How I Make My Roblox Games Go Viral Everytime — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00This is how I make my Roblox games go
2. 0:02viral every single time. June 14th, I
3. 0:06posted on Twitter, "Watch this game blow
4. 0:08up." This game had anywhere from 50 to
5. 0:10100 CCU. Guess how much CCU it has. Now,
6. 0:13this is not my game, by the way. Look at
7. 0:15this. 38k
8. 0:17CCU. If you watch some my previous
9. 0:19videos, you know I also made a good call
10. 0:21with that game, My Gaming Cafe, which we
11. 0:23found at around 1K CCU. It peaked at
12. 0:26around 15, maybe 20K CCU if I remember
13. 0:29correctly. And basically in this video,
14. 0:30I want to show you guys what I look for
15. 0:32as an investor in games. Cuz obviously I
16. 0:35invest in games. I partner with devs and
17. 0:37that's how I work on Roblox games. I'm a
18. 0:39producer/ project manager. I do not
19. 0:41code. You guys know this. So I want to
20. 0:42show you guys how I can know with
21. 0:46certainty if a game will work well or
22. 0:49not. And this is going to be especially
23. 0:51relevant for you if you're working on a
24. 0:53game right now and you have some
25. 0:54self-doubt and you want to make sure
26. 0:56whatever you're sinking all of your time
27. 0:58and energy and effort into is actually
28. 1:01going to bring home the bacon and print
29. 1:04a little bit of paper. Right? That's
30. 1:06what this video is going to be about.
31. 1:07What I look for when it comes to
32. 1:09investing in games. How I can know with
33. 1:12certainty if a game is going to do well
34. 1:14on this platform or not. And I'm just
35. 1:15going to share what I've learned along
36. 1:17the way. Now, am I wrong sometimes?
37. 1:19100%, dude. I'm not, you know, the
38. 1:22ultimate um fortune teller when it comes
39. 1:25to games blowing up, but I have started
40. 1:26to build an intuition and start to look
41. 1:28for patterns. And I have gotten much
42. 1:32much better at knowing and recognizing
43. 1:34if a game can do well. And I want to
44. 1:36help you guys build that same intuition
45. 1:38in this video. So, without further ado,
46. 1:40let's dive straight in. So, first thing
47. 1:42I look at is clear demand signals.
48. 1:46usually off platform. Okay, let's look
49. 1:49at the case of secure the airport
50. 1:52because low-key I made a game like this
51. 1:55before this game ever came out using an
52. 1:57AI prototype. And the reason I did it is
53. 2:00because I found clear demand signals off
54. 2:02platform. So, I don't know if you guys
55. 2:04are aware, but there's this Steam game.
56. 2:07It's called Totally Secure Airport,
57. 2:09which is not even released yet. Dude,
58. 2:10let me show you guys this So, I go
59. 2:12here, Totally Secure Airport. You can
60. 2:15see release date coming soon. It's not
61. 2:17even out yet, dude. All right, 200k wish
62. 2:19lists on Steam. All right, that's a huge
63. 2:21demand signal. So, literally this dev,
64. 2:23what they did is smart is they just beat
65. 2:25them to the punch. They got the game on
66. 2:27Roblox. It's blowing up. That's how I
67. 2:29knew it was going to blow up. Not just
68. 2:31that, but this airport game was also
69. 2:35proven to be quite interesting to the
70. 2:38younger demographic. If I go here to
71. 2:39crazy games, I'm going to show you guys
72. 2:41this cuz I called this like if you've
73. 2:42been watching my videos for a while, you
74. 2:43know that I called this a while ago. And
75. 2:44I'm not making this video to toot my own
76. 2:46horn and say like, "Oh, I can predict
77. 2:47the future." I really just want to help
78. 2:49share my thought process and how you
79. 2:51guys can use a similar thought process
80. 2:53to give your guys game a better chance
81. 2:55at succeeding by doing some of the
82. 2:57research before you spend all your time
83. 2:59actually building the game. So, if you
84. 3:01look on crazy games, look at airport
85. 3:03security, right? I scroll down here. So
86. 3:05on Crazy Games, just for insight for you
87. 3:07guys, they'll often have gameplay videos
88. 3:09that are associated with the game that's
89. 3:11on the site. So if I look at this, this
90. 3:12is again another airport game, very
91. 3:14similar loop, but it's more of a flash
92. 3:16game. Sorry, it's not a flash game, it's
93. 3:17a Unity game. But look at this. Four
94. 3:18years ago, right? 6.2 million views.
