
00:04:23
Speaker
Right now it's got 150 million DAU. And i just thought it was a fascinating platform. And in 2018, could see it really starting to hockey stick up in terms of both users and revenue using you know some different data services.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I said, I think this is going to be the next big thing. And so I started ah bootstrapping some games. And I said, I think this could be a real business that could make a real impact on the gaming industry and provide obviously great games to players and long term careers to great people. And so I started GameFam. And as part of starting GameFam, I think just trying to do the right to you know to execute to our highest degree as a company, we knew data was going to be a big part of the story. We knew there was a lot of data outflowing from Roblox. We knew Roblox was an algorithmic gaming platform, which had never really existed before. And so we built RowMonitor,
00:05:25
Speaker
very early on to start aggregating data so that we could try to understand what the meta of the platform is. And I would say in the last six months, the meta of the platform has become more relevant, more pronounced, and more dynamic than ever. And so it's exactly why we built this platform so we can actually take a look at it in a mathematical way, not just based on our feelings of looking across games and numbers on a daily basis.
Engagement Trends and Cross-Platform Insights
00:06:01
Speaker
There's so many more questions I want to be able to ask you right now, and I'm going to sprinkle them out throughout the interview here. But let's let's talk about cross-platform engagement. Right now, only 24% of Roblox players are mobile only, and the rest spread across other platforms. How do you think studios should think about designing experiences that feel lightweight enough for younger players? You know, I watch my kids play these games, and they hop in and hop out and go. It's crazy. but also something that can still scale across higher platforms. And I guess this question now also comes up and it's top of mind because Microsoft just said their competitor is more of a TikTok rather than a a traditional AAA gaming studio, right? And I think it has people questioning what is the future of games? Is it these shorter experiences or is it a bigger experience?
00:06:46
Speaker
So yeah, this 24% that ah Greg just mentioned is actually comes from Newzoo's Global Gamer Study. So we surveyed people from 10 to 65 years old across 36 markets. And then among these respondents, we identified Roblox players. So just a little bit clarification here, our survey data doesn't cover players under 10. So the data might be a little bit different when you look at Roblox's own data. But still, I think the message you want to bring out here is that although most Roblox players, they access the Roblox platform or content on Roblox through a mobile, for Roblox players, they actually also engage with other gaming content through PC and console. So I think that's where you know we try to do and this analysis and try to see whether there are opportunities for traditional PC and console, even mobile developers. And I think you know back to the ah question about how to develop or design gaming experiences of outside of mobile.
00:07:58
Speaker
My personal opinion is that I think still ah most Roblox experiences should be focused on the the mobile platform. So still having like a mobile first as the concept when it comes to game design. Although, you know, many players, I think we're also seeing more and more ah players engaging with Roblox content on PC and console.
00:08:20
Speaker
But I would say the the design depth doesn't really come from mechanics, but more to my understanding, more on the like social aspect. So it's more about you know social engagement and self ah identity.
00:08:35
Speaker
That's how I see the trend. And I think you know it's a cross platform game. So Roblox players can access the platform through mobile, PC, as well ah as console. I'm interested to in like listening to Joe's perspective as well because my hypothesis is that players play your Roblox games but they behave differently across these three platforms. On mobile, I think it's still like short sessions. They jump in the game, they do something small and then they jump out of the game.
00:09:10
Speaker
And then on PC, it's probably more like a social ah play you know because it's a better platform for chatting, engagement, and also like identity play. Roblox released recently on PlayStation. And also in the reports, we pointed out that it's already captured about 3% of the total playtime on PlayStation. So that's quite a big ah proportion. and And I think our role on console, my hypothesis is that you know players
00:09:42
Speaker
see it meant more as like a digital couch, handouts, something like that. They play together with their friends or perhaps it's also like multitasking, right? These days kids, they can do multiple things at the same time. And maybe they play like Roblox on console while watching YouTube videos on their desktop or mobile devices. So these are my thinking. I don't know if Joe, from your observation or your experiences, do you see like such pattern on like behavior?
Game Discovery on Roblox and Algorithmic Influence
00:10:11
Speaker
from players.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, very very um very similar insights. I mean, I think I was just looking at some data while you were talking to see, and it is actually interesting. There definitely are, i think, certain games where the PC audience and console audience is is essentially equal to the mobile audience.
