Making Hit Roblox Games | Real Devs Share Secrets to Success

hey welcome everybody the focus of our discussion today will be game development on roblox and speaking to us on this topic we have four successful developers on roblox who can give their real world experience and perspectives and with us today we have first brezza and uh andrew do you wanna maybe tell you know i normally skip intros but in this case i think you guys all have super interesting backgrounds and kind of stories so maybe you could tell us a little bit about who you are and kind of the game that you're working on sure uh so my name is andrew brezza on roblox i've been on it for over 10 years some of my games are miners haven vesteria azure mines and right now i'm working on a project called build island i'm just super interested in sort of creating this really cool physics sandbox where people can make their own experiences with their friends and just have full control over their environment great and next we have josh deboer josh

you're driving so please don't crash into anything while you speak to us but yeah if you could give us a little bit about your background that would be great the username of artemis the deer on roblox i used to be known as uh bell's base but i changed it because it's impossible to pronounce my username i've been on the platform since 2007 and i've been developing for over 13 years now i am currently the co-owner of a project called vehicle simulator and that project has amassed over 575 million play sessions over the space of a couple years nice and next we have uh ann or maesta uh and can you tell us a little bit more about yourself yeah i started on roblox as a player and then one day my favorite game broke so i decided to open up studio and try to recreate it myself for me and my friends moving forward when i graduated high school i decided to take roblox as a serious

career and this year i started my first company full flower studio and i'm working with two separate teams on a game called mermaid life and a game called my droplets my droplets uh i think is about to hit 50 million play sessions so far nice yeah and great and finally we have arthur chusoff arthur do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself i am i'm arthur trusavis our aforementioned i'm who to trust in roblox uh i started on the platform making video games like the rest of y'all and uh games i'm known for strop peridot which has its own toy currently i'm working on tycoon hospital coming out december and next month uh but i'm mostly known for my ugc stuff i was one of the first creators in the ugc program i did some previous contracting work for roblox but i believe most of us i think all of us here did as well so that's all there is to me great and so i thought we could just jump right in in terms of the first question i want to ask is really about

you know what is it like for you guys being roblox developers in terms of like how do you spend your time and what is kind of the day-to-day look like and maybe actually starting with you arthur wow so uh it's a very very flexible job um sometimes it's stable sometimes it's unstable you never know um it's always something different every day um that can be a good a bad thing uh it's just a very flexible expansive career with a lot of room to grow and a lot of places to go and grow there as well okay and what about for you ann and did you actually just jump right into this right after high school um well i've been a game developer for a while okay i went to college for a year and i decided to drop out because i realized i had all of this tools that i needed to uh have a game developer career uh so yeah basically my day in the life is managing two different teams um

so i kind of feel like i have a bit more structure than like the average solo developer but definitely it's really nice being able to kind of set up my own schedule every day and uh just like work on what i'm passionate about all the time that's kind of what it's like being a roblox developer it's like a lot of passion and so and for you are you more on the management side rather than the development side so are you more on that like managing these teams working on the design or are you actually coding as well my job is very chaotic because i'm going back and forth between trying to manage teams trying to design games also doing the coding side also doing uh the 3d modeling side it's a lot of work everything all right and by the way andrew did you start college yet or i thought i saw some twitter posts about some college stuff or what's going on with you so uh i only applied to one school it was my dream school the university of washington and i was rejected without

waitlist uh but i appealed and i actually got in on a one one in 20 appeal and i went there for a year uh and then i took a break to uh run vestaria uh and i spent about i wanna say like seven or eight months on that uh and then after that failed i went back to school and i applied got rejected applied again and got into the computer science major at the paul allen school uh but right now again roblox is tugging and and i might have to either take another break uh from school or follow in other roblox developers footsteps and drop out but i really value my education and i'm learning a lot from it so it's not it's not something that i do lately got it and josh so i went to school for four years back in it was like back in 2014 2015 i graduated high school at 15. and i went ahead and got a full i got a by the grace of god i got a full ride