95. 3:21Okay, so now I have two sources of clear
96. 3:24demand signals that this kind of
97. 3:26fantasy/core
98. 3:28loop could work really really well
99. 3:30because people are consuming content of
100. 3:32content creators playing the game and
101. 3:35also I mean 200k wish lists on Steam
102. 3:38right now. There is one more place that
103. 3:41I want to show you guys how you can
104. 3:43further validate just a concept a
105. 3:45fantasy whatever you want to call it. If
106. 3:46you go to creator exchange and if I just
107. 3:48look in here and I look at airport,
108. 3:49right, and I sort by visits and I look
109. 3:51at all of the airport games on Roblox
110. 3:54and I see what genre they're in. Okay,
111. 3:57you can see most of them, if not all,
112. 4:00are role playing. Okay, simulator
113. 4:04roleplaying. There's nothing really
114. 4:05focused around action slash checkpoint,
115. 4:09which is exactly what this game is.
116. 4:10Secure the airport. It's a checkpoint
117. 4:12game. Okay, it's a papers, please. Now,
118. 4:15if I look through here, I mean, look at
119. 4:16look at this game. Just absolutely
120. 4:18dominating this fantasy because if you
121. 4:20play all the games in this fantasy,
122. 4:22there is no games like this game, okay?
123. 4:25They're all roleplay. This guy came in,
124. 4:27he said, "Let me take this fantasy. Let
125. 4:29me make it a checkpoint style game." And
126. 4:31he's absolutely ripping, right? So,
127. 4:33that's the third reason why I was really
128. 4:35bullish on this idea and why I felt
129. 4:36confident enough to call this on
130. 4:37Twitter. And I'm glad I did cuz it's
131. 4:39blown up. And I'm sharing the thought
132. 4:41process with you guys behind the scenes.
133. 4:44Okay, another one, like I've said in
134. 4:46previous videos, is firefighters. Like,
135. 4:48look at this up. Look at this.
136. 4:49Firefighter. Okay, there's literally
137. 4:51only one game that has steady had 1k CCU
138. 4:55for a couple years here, it seems like.
139. 4:58So, make a game in the firefighter
140. 5:00fantasy with a relevant trendy genre.
141. 5:04Could be checkpoint, could be extraction
142. 5:06was an idea I had. A firefighter
143. 5:08extraction game could work really well.
144. 5:10Now that's that first thing I look for
145. 5:11clear demand signals both on platform
146. 5:14and offplatform. Okay, again if we look
147. 5:17at Mecha Chameleon I mean dude 10
148. 5:18million sales on Steam and then we look
149. 5:21look at look at what they did right they
150. 5:23brought it to Roblox 55k CCU 42k CCU. I
151. 5:27mean this is probably the easiest way to
152. 5:28print money is to take a game that's
153. 5:31doing well on Steam. You have some kid
154. 5:33that lives in Indonesia. He doesn't want
155. 5:34to pay the $10 USD whatever it costs on
156. 5:37Steam to play it. He sees tons of
157. 5:39content creators generating this
158. 5:41off-platform demand showing content of
159. 5:44this core loop, but he doesn't want to
160. 5:47burden his parents and beg them for $10
161. 5:50Steam gift card. So, what does he do? He
162. 5:52looks see if the game's on Roblox and it
163. 5:54is. And they're absolutely printing
164. 5:57these games. Okay, it can be that easy
165. 5:59if you guys let it be that easy. For
166. 6:01real. Now, I'm not saying copy these
167. 6:02games one for one. I think that's kind
168. 6:06of a scapegoat. I think the smarter way
169. 6:07to do it is to mix it with multiple
170. 6:10different proven mechanics on the Roblox
171. 6:12platform, which I'm going to get into
172. 6:14later in this video. So, let's look at
173. 6:15step number two. What do I look for if
174. 6:18I'm trying to see if a game is worth
175. 6:20investing in or if I think a game is
176. 6:21going to blow up or not? And that is a
177. 6:24clear gap in the market. What the
178. 6:26do I mean by that? Okay, basically what
179. 6:28I mean is, is the idea novel? aka is the
180. 6:33idea fresh slash new or is there no one
181. 6:37really dominating the fantasy well on
182. 6:40the platform? Again, look at
183. 6:41firefighters, dude. I see a huge gap
184. 6:45here. Okay, there's clear demand. 20 225
185. 6:48million visits. This game has been
186. 6:50getting players for quite some time.