00:10:31
Speaker
But I think that the games that are at the biggest scale on the platform, even though people may be touching them on on multiple platforms, I do tend to believe that that mobile audience phones and tablets are probably the main place that players are engaging. If you look at the top games on the platform, which are you know Steal a Brain Rot, Grow a Garden, 99 Nights in the Forest, Brookhaven. And I think it in my experience, it it really depends on on the age group. The younger the game skews and the more spread out in gender demographics the game skews, the more players are going to tend to be on mobile phones. And the more older and male the game skews, the more you're going to see a higher proportion relative on...
00:11:17
Speaker
console and PC gaming. And, you know, the platform is aging up on the margin, undoubtedly. i think the data on that is not a hundred percent necessarily clear because it's all self-reported and, but certainly there are games such as war tycoon or rivals, which is a really slick shooter that carries sometimes up to a hundred thousand plus CCUs during a weekday that are clearly attracting a much older audience. and And the best way you can tell that is really looking at the discord followers for a given game.
00:11:52
Speaker
So if you take a game like Brookhaven, for example, great game, absolutely massive franchise. It has not only very few Discord followers, but almost no Discord followers online at any given time. And then if you look at a game like War Tycoon, it has about the same number of followers, despite having a a fraction of
The Growing 13+ Audience on Roblox
00:12:10
Speaker
of the users on Discord, and then a much actual larger number of Discord users online in absolute terms at any time.
00:12:17
Speaker
So these are just a comparison of two different franchises that are played on different platforms and have... different data streams associated with them that can help estimate why they're diverged in terms of platform usage.
00:12:33
Speaker
How is this discovery mostly happening on the platform? It sounds like, I mean, I think both of your numbers, you said there were smaller discords, right? Or am I mistaken in what I heard there?
00:12:43
Speaker
So in terms of the two games I was just comparing, both of them have low six figure total discord followers. I think the question is the proportion of followers online as well, right? And how and and, if you want to get really wonky on the data, are those discord followers net net growing?
00:13:05
Speaker
Or are they, you know, static too? Right. And so I think that um I think that games become very trendy on YouTube. And when they're trendy, they'll see a huge rush of multi demographic gamers. And then once the trend ends, they might find more of their core demographic, which I think still tends to be for games at scale quite young is my impression.
00:13:30
Speaker
So with everything you've been mentioning, Joe, right, with the 13 plus audience is growing and they're finding and they're discovering these on different tools and platforms. Is that accurate on why that's growing? Or you see other trends on why 13 plus is growing and perhaps the younger audiences aren't keeping up with that growth rate?
00:13:47
Speaker
Yes. So I think um For the data also back to what Joe actually mentioned earlier, like this is self reporting data, of course, Roblox does this like growth. uh rates uh for 13 plus and under 13 every quarter and we often see that the 13 plus group is growing faster um but i think you know it's it's yeah people talk about it it's it's it's self-reporting uh so the the data could be biased ah but from my own experience it's also like watching people or young players around me i do see actually
00:14:24
Speaker
you know these players tend to uh stay with the platform even after they become a teenager so i do see a lot of kids ah beyond the 13 still engaging uh with the platform and and i think it's it's more like the the social sickness of roblox that the rob the platform offers it's like because they grew up with friends on whether online or like offline friends but it's like a handout place for these people And
Understanding Roblox's Algorithm for Success
00:14:50
Speaker
now even when they grow you know beyond 13, become teenager, this pattern or this habit still stays. So I think that's why it explains why the players on the platform are aging. And I also think you know for their it's just like becoming a much bigger platform these days. And then we see more and more either professional studios or individual developers coming to the platform. They also create you know great content that also
00:15:17
Speaker
you know, boost the thickness of players on the platform. so that's why I think, you know, people, the 13 plus group is growing faster.