scholarship at my dream school and i completed four years of college there focusing on networking with a major in cyber security and the school shut down so i was one degree away from getting my bachelor's degree in information technology and the school shut down because they got sued by the state of illinois so after that um i kind of started working at best buy i hated it there so i quit that i started working on video games full time we launched our project it took off and that's kind of how i got started in terms of the life though um i'm basically the chief cook and bottle washer of the company along with my partner sim builder he's um the ceo of the company but we both complement each other and stuff like that um it's 24 7 work i mean the morning afternoon and evening it's always worked for me i'm always checking my phone about work i'm always got my laptop on hand i've always got like i'm always near my office just in case

something goes on um it's a flexible career if you want it to be but if you really want to thrive and succeed you got to treat it like a real job all right and so maybe we could talk about that so it kind of sounds like from what i'm hearing from you guys that this is pretty much a full-time thing is it's sounds like it's a career for you guys but uh in terms of like the the kind of the perception from some folks outside of roblox not knowing a lot about it is that hey this is a platform where some 13 year old kid can just kind of jump on create something and become a multi-millionaire and so maybe we could talk about that to the degree that is that perception actually true and for you guys you know sounds like a lot of you are probably in your early 20s is this are you guys thinking of this as your career or is this something that you guys are doing part-time and as you work towards something else and maybe starting again with you arthur um so the the perception that

uh you know 13 year old can get on the platform and become an overnight millionaire it's an idea it's it's been thought about all by everyone on the platform but um what i've noticed is that the most successful people on the platform have been with the platform for years so i don't think it can happen immediately you just have to work and work on it the entire time and of course a lot of people that do this uh tend to turn roblox into the career of sorts but uh for me right now i do rolex as a a side gig i guess well as a job i don't expect to be a full career um i'm focusing on school right now and after that i want to go out into the video game industry got it what about you ann it's definitely a full-time career for me um i sorry what was like the full question again well i think the question is more around whether it can be a career for you and you know just how possible is it or in terms of the perception

of like young kids being able to just kind of jump on and become multi-millionaires so well it definitely takes a lot of learning and kind of discovering like what it is about the platform that makes a hit um i don't think it's possible to just like overnight become a millionaire on roblox i definitely have been like on the platform for 10 years uh i'm not a millionaire yet but i have learned a lot and i feel like if you keep yourself going on the platform and you continue to learn about it it is possible but it's definitely not just like a magical like i'm going to join roblox and become a millionaire just like any youtuber hops on youtube is like hey i'm gonna have a million subscribers in 10 days it just doesn't work out that way right yeah for me it's a full-time job sometimes beyond full-time putting in more hours than i should it is definitely a source of stress for a lot of people i think the most common thing though now is that roblox is becoming a sort of microcosm of what people are calling the gig economy so you only have like a thousand people

who are actually making enough from the developer exchange directly to pay minimum wage or higher but you have tons of people tens of thousands if not more who make money by working for roblox developers producing assets uh you know like art or music or other stuff that's useful uh and so a lot of people are able to supplement income uh by creating on roblox and it's the barrier to entry to that is not very high it's really easy to just jump in and start making stuff got it josh so in terms of full-time career it absolutely is my full-time job i literally left best buy i closed down my computer repair business i was running on the side um it's full-time for me i literally have no other source of income besides roblox right now um in terms of i i do want to point out the thing about andrew said about stress the stress is absolutely real with roblox there's a lot of anxiety a lot of heartache it's a tough career it's definitely not a walk in the park