187. 6:52Like, if we look on Roblox, okay,
188. 6:54created in 2018, bro, this game has been
189. 6:57steady at like 1K CCU for a while. So,
190. 7:00this fantasy, whatever you want to call
191. 7:03it, is just begging to be innovated on.
192. 7:05And if you make a firefighter game, I
193. 7:06almost guarantee you will do really well
194. 7:08as long as you make it with a genre that
195. 7:12is relevant to the current times. Okay,
196. 7:14so that's what I mean by gap in the
197. 7:16market. Now, the second thing kind of
198. 7:17here is it's not really necessarily
199. 7:19related to the gap in the market. Kind
200. 7:20of is. Is the idea fresh/new? So, I want
201. 7:24to show you guys this game. And if you
202. 7:25guys are watching this, the devs of this
203. 7:26game, shout out to you guys. But I'm
204. 7:28going to explain why I think this game
205. 7:30is not doing well and why I think
206. 7:32they're really going to struggle to get
207. 7:33this game off the ground. So, here we
208. 7:34have an FPS game. Really well polished,
209. 7:37great weapon system. Okay, could use a
210. 7:39little bit more polish. There are other
211. 7:40games that have better polish, but why I
212. 7:42simply think this game is not doing well
213. 7:44is simply because there's nothing new
214. 7:47about this game. It's a team deathmatch
215. 7:49shooter, first person. All the guns are
216. 7:51pretty much the same. The only thing
217. 7:52they have going for them that's a little
218. 7:53bit different is they use a lot of old
219. 7:55school Call of Duty maps but even some
220. 7:57top FPS games also do that. Now if we
221. 8:00look at the FPS genre for example and we
222. 8:02look at this game Bonk and Block this
223. 8:04game is really unique dude. This game
224. 8:07has some building mechanics. They have
225. 8:09kind of like a Mario Kart aspect where
226. 8:11you get a mystery box and you can get an
227. 8:13ability during the game play and they
228. 8:15have destruction physics and they also
229. 8:17titled it different. So, if you play
230. 8:20Strafe and you play Bonkan Block, you'll
231. 8:24see what I mean by a fresh slashnew
232. 8:26idea. It's no wonder to me why this game
233. 8:28is doing well. Not only is it polished,
234. 8:31but it's a fresh idea, dude. They have
235. 8:33new mechanics, things that the players
236. 8:35have never seen before. And they're
237. 8:37doing well, bro. And we all know FPS
238. 8:39games print, right? 3.8K CCU, they might
239. 8:41be doing anywhere from 30 to 50k month
240. 8:43USD depending on how well it it is
241. 8:45monetized. So that's the second thing
242. 8:47I'm looking for is is there a clear gap
243. 8:49in the market? Is the idea, you know,
244. 8:51fresh slashnew? Okay. Now, the third
245. 8:55thing, and I know I've been blueballing
246. 8:58you guys for a while with this
247. 8:59checklist. The third thing that Cole
248. 9:01told me here is, does a popular Roblox
249. 9:04game already share a mechanic with this
250. 9:06game? Okay, so the third thing I look
251. 9:09for is, is it readable? What do I mean
252. 9:11by readable? I basically mean is it easy
253. 9:13to understand the mechanics? This is how
254. 9:17I like to think of cuz really when you
255. 9:19think about game design, you think about
256. 9:20a game, a game is literally just a bunch
257. 9:21of systems stitched together. Okay? And
258. 9:24what I like to do is I like to make sure
259. 9:26that each system in one of the games
260. 9:28that I'm working on has been proven to
261. 9:31work well on Roblox. So, let me show you
262. 9:33guys an example. So, we look at Hacker
263. 9:35Business, right? We look at something as
264. 9:36simple as these buttons in the headsup
265. 9:39display. Okay, this is proven mechanic
266. 9:43to work well. If you look at grow
267. 9:45garden, you'll know what I'm talking
268. 9:46about. This is how grow a garden does
269. 9:48it. This is how tons of games have done
270. 9:49it. The way I like to look at it is if
271. 9:51this mechanic has been used by a top
272. 9:54game, that top game has already spent
273. 9:57how many visits does grow a garden have?