00:15:28
Speaker
I think to add to that, I agree. And if you look at the last six months specifically, or last eight months, which has been a really wild ride on Roblox, starting with Grow a Garden in April, we've seen the platform hitting pretty wild insane numbers on the weekends with these admin abuse, real-time event updates. They call them admin abuse. It's Roblox nomenclature. It just means a real-time event that takes place at a certain time in the game. And what I think is happening is a lot of early onset nostalgia. So I think a lot of people who are now in their late teens and even early twenties who grew up with the platform are really excited to see it as fans like hitting these
00:16:16
Speaker
new numbers that are just unbelievable, right? 25 million concurrent players and in a single game, for example, 35 million concurrent players on the platform as a whole. And they're logging on as groups of friends to be part of these trend moments.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I'm not sure they're necessarily sticking around as daily players, but they're coming on to be part of the moments and to sample some of the gameplay. And I think that a little bit of Roblox is becoming part of the ongoing gaming diet of a lot of older Gen Zs and and very young millennial gamers who grew up with the platform. That's what I think is going on. There's also a lot of parents co-playing in these events as well. I can tell you anecdotally, I don't have any panel data to support that, but it's what I hear from a lot of friends I know who have kids who are on Roblox. They all have accounts they've made so they can play Grow a Garden or Steal a Brain Rot with their kids. The games are so simple that anybody who's ever played video games essentially can get in and have some fun playing these games. But at the same time, it makes me question whether the platform is really retaining a lot of these older users because if you look at Steal a Brain Rot,
00:17:34
Speaker
And you think to yourself, is this something that, you know, many 16 or 18 year olds could spend time on regularly? i do think that starts to kind of strain credulity. And what I've been hearing more is that people have been using Roblox as a test platform to build some core loops or some core mechanics to see if an audience likes it. And if the audience likes it, then you can build it into a bigger game itself with you, Joe, with the types of games that you're creating on Roblox, do you kind of use that kind of those metrics of, Hey, we're going see how players play these games to kind of quickly create our own iteration of it and then build it out there.
00:18:09
Speaker
We are adapting to the new algorithmic situation of Roblox, you asked how important I think is the algorithm before or where are players finding games, I think is what you asked. and my belief based on all of the data I have available, as well as seeing the data on a number of the top five games that have come up over the last year on Roblox, as they were coming up, is that algorithm is not only king, but it's king, queen,
00:18:44
Speaker
Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace. Algorithm is currently everything on Roblox. In fact, they're A-B b testing lately the continue playing bar.
00:18:57
Speaker
So even if someone played your game yesterday, they may not even see that game in the continue playing bar in its sequential order in which you played it. So developers are having less and less control at this time Roblox.
00:19:14
Speaker
the impressions for their page. And search accounts for a very small part of any Roblox game that I've seen. Now, of course, when you're talking about these outlier games like Grow a Garden, then become pop culture sensations, you might see some different patterns in those data. You may see some outlier data points, but there's only five of those games on the entire platform out of tens of thousands of of games that people are playing on the platform right now.
00:19:46
Speaker
And so what we're doing at GameFam is not only continuing to live operate our existing games and grow those games by knowing how the algorithm has changed and targeting the right metrics. For example, we have tripled the users in Super League Soccer over the last three months.
00:20:07
Speaker
We picked a metric to target. It was the right
Quick Game Development and Adapting to Algorithms
00:20:10
Speaker
metric. We achieved growth on that metric and we have been rewarded by the algorithm with a humongous amount of new users. But we're also making very quick casual games at the company.
00:20:23
Speaker
If you look at the games that are winning on the platform at scale, almost all of them were made in a one week or less. This is the era of trendy viral gaming.
00:20:35
Speaker
And we are participating in it. For example, we have a game called hop that we made in a few days. It's about two frogs that are tied together at the tongue and they have to go through a platformer together, multiplayer, right? Social gaming.
00:20:53
Speaker
And again, we spent a few days making this game and it's already generating tens of thousands of dollars in profits for the company just after a few days.
00:21:05
Speaker
That's a great business model that we're really excited to participate in Two questions on that, maybe more than two questions. One, how many people work on a game like that? And two, to find that community, to find that audience, is it easy enough for you to tap into the people that have played the other experiences already? Or like you said, it's making it harder. It sounds Roblox is making it harder. So how do you, is just luck of the draw people find you?