to say the least it's just like a real business you have your ups you have your downs there's definitely some um volatility with the platform too things can get a little bit hectic at times you know you got your ups you got your ups and downs during the seasons you know you can see the seasonal trends um but it's definitely a full-time career for me in terms of overnight success with millionaires though um i'm a firm believer that if you have the right idea and the right talent you absolutely could become a millionaire overnight there's been a lot of breakout games on the platform and stuff with either some veterans developers or new developers but to actually become a millionaire from roblox is a little bit difficult because the ipo filing of roblox i think said 26 people made over a million back in 2019 with my knowledge um it was something like that there's only a handful of people that actually make millions from the platform there's like only three that made more than a couple million per year um i actually taught a roblox course a

while back on how to be intro to roblox and stuff like that i worked with an educator and what i learned is a lot of kids are really talented like the these savants and stuff like that um so i'm i firmly believe if you have the right idea and the right talent and you're 13 and you want to become a millionaire go for it and i think it's definitely doable well that's that's the beauty of being 13 too is that there's nothing stopping you from just jumping into it you know you have the creativity imagination still growing with you yeah right considering roblox's market primarily is younger um at least with our game we have about eight to twelve as our primary demographic um 13 year olds no 13 year olds and younger people best than us you know older developers and such so yeah that's kind of my thoughts on that so maybe we could now talk about what does it take to make like a hit game in terms of like so it sounds like you guys have all been working on roblox for

quite a while so it sounds like experience is part of the factor but like in order to make a game that would be good enough to become a hit could you talk about the kind of team that you would need like in terms of the team size and is it possible for a single developer versus you know for example and you're saying you're actually managing two teams is that the typical teams like what would a typical team size be like and how big how much experience in order to make a hit product and again start uh go ahead and um before i started work with teams that happened very recently like this year it's definitely possible for you to like have a career on roblox create a game on your own uh my droplets was originally a solo project i released it on my own and then this year i just gave it like a huge update after hiring uh six people who kind of had their own set of talents to really like bring my idea to life so it's definitely like you can make a game and be successful as a solo developer you don't need to have like a huge team but i definitely see

that's where roblox is going so far they definitely like want uh teams to get bigger that's what i've noticed um so yeah i see that's where it's going but it's possible as a solo developer got it what about what do you think arthur what was the question again like what what what team sizes are typical to make a hit game i mean team sizes it always depends on what game you're making but typically you want to keep it small always start it small i've been with many many projects that started big and ambitious and ended unambitious at all you just i think what matters more is the chemistry okay the more connected your team is the more powerful you can be um even if it's just you too you can be more powerful than the team of 20 people you just gotta love the game you gotta love each other chemistry is the most important factor so it's a very dynamic situation but in my opinion the best team size is always just start

emphasis start small okay and brother uh well i think everyone loves to talk about the dynamic duos you know bad cc and asimo uh or newfiscy and be think and adopt me and jailbreak are some of the biggest most profitable games on roblox but i think the most common setup for you know games that reach millions millions of users is you have this superstar developer who's really driven with an idea and people naturally gravitate to the idea to that energy and you get just different orbits of people who contribute in different ways sometimes they become long-term members but i'm against rigid team structure i think that things on roadblocks are moving really fast and you know there's people who want to work on a bunch of different projects they have a skill set that is very universally applicable uh as for myself personally so i tried having a very rigid team structure with fisteria i found that i wasn't able to manage that type of organization effectively

but what i have had huge success with is building up a game and then leaving people in charge of that game to keep it running uh who are very familiar with the project you know creatively and analytically and it's worked really well with me with miners haven i left out of order foxy and talon midnight in charge of that they've been running it for years really well and i'm trying to do the same with hysteria right now uh empowering uh some of the team members who stayed behind to finish the game and you know finish the vision that we started for it president do you think that that kind of organizational structure that you're talking about so there's like a person with an idea attracting people to kind of form these ad hoc teams do you think that becomes increasingly popular or and what percentage of that of those kinds of teams do you think are part of roblox versus the more structured team that you were talking about uh i think most teams on roblox of successful games that have already released are not rigidly structured um you know don't have your traditional