274. 9:5935 billion visits, 35 billion eyeballs
275. 10:02have seen this mechanic and been trained
276. 10:06on how to use it. So by the time they
277. 10:08come into your game, they immediately
278. 10:11know how to use the mechanic. It becomes
279. 10:13intuitive for them because they can feel
280. 10:15that they've seen this same mechanic
281. 10:17elsewhere. Now, you never want to copy
282. 10:20it one for one, but you want to look at
283. 10:21the way the system functions and pretty
284. 10:25much have your system function very,
285. 10:28very similar. If we look at steal a
286. 10:30brain run, right? The ability to lock
287. 10:33your base. This is very understandable
288. 10:36to almost all of Roblox. Like I mean
289. 10:38look at how many visits steal a brain
290. 10:40rod has had. 70 billion visits. Every
291. 10:43single Roblox player understands what it
292. 10:47means to have a base with a laser door
293. 10:50to lock it. Thanks to Stila Brian Rod
294. 10:53training Roblox players on how to use
295. 10:56this mechanic. Do you guys see where I'm
296. 10:58going with this? So, when I'm looking at
297. 11:00investing in a game or I'm working on
298. 11:02designing a game, what I'm looking at is
299. 11:06the mechanics we have in the game. Are
300. 11:09they readable? Are they understandable?
301. 11:11Are they easy to use on mobile? Have
302. 11:13players seen this mechanic before? This
303. 11:15isn't something that's coming from me.
304. 11:16This is not like a brand new idea. I
305. 11:18mean, Cole taught me this a while ago.
306. 11:20Look at this. Does a popular Roblox game
307. 11:22already share a mechanic with this game?
308. 11:25I look at my entire game and I and I
309. 11:28look at all the mechanics and systems in
310. 11:29my game and I think, has this mechanic
311. 11:31already been used in a popular Roblox
312. 11:33game? Because it's going to make your
313. 11:35onboarding that much easier because it
314. 11:37becomes so much more intuitive. Let me
315. 11:39show you guys something we did for a
316. 11:41recent game that we released. Okay? And
317. 11:44shout out to Gage. We're working on this
318. 11:45game called Build or Get Robbed. Just
319. 11:48released it. Go follow this dev. He's
320. 11:50goated. He has tons of top games. I
321. 11:52mean, he's being super humble here. He's
322. 11:54had some games hit up to like 700
323. 11:56million visits if I'm not mistaken. So,
324. 11:58in our game that we just launched
325. 12:00literally last night, there is an
326. 12:04upgrade board, right? We've all seen
327. 12:05this. This is your typical incremental
328. 12:07upgrades. Okay. Now, when we first had
329. 12:10this system, what we had was just the
330. 12:13ability to upgrade by spamming this buy
331. 12:16button. Okay. And this leads me to my
332. 12:19fourth point which is just mobile UX and
333. 12:22user experience overall. All right. So
334. 12:24what we did is we actually added this
335. 12:27second column here where they can
336. 12:29quickly quickly just come in here and
337. 12:31click buy 100, buy 99, buy 249 because
338. 12:35what we noticed during live play testing
339. 12:37is some players gave feedback that hey
340. 12:39can you just allow me to max out this
341. 12:41stat because I don't want to sit here
342. 12:43all day and just click and tap tap tap
343. 12:45tap tap tap my screen. buy one, buy one,
344. 12:47buy one, buy one. All of a sudden, next
345. 12:48thing you know, the players spent 10
346. 12:50minutes just upgrading one simple stat
347. 12:52when they could have spent that time
348. 12:54actually engaging with the core loop and
349. 12:56having fun with the game. So, what did I
350. 12:58do? I looked at other very popular
351. 13:01incremental games because this is an
352. 13:02incremental system. So, I looked at Cut
353. 13:05Grass. Shout out Pob. If you watch my
354. 13:06videos, you're the goat. I've been
355. 13:07following you for a long time. I looked
356. 13:09at what Pob was doing in Cut Grass. I
357. 13:11saw that he has both a buy one or a max
358. 13:14button. I said, "That's super smart."