00:21:29
Speaker
Well, it's it's luck of the algorithm, I guess. The algorithm is searching for KPIs that Roblox has decided are in the interest of their overall platform group.
00:21:43
Speaker
My experience as a Roblox developer is that working with Roblox is great. They're fantastic partners, but they have a business to run and their business is measured on share price. And they are looking at how they can hit their internal KPIs and And as a developer, it's on us to be in synchronicity with what they're trying to do and understand as best we can from the tea leaves, what is important to them.
00:22:07
Speaker
And having a portfolio of games as we do at GameFam has made that, has given us a ah great advantage in that because we can see things that are working in some games. So if we see a game growing in users and we say, okay, what metrics have changed in that game over the last month?
00:22:25
Speaker
okay, that must be a metric that the algorithm is now prioritizing. Let's go and target that metric in our other games. And so that's the way we're approaching it at Game Fam. And as I said, um we've seen a lot of success growing older games on the margin lately, and we're seeing some really exciting traction on shipping very casual, very quick games and getting you know meaningful amount of players and revenue from those games based on the amount of investment put into them super cool stuff so i want to jump in and ask a question joe like because you talk about the uh the robots algorithms so are they are they actually changing in identifying the trends or is it always consistent in my seven years on roblox the one consistent
00:23:16
Speaker
The one thing that is most consistent is the algorithm will change. There were times when the algorithm was very predictable and we are in a time right now where the algorithm is extremely dynamic. And I believe that Roblox has some internal ways of segmenting users.
00:23:41
Speaker
and targeting different games with different users to try again to achieve the metrics that are important to Roblox. It's pretty opaque to us as developers in a lot of ways. What we do have is a lot of signals. So Roblox has given us a lot of algorithmic signal data across different metrics. We have dashboard we have dashboards with, I don't know, we probably look at 25 different charts on a daily and weekly basis that are from the Roblox native dashboards. And then we have some proprietary measurements that we do as well through third party data services.
00:24:20
Speaker
And we are looking at those regularly trying to understand at the end of the day, it's impressions, right? You know, you know, acquisition, retention, monetization, the fundamentals of free to play gaming are still very true to Roblox, but they, they manifest in a fundamentally different way because acquisition is essentially fully dependent on the algorithm.
00:24:50
Speaker
You need, because of ARPDAU and LTVs being relatively low compared to mobile free-to-play, you're not going to have a game on Roblox where you're going as a developer to net a $1 ARPDAU.
00:25:03
Speaker
it's not That's not anything. We've never seen data that even approaches that level of of average revenue per daily active user. And what that means is you need a lot of users, right? You need a lot of user volume to make a game successful.
00:25:18
Speaker
The only way to get the type of volume you need to make a game commercially successful on Roblox today is through algorithmic discovery.
00:25:31
Speaker
So do you just have some dummy games that basically run that you'll mess with the ah some of the internal KPIs or metrics to see, hey, what changes and and like basically bait
00:25:43
Speaker
We don't even need to do that because we're constantly live operating our core franchises. And i think right now we know what are the key metrics to target as a company and those metrics are working for us. But the one thing I also know is that soon enough, what we're doing will stop working and we'll be scratching our heads and looking around at each other and trying to you know look through the data and figure out, okay,
00:26:12
Speaker
what's the next signal that now Roblox wants to prioritize and then
Roblox vs. Traditional AAA Games
00:26:17
Speaker
targeting that signal. And we've been doing this, as I said, for almost seven years now. So we've gotten pretty practiced at it and we've gotten pretty good at keeping a level head during those transition phases.
00:26:31
Speaker
One of the questions I had, and I didn't put it in this kind of pre-question report, both of you, I'd love your input on it, is there's been a lot of talk about GTA 6. And I know GTA 6 actually worked with Roblox to kind of build out those custom experiences, or so they said, right?
00:26:45
Speaker
And a lot of people have been talking about how it's going to be the biggest game, and I don't doubt that. But I think there's a subset of users that are just in Roblox world, and they're not going to move over. And I think people are overthinking how big this is going to get everyone to play GTA 6, and it's not the kind the conversation that is Is Roblox sticky enough where it's not going to lose as many gamers to other possible experiences? Because like you said, they're in it for the engagement in the community. They're not necessarily in it for the game.