uh you know company roles it those that structure usually forms after a game has already been released and it needs to be maintained uh the the structure that you know sort of if i had to write a recipe to try and make a front page game uh having a really strong vision that attracts other people to you and creates that orbit it's it's something that's really only possible on roblox i think it's something that's very unique to the platform uh and and so i think people should take advantage of that flexibility uh and just take advantage of what's available on roblox great and josh so originally when we started off with vehicle simulator it was that story of the dynamic duo it was two people my boss sim builder is located in arizona and i'm from the chicagoland area and we kind of met by fate and we were that dynamic duel we were wonder twins basically but we grew our team out significantly because we as we grew we realized that we need more men and women power so our team currently consists of six

full-time employees that are salaried along with about 22 independent contractors that do things from 3d modeling sound design um you know asset creation directing um that's the size of our team and stuff i think it's definitely possible and i've seen it about going solo and making it big there's the developer on roblox called kopetus i think that's how you pronounce his name um but he made the game called welcome to bloxburg which was an instant success and to the best of my knowledge he did that solo for the longest time and i think he still does go solo so it's definitely doable and i think the team dynamic it's these small close-knit teams that's almost like family and i really love that about roblox is it's like a home-grown kind of feel it's like a mom-and-pop store almost when it comes to running businesses for the most part and i really like that and in terms of like financial outcomes

like i know josh you mentioned that based on roblox's s1 filing that there was some mention that 20 some odd people or 20 some odd teams had made over a million dollars but what what is like the in terms of the biggest schemes is there any indication of like what the potential financial outcome could become uh the biggest games on roblox clear over three million dollars a year according to their s1 filing to the best of my knowledge they make a lot more than that um i think it's just because when you go up in the ranks of roblox and they have this thing called the top earnings sort and when you get up in there it's like the top 30 games and stuff it becomes exponentially harder to get up on there with the top earning when we released our game at the time we hit number two on top earning behind welcome to bloxburg and we were clearing about 20 to 30 000 a day or something like that i think um but i i know for a fact the top

roblox devs make millions upon millions per year so like when they mentioned those three developers that made over three million it's beyond three million to say the least it's uh it's actually don't mean to interrupt or fact check but i've been reading the s1 a lot super interested in and it's uh three games that are making over 10 million uh and i believe it's 27 who are making over 1 million yes and fun fact david bazuki the ceo of roblox his total annual compensation is about 5 million so i think it's really cool there are games on roblox that are out earning the ceo significantly it's actually it's 4.5 million there you go well his base salary is half a million that's so his so his total compensation 5 million yeah but that includes his base salary mm-hmm yeah but i'm sure after after the ipo they'll be with a lot more but yeah i don't know that's great um and i think that part of the when we talk about like the compensation

to developers one of the one of the issues that comes up is the revenue split and for example another platform very recently kind of came out that called manticore who are kind of saying hey well we have a 50 50 split and it seemed to be like you know trying to draw attention to roblox's split which i believe is 75 25 or 75.5 versus 24.5 and so as roblox developers when you when you see that kind of split when you see this split for example even with companies like epic and tim sweeney you know talking about the split that apple has which is 30 versus 70 for developers like what you guys how do you guys interpret that in terms of the revenue split for you guys which is less favorable than on other platforms and maybe starting with you arthur um about the splits from the other platforms well about the split that roblox has for you just given that on a relative basis some

of the other platforms seem to be giving more now you know you can argue that roblox does more as well but just wanted to know how you guys feel about that so i'm not all bothered by the split because you know i don't know the internal workings of roblox i am not one of their stanford uh graduates in finances or economics or accounting like i i don't i'm not the smartest guy in the room when it comes to economics so they probably have some typical justifications for that um but i i think the reason why other platforms especially manticore offering the higher splits because they're just starting out when they come bigger and bigger they're going to need more of that money back if they want to support their entire player base you know roblox is a billion dollar company and they have the smallest people in their staff and they're growing every year so i'm not really in the position to say you know roblox should move up the percentage with developers for that and that i'm just i just make hats dude