359. 13:16That's obviously proven. Tons of people
360. 13:17have played this game. It's an
361. 13:19incremental system. Let's just implement
362. 13:21that into our game. So, that's how I
363. 13:23like to think about designing and making
364. 13:25games readable and understandable is
365. 13:27that the mechanic has already been
366. 13:28proven in a game within the same genre.
367. 13:31So, like our game is not an incremental,
368. 13:33but this is an incremental system. So, I
369. 13:35looked at a game in the incremental
370. 13:37genre that uses a similar system that's
371. 13:39proven, if that makes sense. Okay. So,
372. 13:41what I want you guys to understand when
373. 13:42it comes to just like user experience in
374. 13:44general, one of the biggest hacks is
375. 13:46just have your little cousin play the
376. 13:47game. Don't teach them how to play the
377. 13:48game. Just watch what they do on their
378. 13:50phone. Just literally watch in real
379. 13:52time. This is like the biggest hack of
380. 13:55all time. Okay. Something else you
381. 13:57should also understand is that it can
382. 13:59quickly become death by a thousand cuts.
383. 14:01What I mean by that is if your game has
384. 14:03tons of little points of friction, those
385. 14:05points of friction can add up and create
386. 14:07an overall bad user experience. Okay, so
387. 14:11if we look at just our game builder get
388. 14:14robbed for example, this one simple ad
389. 14:16that we did that removed the friction
390. 14:18because previously the friction was
391. 14:20player had to sit there and spam buy
392. 14:21one, buy one, buy one, buy one. That was
393. 14:23just one point of friction in the game.
394. 14:25Now imagine we have a second, a third, a
395. 14:27fourth, a fifth. Imagine we have 10
396. 14:29points of friction. All of a sudden the
397. 14:30game is no longer fun. The game becomes
398. 14:32a chore and it's not fun. So all of
399. 14:35these little points of friction really
400. 14:36matter and the details really, really
401. 14:38matter. And I think a lot of devs
402. 14:39overlook these tiny little details
403. 14:41because it can quickly become death by a
404. 14:43thousand cuts and tons of little points
405. 14:45of friction can add up to just make a
406. 14:48bad overall user experience. And I think
407. 14:50user experience, especially on mobile,
408. 14:51is very overlooked. Dude, I can't tell
409. 14:53you how many devs haven't even played
410. 14:55their own game on a phone or a tablet.
411. 14:57Like they don't even check their own
412. 14:59games on phone. And that's where 80% of
413. 15:02Roblox players are. Okay, one more thing
414. 15:03I want to show you guys cuz you can't
415. 15:04just use this for systems. Also with a
416. 15:06level design. Okay, so when we first
417. 15:08started working on this game, right, I
418. 15:10started working with Gage. This map
419. 15:12originally was very big. Okay, it was
420. 15:15not this size. It was spread out. It was
421. 15:18separated by water and there was boats
422. 15:20and you had to take a boat to travel to
423. 15:22other player plots. Okay, it's an
424. 15:24interesting, innovative idea, but I
425. 15:25thought, hey, it would just be easier if
426. 15:27we use a proven level design. So, we
427. 15:30landed upon this, which has been super
428. 15:33fun. Like, you can hit players into the
429. 15:34void, they fly off the map. It's just
430. 15:36hilarious and it's mad fun. So, what I
431. 15:39did is I looked at, okay, this is how
432. 15:40Grow a Garden 2 does their level design.