00:27:13
Speaker
I think that GTA 6 will be the biggest gaming event of the decade, I'm sure, on a on a commercial basis as as a single data point.
00:27:29
Speaker
I'm a huge fan of the franchise. I think GTA five might be the single biggest creative achievement and in the history of the video game business ah among others, but it's, it's a pretty special, it's a pretty special product and experience and in so many ways. And GTA online is, is just an incredible service considering that it wasn't necessarily strategically designed from the outset as a free to play service. It is pretty remarkable what you can do and the fun you can have there.
00:27:57
Speaker
i I don't, think that GTA is in competition with Roblox. It's, I think it's a very different player who has very different values that they have. Sure. Because Roblox's footprint with, you know, 13 to 18 year olds is so huge. I'm sure there's some crossover, but overall GTA is,
00:28:21
Speaker
is going to make a a huge impact. And I don't think Roblox is going to be cannibalizing any any of any of GTA 6 in the coming year. Fair enough.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I think from my conversations with like some of the AAA or even like AA developers, um I think Roblox for traditional developers, I think there's a knowledge gap still there.
00:28:47
Speaker
And then a lot lot of developers think like robots more like a black box. And then they really want to understand the platform. They really want to understand the audiences on the platform and also their like behavior on the platform. And the for of course, I think to them, they want to find a way to kind of like bring some of the Roblox players to their ecosystems, to their games. It doesn't mean like these players will stop playing Roblox. but then they will want to find some a kind of player overlaps so that they can market to the Roblox players. I think this is a you know kind of a direction a lot of the AAA developers are looking at, um but I think it's still at a very early ah phase, and I feel the industry is still like kind of experimenting or testing which would work you know for their marketing purposes.
00:29:38
Speaker
I appreciate that. I think if you look, I'd like to just add, if you look at the recent success of Battlefield 6 and Ark Raiders, Marvel, Marvel Rivals, you know, Steam is thriving as far as I can tell. And console is, is you know, doing well too. I think to me, what's really changing is that the biggest bets are the becoming riskier and riskier and things like Megabonk or Vampire Survivors, which I guess are the same game, so I should find a more diverse set of examples there. But those games are, or it takes two, things that have much more tactical budgets and a really clear POV on who they're trying to achieve. I think the era of huge tent, huge AAA games is, you know,
00:30:31
Speaker
maybe starting to evolve. I wouldn't say it's coming to an end, but it's becoming one segment of the industry. And there's so many other segments that are thriving. And Roblox is a now a ah billion dollar plus developer market.
00:30:48
Speaker
And it's continuing to grow. It's been growing for 15 years. It's not going to stop growing anytime soon. We can all argue about how much it's going to grow if we want to. And the stock market can try to predict that, but it's going to keep growing The network effects are there and it's bigger than ever.
00:31:02
Speaker
So it's a and really important segment and it's a segment that will be competing for market share from other segments over the coming years. So with that being said, and I think it's extremely well said, I love the idea of segmenting it, which we already have, right? But Roblox and these experiences are one, you have mobile gaming, you have console gaming, right?
Challenges and Opportunities for Large Studios on Roblox
00:31:24
Speaker
When you see the biggest missteps or where do you see the biggest mess steps established when say a triple A studio mindset comes into Roblox? Is it the production cycle of monetization? it something different, just not about understanding what the experience is like?
00:31:40
Speaker
Tianyi, you want to go ahead? Yeah, so I think we we kind of cup covered that quite a lot from the previous conversation already. Like what Joe mentioned about kind of discovery or Roblox is all driven by algorithm. And that's very, very different in the like AAA or traditional game development world, right?
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, what people are used to is more like making a game, like spent years making on the game, and then they launched the game, the market the game. And like Joe said, like developing Roblox game these days takes about a couple of days. So it's like really different ah scale that we're talking about. And I think for, yeah, AAA developers, like I said, from my conversations with some of the AAA clients, you know, Roblox still like a black box for them. So it's very early phase for them to understanding the platform. and
00:32:35
Speaker
Part of that is including understanding the platform's native language. right and then I'm saying that it's not because we are partnering with GameFam on the Roblox ah data, but i also feel like we pointed out in the in the in the report itself, I think it's it's a wise option for AAA developers at this moment if they really want to tap into the Roblox platform.