no arthur for you you don't mind what about you ann uh i'm also pretty unbothered by it i feel like there's a lot of benefits to working on roblox versus other platforms so um really when it comes down to it i feel like i have to do half the work to reach more people than i would if i were working on another platform um so i'm pretty happy with the split right now i have no issues with it okay brezza um i think what anne the nail on the head when she said you do half the work on roblox uh roblox really does make a lot of things uh a lot easier for you just like google's app engine basically took all of the server hosting and network infrastructure stuff out of making an app roblox is taking all that difficulty out of making games uh although i do think that developers should get more than 24.5 percent of the revenue their games generate i really like that core is challenging roblox with their 50 50 split i i'm not confident yet that core will

be able to seriously compete with roblox but i do like what they're doing and i like you know the direction they're going in in their vision uh so it remains to be seen i know that you know 26 of the of the revenue just gets eaten up by companies like apple uh and and that's what concerns me more honestly uh you know i really want to see there's a lot of legal fights right now and a lot of fights in the popular media over apple's 30 feet and some of their monopolistic practices and uh you know if the good guys so to speak win on this one you know developers on roblox could be making larger share and developers on other platforms could be making a larger share so i i think also like arthur said you know the non-economicist not a money finance person didn't go to stanford uh you know i'm sure a lot of really smart thinking went into that percent uh i personally like am constantly you know doing the competitive analysis does it make sense for me to go to a different platform does it make sense for me to go to unity

or core or anywhere else and the answer is pretty much always a resounding no just because of how much additional workload there would be and how much i've already learned how to do on roblox it sounds like you're tim your team sweeney is that am i right on that a little bit a little bit cool and josh so i love roblox specifically because as ann and andrew nails it on the head there's a lot of back end things that people don't take into account i did some math for us um with our game vehicle simulator specifically if my math is correct it would cost us upwards of ten to twenty thousand dollars a month in order to actually host everyone's player data just because of the sheer size of the player base plus these save profiles with what roblox has to offer in terms of services and stuff if you do a breakdown of what these services actually cost like hiring moderators legal server storage everything like that i think if you were to host on your own platform such as unity or something you'd be looking at a similar take at

the end of the day it would be nice to see obviously because who doesn't love money but i'm very content with what roblox has to offer got it and so in terms of our next question i was hoping that you guys as experienced roblox developers could speak to maybe an audience out there that's interested in hey i want to build for roblox i want to get involved so what if you guys could kind of comment on you know in terms of how old do you think you need to be what kind of skills you would need then how long does it take to learn the skills that you would need to learn in order to start developing for roblox and again maybe starting with you arthur uh i think you start at the age of 13 because that's when your account rolex is marked above 13 so you can actually use the chat um that's the first thing you need to establish communication skills in roblox but um after that realistic sense um you can start run edwards be honest because it's your imagination that's why

rolex power is your imagination um but uh what was the question again i had to make sure to get powering imagination in there [Laughter] question is like what skills do you need to learn and how long do you think it takes if okay just for like noob out there so just just take like some 13 year old kid out there who's like hey i want to build for roblox what advice would you give that kid so um it's never too late to start um just delve into what interests you the most like try out coding field a little bit look at coding tutorials see if you like building stuff see if you like being a 3d artist if you're not it's definitely do 3d art models all that good stuff um you just explore give a trial run of each department like ui ux 3d art animations animation is really fun by the way um but you need a lot of patience for that um you just need to explore what do you like first and then just delve on that for years to come um

go to like some small syrup and roblox give them your skills um maybe do like a internship or do you know we have entered like groups on rolex doing internships now um i can't believe we've gone that far but yeah do some internships or something explore that practice your skill you just spend years on it much like the real world and like josh described it as you tree is like a real job that's what it is so you're never too late to start um but it'll be preferred if you start young right and um i'm actually very passionate about like getting started on roblox as a new developer um because i feel like personally i for a long time limited myself heavily on progressing as a roblox developer and as soon as i started reaching out to other people making connections and when i went out and i like reached out to people and learned from their own personal experiences i