433. 15:43I took note of how the player plots are
434. 15:45spaced and I'm just like, okay, this is
435. 15:47interesting. This is giving me
436. 15:48inspiration. This game obviously has
437. 15:51tons of players, tons of visits. Again,
438. 15:53players intuitively understand this type
439. 15:54of level design. I then also looked at
440. 15:56Bedw Wars, right? If you guys have
441. 15:58played Minecraft Bedwars, and I thought,
442. 15:59okay, floating islands, that's
443. 16:01interesting. I didn't see any games
444. 16:03where you had to steal a character,
445. 16:05steal a brain rot, whatever it was,
446. 16:07where there was water separating the
447. 16:09plots, but I thought a lot of players
448. 16:11have also played bedwars. Like, if I go
449. 16:13to Roblox and I type in bedwars, right?
450. 16:17I mean, you can see just how many people
451. 16:20have played this game. 11.3 billion
452. 16:23visits. So, the way we landed on this
453. 16:24level design is basically took
454. 16:26inspiration from Gro Garden 2, which is
455. 16:28proven. players like it, they engage
456. 16:30with it and mixed it with a bedwars and
457. 16:31we landed kind of on this skybased
458. 16:34feeling where the player is in the sky.
459. 16:36Each plot is separated by little
460. 16:38bridges. You can smack people into the
461. 16:39void and it added a lot of nuance to
462. 16:42what is originally like if you look at
463. 16:44steel brain rot, you hit people, they
464. 16:46just go flying across the map. But now
465. 16:48that you can actually hit people off
466. 16:49into the void, it makes it a lot more
467. 16:51satisfying. We add a little bit of
468. 16:52nuance there. But you guys see how I
469. 16:54combined two kind of proven concepts to
470. 16:58come up with a somewhat fresh idea.
471. 17:01Okay? And this is something called the
472. 17:04Pareto principle. Pareto principle.
473. 17:07Okay. What is the Purto principle? Let's
474. 17:10just Google search this real quick. The
475. 17:11Pareto principle, commonly known as the
476. 17:148020 rule, is the observation that
477. 17:16roughly 80% of consequences or results
478. 17:18come from 20% of causes or inputs. So,
479. 17:21when you're making a game, the way I
480. 17:23like to think of it is you take a proven
481. 17:25game loop, proven concept. You've done
482. 17:27all the research. You look at the demand
483. 17:29signals, everything we've talked about
484. 17:30in this video, and think about how can I
485. 17:32just make this game 20% better, right?
486. 17:34So, we have the grow a garden to map
487. 17:37layout. Now, obviously, it's proven to
488. 17:39copy it one for one. That's kind of like
489. 17:41a copout, right? It's kind of boring. I
490. 17:43wanted to innovate. We also have
491. 17:45bedwars, right? So, we take a proven map
492. 17:48layout and we change 20% of it. Now,
493. 17:51it's in the sky. Okay? And now it's
494. 17:53meaningfully
495. 17:55different enough where our game now has
496. 17:58its own identity. People aren't going to
497. 18:00join our game and be like, "Oh, this is
498. 18:02just grow a garden, right? But it has
499. 18:06clear inspiration." So, that's basically
500. 18:09all I wanted to put in this video. These
501. 18:11are all the things that I like to look
502. 18:12at when I'm deciding if a game is either
503. 18:15worth investing in or if I think a
504. 18:17game's going to blow up. Because people
505. 18:18hit me up all the time in Discord
506. 18:20saying, you know, Tizzy, help me with my
507. 18:22game. What's going on with my game? And
508. 18:24if you're one of those people, dude,
509. 18:25just rewatch this video because I really
510. 18:27think there's there's a method to this
511. 18:30madness. All right, and hope you guys
512. 18:33got value from this. Peace and love as
513. 18:35always. Talk to you later.