00:32:59
Speaker
you know It's not really wise for them to actually start developing standalone experience themselves because they don't really understand the the platform from their decades, years of experiences while partnering with native studios like Gamefam, I think would be like, you know, the much wiser option to go.
00:33:21
Speaker
We welcome the partnership opportunities. so feel free to hit me up and thank you for the call out Tianyi. But I think that in short Triple there's no demand for AAA content on Roblox right now at scale.
00:33:38
Speaker
um That's where the platform is at today. That could change tomorrow, but today there's no demand for AAA content. AAA developers have no place on the platform today whatsoever.
00:33:51
Speaker
And if they do come to the platform, they not only have no competitive advantage in terms of gaining users, or building a business, but they're massively disadvantaged versus the native developers who just don't have the, and this is hard for me as well, sometimes as a producer, and I've been adjusting myself and I've been finding the right developer partners in the community to work with because i like making really polished things.
00:34:24
Speaker
I like trying to make everything better, but what's working is the same thing that works on TikTok. What works on TikTok? Open up your phone, talk into it, set it up, do a dance, ship it.
00:34:38
Speaker
That's what makes TikTok go. And analogously, that is what makes Roblox go. Code a game, ship it, see what happens.
00:34:50
Speaker
How...
00:34:53
Speaker
How do content i mean how are content creators getting involved in this as well? right They seem to have some really good success as well, right? Because they can create those videos for those platforms. Does finding a good content creator make a difference in a world like this?
00:35:09
Speaker
At this time, it doesn't seem to have any advantage at all. the content creators have no advantage in launching games because especially in the last six months, and I'll give you an example of a game um, called dig that I followed. It was a, it was made by part of the same people who made the game fish, which was a huge hit on Roblox and remains a top 20 game on the platform. Great game. And they built a really.
00:35:38
Speaker
and Improved version of, of fish in a lot of ways with a different theme to it. They brought in all these YouTubers, they built a closed community for a paid beta and it launched.
00:35:51
Speaker
absolutely massively with 80,000 concurrent users. That's a good launch on any platform that is a world-class launch. And within a month, it was essentially had no users at all. Like practically speaking, because the algorithm doesn't care about launching games. The algorithm cares about game metrics.
00:36:13
Speaker
And as an influencer who makes YouTube or Tik TOK content, you, cannot make a game sticky. All you can do is get people to sample a game on the first few days it's out.
00:36:26
Speaker
And because the competitive set for the competitive attention economy on Roblox is arguably the most competitive in the world, if the game doesn't catch the attention of players at large, there's nothing that can make them want to keep playing the game, except are they having fun?
00:36:44
Speaker
Do they like the game? And no one concurrently predict which games they're going to like. Only once you see metrics can you know.
00:36:55
Speaker
GameFam has worked with some of the AAA developers in the industry. like like For instance, Sonic beat simulator, so you work with Sega. So I'm also curious to understand kind of your experience working with like a AAAs um on So we have had some great success making what I would call AAA Roblox content. So Sonic Speed Simulator, when it launched, we had a really high fidelity game.
00:37:24
Speaker
It was actually made very quickly, almost and by by necessity to hit the movie launch date. And so in that regard, maybe it it caught a little bit of the Roblox magic. Kind of serendipitously.
00:37:37
Speaker
And that game launched absolutely huge. It was actually the biggest launch in Roblox history at the time. Again, all algorithmically driven, um reaching up to 275,000 users in its second week, which again was was the biggest launch ever and remains one of the biggest launches ever on Roblox.
00:37:56
Speaker
And then our Barbie Dreamhouse Tycoon game has also been massively successful, a very polished game that we put a huge amount of time and effort into and you know is the number six all-time brand and IP game on the Roblox platform and still has a great audience today. And where we have found is that that those games came out you know respectively two years ah over two years ago and almost three and a half years ago.