was able to get a better grasp on the platform myself so definitely reach out to people and make connections and don't be afraid to ask for help because without it like you're gonna limit yourself so much now are you doing internships and as part of one of your teams um i did a few times i've been an intern at roblox uh three times and i did one other thing where i got to bring someone in that i was eventually going to make an employee at my company i got to bring them in on roblox and they basically worked under roblox but still for me and then at the end of the program i hired them as my full-time employee so that has also definitely helped uh right out of me dropping out of college i got to be an intern at roblox and that definitely helped me stay stable uh while i didn't have a job or i didn't have any money um but yeah perez uh well it depends if you're super young just just do something just figure out

what you can do do it figure out what you can't do and find people who are similar age similar skill level to you who can do that uh a lot of times like i know there's a lot of resources available online for like learning how to script on roblox or you know how to make a game on roblox but i really do think the easiest way to learn it is just by doing it set incremental goals for yourself like i want to make a part that kills me when i touch it and i want to figure out how to do this without just copying code from somewhere else i want to know why that works and then just incrementally keep giving yourself bigger and bigger goals and eventually uh oops you're a full-time game developer that's that's sort of how it happens for for most people um if you're under 18 uh you want to like take advantage of the lower risk and and the lower you know expenses and costs in your life and really uh you know just go out there and commit yourself 100 to trying something trying a skill like mastering scripting or or even making your own game if you're over 18 it's really exciting because there is a lot of experience

developers that are starting to learn how to run businesses and make companies and at the same time there's also a lot of outside interests coming in from the game industry and elsewhere who are super interested in getting on roblox but haven't really figured out exactly how to do that roblox is a really interesting place that stands out from the rest of the game industry so there's a huge opportunity for people who are over 18 who have experience in roblox uh to find roles in these organizations and help these organizations basically bridge the gap between the roblox world and the rest of the world uh if you're over 18 i think you know focus on finding a cool place to work at related to roblox uh because you might you know be able to turn that into a really good career path like what's step one is it is it basically lua is that the language that people need to learn or are there any other languages that will be supported in the future is that basically it i know there were talks of of um supporting c sharp or something at some point but i wouldn't it's lua or bust basically roblox is

actually um trying to make their own typed lua called lua u uh which is a programming language that's brand new to roblox as far as i know um and it has like strict typing and other cool stuff um that's being rolled out that's probably going to change the game it's worth looking into but if you know lua you can figure out uh lua u uh it's backwards compatible anything that runs in lua runs in luau uh and yeah besides that i've learned other languages as far as i needed to i learned java as far as i needed to make mods in minecraft i really wanted to have a command where i spawned a baby piglet and then i could detonate that pig and have it explode whenever i wanted so i had ideas that i wanted to do and i learned java in order to make that work in minecraft but that is the extent to which i learned java and then i approached some other programming languages like that too there's always something that i wanted to do and programming was a means to an end all right and josh so it's just like nike slogan just do it um age-wise i mean just like lego from 9

to 99 anyone can use roblox honestly i mean even if you're young and you know whatever age anyone can do roblox i don't think there should be any stigmatism behind who can do it um in terms of how i learned personally i did something similar to andrew of where um i i took other people's code and dissected it and that's how i learned is i'd say okay this line does this this line does that here's what this does here's what that does that's how i learned um but in terms of other people learning how to say just literally do it open up studio fiddle around with the buttons break stuff have fun doing it that's the best way to learn and then later on then you can solidify your focus if you say okay i want to be a jack of all trades master of none or if i want to be specific with this one skill area and stuff um you can figure that out later on but for the moment just have fun and get used to the tools and stuff like that that's like the best way to start learning in my opinion

