{"id":753,"date":"2022-12-20T13:24:14","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T13:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/?p=753"},"modified":"2023-04-13T09:05:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T09:05:45","slug":"splitting-point-how-field-trip-z-got-45m-players-on-roblox-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/?p=753","title":{"rendered":"Splitting Point: how Field Trip Z got 45M players on Roblox this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently spoke with Janzen Madsen, founder at Splitting Point Studios, to get his perspective on how to develop a hit on Roblox. Splitting Point has created multiple experiences, including Field Trip Z which this year alone saw more than 45M unique players. Janzen is intimately familiar with what makes a Roblox experience a success.<\/p>\n

Roblox is an absolutely massive platform, with over 32 million experiences and 52 million active users. But making a game there is unlike making a game anywhere else. It\u2019s much faster paced, the audience is much younger, and it\u2019s much more tricky to design. The typical principles you might expect are quite different.<\/p>\n

1. Don\u2019t make it like a mobile game<\/h2>\n

\u201cOften, developers coming from the mobile gaming industry will assume that they can replicate their success by rebuilding their games on Roblox. This just doesn\u2019t work,\u201d Janzen explained. \u201cThe players just aren\u2019t receptive to this style of game.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Splitting<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to play on Roblox to understand it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re not making a typical game with a typical game loop, you\u2019re making a social experience. And a lot of developers that hop over to Roblox don\u2019t really understand this. They just make a game with a few mechanics, but without thinking about the social element. And so it just doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Roblox, Janzen explained, \u201cthe players are vastly different from what you\u2019d expect. For one, it\u2019s extremely easy to switch to a different game. If you don\u2019t grab their attention in the first thirty seconds, they\u2019ll just head to another experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to remember that on Roblox you can switch whenever you like,\u201d Janzen said. \u201cPlayers will just jump over to another game at the drop of a hat. So you\u2019ll notice that most Roblox games don\u2019t have tutorials, for example. Instead, you\u2019ve got to come up with other ways to teach people how to play the game. It\u2019s all about making sure everything is active.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis creates an extra challenge for developers. Young players means that they don\u2019t have the same arsenal of preconceptions that the average player might. You can\u2019t piggyback off the symbols we\u2019re all familiar with. But you also can\u2019t have a tutorial. So it\u2019s super important to make your design as intuitive as possible. And to test out whether it\u2019s working.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. Focus on the social aspect<\/h2>\n

Roblox is a social platform. Janzen described it as the \u201cTikTok of gaming.\u201d It\u2019s less about the mechanics and more about how the players will be able to interact with one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is another problem that developers coming over to Roblox find,\u201d Janzen said. \u201cThey forget that every game on Roblox is multiplayer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A good example of this is Wacky Wizards, another of Splitting Studios\u2019 most popular titles. In Wacky Wizards, the player solves puzzles and makes potions. These potions have a variety of effects on the player\u2019s avatar \u2013 from turning them into a giant marshmallow man to simply stretching their neck to ridiculous proportions.<\/p>\n

\"Wacky<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the hook? In a typical game you might have a specific objective \u2013 even a to-do list to guide the player to find each and every potion. Not in Wacky Wizards. It\u2019s important to remember here that the player has an avatar they use across multiple games. So seeing weird and wonderful things happening to that familiar avatar is amusing in its own right.<\/p>\n

But it also encourages other players on the server to make those potions. Did your friend just turn into a troll? That\u2019s cool. How do I do that? And so the gameplay loop continues. This design principle \u2013 of thinking about the social element first \u2013 can feel quite foreign to newcomers. But it\u2019s essential to making a Roblox game work.<\/p>\n

3. Build a fun game and the revenue will follow<\/h2>\n

There are a lot of monetization options available to Roblox developers. But the key to making money on the platform? It\u2019s making a game where people stick around. This is particularly true if you want to attract premium players \u2013 those who pay a subscription. The more those players are on your game, the more you\u2019ll get paid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s best not to think about the premium player, though,\u201d Janzen added. \u201cMake the game for everyone \u2013 and look at how you can get them to stick around. If you happen to a bunch of premium players, that\u2019s great. But there\u2019s no real way of picking them out.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Field<\/p>\n

This is probably because, unlike whales in mobile games, the premium player isn\u2019t really any different from the rest of the players. They\u2019re still young. Still new to gaming. Still wanting to just mess around with their friends.<\/p>\n

Janzen explained that these premium payouts can vary wildly for different games. With Splitting Studios, some games get almost 50% of their revenue from them. Others, barely 10%. The important thing, either way, is to make sure that you\u2019re improving your game and looking for ways to keep the playtime high. That way, you stand a better chance of attracting those premium players.<\/p>\n

4. You need to be a lot more agile on Roblox<\/h2>\n

We appreciate that many mobile developers might scoff at the idea of working faster. The mobile gaming industry is extremely fast-paced compared to other techy industries with reports of excessive hours and \u201ccrunch\u201d periods even at the most successful studios. How could you possibly ship releases any quicker? Well, the Roblox platform itself makes that easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Field Trip Z, we were releasing updates every single week. And most of the time we were only finishing the updates an hour or so before we went live,\u201d Janzen said. \u201cWe were watching the bugs roll in and fixing them as soon as we got the report.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Field<\/p>\n

This is possible because Roblox doesn\u2019t have the usual red tape \u2013 when you update your game it automatically rolls out to everyone. Pretty much instantly. It\u2019s also much simpler to make changes, as the platform itself relies less on coding and more on creativity.<\/p>\n

And with that speed comes an expectation. Players won\u2019t stick around waiting a week for you. They\u2019ll just go to the next game. Thankfully, they\u2019re also much more forgiving about mistakes and bugs. They care more about fun and regular updates \u2013 and will ignore a bit of jank here and there.<\/p>\n

5. You\u2019ll need live data<\/h2>\n

\u201cAnalytics was super important to our development,\u201d Janzen said. \u201cAbout 80% of the bugs we caught were because of GameAnalytics and the real-time bug tracker.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the community expects rapid development, it\u2019s important to be getting live data about how your game is performing. You need to be able to react the same day, even the same hour. Splitting Point chose GameAnalytics for exactly that reason. We were easy to add into their experience to get real-time KPI updates.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019d like to explore making a Roblox game yourself, or if you\u2019re a Roblox developer looking for more data and insights, make sure you check out our Roblox SDK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We recently spoke with Janzen Madsen, founder at Splitting Point Studios, to get his perspective on how to develop a hit on Roblox. Splitting Point has created multiple experiences, including Field Trip Z which this year alone saw more than 45M unique players. Janzen is intimately familiar with what makes a Roblox experience a success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalgoodplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}