00:38:25
Speaker
Now, and so there was a time when, again, this is a bit subjective because what does AAA mean? What does higher fidelity mean? But, you know, maybe measurable via just pure investment level of of of development work going into a project. There was a time when bigger projects with more production value were seeming to trend on Roblox.
00:38:52
Speaker
That all changed. 180 degrees when Grow a Garden came out in April, that created a trend for the absolute lowest complexity and lowest production design inspired games on the platform. And that trend has taken Roblox to new heights that no one even believed would have been possible until they saw it.
00:39:20
Speaker
And that is where the platform is at today. Where
Success Metrics and Adaptation on Roblox
00:39:23
Speaker
will the platform be at in six months? Will the trend for AAA high fidelity gaming come back? I think there's a very good chance it might.
00:39:32
Speaker
But this is the internet. Roblox is the same slice of the internet that TikTok and YouTube and Snap and Instagram inhabit.
00:39:47
Speaker
It is a completely unpredictable market that functions at a zeitgeist that no one can predict or engineer so far in media history.
00:40:01
Speaker
You make it sound like the toughest battlefield out there. And I respect the hell out of anyone that's taking the time to build experiences in there. Cause you know, i love it. You throw it together quickly, you see what works, what doesn't work and you iterate. So, well, i think Roblox is, I think Roblox is undoubtedly the best place in the world to be launching new games as micro indie teams right now, your chance of being commercially successful and creating meaningful income, making video games as a micro indie on Roblox has never been better.
00:40:30
Speaker
The opportunity for a company like ourselves to scale profitably into the tens of millions of dollars as we have done in by that same measure has never been more challenging. Luckily, we were here very early on. We built a moat, we built a competitive advantage and we have a.
00:40:47
Speaker
huge data set that we can use to continue to find opportunities. And we built the largest third party ad network on Roblox, which is something we knew we were going to do when we started the company as veteran media professionals.
00:41:01
Speaker
So, but I think today, you know, again, trying to become a triple A studio on Roblox, trying to build games in the way that people have been doing in mobile free-to-play or PC indie, there is it is um very unlikely to achieve commercial scale or success doing that right now. so you know, you have these indie, micro indie developers coming into the platform. We know algorithm is king and you'll always be trying to figure out how it works. What are those key metrics people should keep an eye on?
00:41:33
Speaker
I think that The best way to try to figure that out is to look at the top games at any given time and try to reverse engineer what it is that those games did start by trying to, you know, um you know, fast follow trends and see if you can get any traction and start learning from there. But it is always, you know, it is always changing.
00:41:56
Speaker
And that is one of the reasons that, you know, we don't tend to fast follow at GameFam because we know by the time we get a fast follow out, sometimes the entire market has already changed. So we're working on building templatized and productized game designs that we can ship um very efficiently.
00:42:16
Speaker
That process as and partnering, you know, continuing to partner as a third party publisher with you know, the most creative and hardworking developers in the world, a lot of whom happen to be people in their late teens and early twenties who are so motivated to create the next grow a garden. And we love working with those people. We love the spirit and energy they bring. And that is how we are trying to kind of compete in the algorithm race.
00:42:48
Speaker
Well, we have learned about the competition of Roblox today and how much success can be found there, but you have to put in the work. You got to figure out what's working, what's not working. And I think it's going be an awesome platform just to continue watching to see what people are building and how quickly it comes out.
Closing Remarks and Online Presence
00:43:04
Speaker
I want to thank both Joe and Tiani for joining me today. Before we go, Joe, you want to it off? Anything you want to say, shout out to people, where can they find you? Yeah. Find me on, on LinkedIn is, is the best place to probably find me. Send me a DM there and I will look forward to hearing from you and Tianyi, nice to meet you and thank you for your partnership on the NewZoo report and looking forward to continuing to be a product and data leader for everyone to learn more about Roblox from hopefully.
00:43:36
Speaker
Thank you, Joe, as well. And I was very happy about the partnership and hopefully we will continue the partnership along. Awesome. Tianyi, you want let us where we can find you or the report or all the above?
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, also on LinkedIn, and then you can always find the latest reports and insights on Nuzu's website. Cool. We'll have links to everything. We'll have links to Nuzu, to GameFam, to the report, to to everything. Again, Tianyi, Zhou, thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you.