and maybe an open question for all of you like which if you guys were to highlight like a specific roblox developer or maybe a game that you guys think is that people should keep their eye out on is there any specific developer or game that people should be watching out for you know obviously besides yourselves and i'm i'd encourage everyone to to keep an eye on you guys as well but uh anyone or any game come to mind it has to be adopt me but yeah you don't want to miss that one flies really really low under the radar [Laughter] um i think that there's a lot of really cool games uh that are made on roblox that don't actually get to explode and there's a bit of a discoverability issue on roblox uh but it's nothing that's you know different from the wider video games industry i mean famously among us uh was released two years ago and its release was a complete dud this is a a game on steam and on

mobile this isn't a roblox game uh and they released it and then two years later a streamer started playing it and it just blew up and now it's like the biggest gaming sensation of this year and everyone in roblox is trying to recreate among us it just started out as this really simple idea a really good idea that didn't explode and unfortunately this is true on roblox too a lot of really good stuff is on roblox that doesn't explode i think roblox is aware of this i think they're going to try to make this problem better but there are a lot of uh diamonds in the rough hidden gems on roblox i think a good game to look out for is kinetic code uh it's being made by one of my friends scriptdon it plays it's a first person shooter that plays really well uh similar to battlefield 4. i never got into first person shooters on roblox like phantom forces but i really like this game and then games that are in the incubator and accelerator i think they cancel the incubator but games are in the accelerator program at roblox i just watch out for the teams making them the people there

i think there's this really cool sphere of people who have done the accelerator and you get to meet all the other people who've done the accelerator uh and everyone basically who gets into the program is super talented one way or another and it's just like rolling the dice every time when are they going to succeed basically and is there an among us or our fall guys on roblox if people try to do that there well there's a lot of an analog maybe of something that you know blew up this year the only thing that really comes to mind is piggy piggy created like a sort of unique social experience for roblox uh that really caught on influencers um and i think love it or hate it youtubers are a big part of the discovery game on roblox so if you can come up with a novel idea that a youtuber would really love to make a video on that's a front you know that's a golden ticket to uh having a big audience for for your game i think okay so next question i thought maybe we could talk about what do you like best and what did you not like or what's a your major issue or challenge

developing on roblox so arthur and just to remind you aren't that the question i know the questions go for it what's the question of semester please okay um so it's it's been the talk about this entire podcast it has to be the amazing support that rolex gives you no other platform's gonna be like here you go here's the server here's tons of moderation all for you all for free uh we trust you can make a good game to give us money back no other platform does that rolex does that excellently they have an awesome as i believe ann said this they do have to work for you uh that's what we like about roblox it's really easy to get into and really easy to succeed and expand your skills it's a great place to just learn and just keep on learning but with this learning it comes with a risk um you know rolex is growing and growing

but it still hasn't grown its security that much um robux you can be financially successful on it but despite that i feel like it's not as secure as many other platforms um i would really wish if rolex could focus on their own security people will bring up moderation but i feel like security is a way bigger issue that is underrated right now okay what about you ann um this is a hard question because i feel like there's there's like a lot that's really great about roblox and i i find it really hard for me to like have any issues with it usually um but i definitely agree that security has come up as like a really serious issue on roadblocks i feel like there's um a lot of things we could do to improve the security of like top developers and their accounts um i'm definitely like getting a little bit wary and feel like i need to change my password very often on the

platform because um there's just like a lot of possibilities of my account getting breached and because it is my full-time career and i make my money off of it it can be really dangerous and i just want to make sure that the platform is a lot safer but beyond that like everything else about roblox i love for real brother uh what i love about roblox is that i could spend like three years of my life basically just non-stop complaining about everything that's wrong with roblox uh and you know not destroy my career like there there are a lot of people at roblox who are super super passionate uh really believe in what the company's doing and really believe in the developers um i think that if it wasn't roblox and it was a different company and and i tried to you know advocate on behalf of developers like i did for a lot of my career i wouldn't have been able to you know actually do anything but you know roblox is is flexible and open-minded and really uh you know cares about its developers

uh and and so there have obviously been issues there have been rough patches uh there have been times where i was like who the hell is doing this what you're doing makes no sense you have to be stupid to do this but you know as developers we don't really have a full view of everything that's going on at roblox we don't know you know what games that they're playing long term uh to you know secure this vision of the metaverse uh and they're playing you know a different game than we are as game developers uh so in the past i would have you know cited you know my chief complaints about the platform but i think this year has actually been really good they've released a lot of really cool features roblox is looking better than ever it's running better than ever you know there's security which is a huge concern lots of accounts get stolen on roblox even famous developers there's discoverability it's really hard to find new games but besides that roblox gives a lot to love and and not as much to hate about it josh same thing as andrew said there's a lot

to love about roblox a lot to me about it but i wouldn't change i wouldn't switch up anything in the world for it honestly it's my favorite platform i mean i could list off all the things i love with it but it's just an amazing platform as a whole um to be frank with you a while back i was going through a very severe bout of depression and without roblox i wouldn't be here today quite frankly um i i wouldn't be around uh if i didn't met my boss you know sin builder and started this project and had a purpose in life i wouldn't be here so i'm eternally grateful to roblox for literally saving my life and the one gripe i have about roblox is getting security it seems like things are a little bit lacks over there and there's people getting hacked left and right and yeah they have remediation policies in place in order to take care of these issues but still they shouldn't be happening to begin with um and then moderation too the moderation team really they keep offering vague answers when it comes to stuff and you can't really get a straight answer out of them and

i get that they have a lot of requests and stuff like that but it'd be nice to have a little bit more transparency from them about why they made a certain decision and such right and so my next question is around monetization or the way in which as roblox developers uh you know money is made and so could you guys speak to you know i'll just leave it as an open question for anyone to jump in on but what are the primary ways that roblox developers make money and do are there things like loot boxes gotcha that kind of stuff and you know if if so how how much of that is there in in roblox games so if you don't mind me starting that'd be great yeah i there's multiple ways for developers to make money on the platform you have in-game purchases they use robux um the universal currency on roblox is called robux and then you can use it for buying items such as

arthur's hats for example or you could spend it on virtual cosmetic items in a game like hands my droplets um the that's the main way obviously the main way i find is the in-app purchases that's the biggest one for us you can sell these things called game passes too which are basically permanent passes that is that you can use um you obviously have the loot box mechanics i haven't personally seen gotcha mechanics on roblox but i've definitely seen loot box mechanics i know for some games they're lucrative for some games they're not for our game personally it only accounted for one percent of our revenue so we just ditched it in terms of integrity and stuff like that um but there's plenty of ways for developers to make money and then you know there's contracting gigs you can work from one developer to another developer selling ugc items like arthur does um i know there's sound engineers on the platform there's plenty of contracting gigs available the possibilities are limitless in terms of what you can do to earn money on roblox

maybe for some of you do you other uh devs like what what do people buy in your games arthur um uh i'd just like to add on uh to josh um i just had this thought he was talking about how some people may spend robux on my cosmetics i make and put on the catalog or maybe buy something like a virtual in-game cosmetic of someone else's game and i i i realized this when i was playing a among us a game based off of among us the other day in roblox um you could buy their virtual currency and use that virtual currency to customize your character which happens to be my own catalog items put into the game without my permission and i think that's just one way to hustle on roblox i guess i just like to add on to that but um i guess when it comes to monetizing your game give something that your players will want and also need at the same time i think for once you want to reserve that for game passes um for one in our tycoon hospital game

main focus is managing your hospital but you can customize it from the ground up as if it's like the sims or something however if you want to change the material of your objects or unlock additional colors uh there's this game pass that allows you to unlock all those but of course we give you like a small sample piece by giving you like a limited amount of colors to let you experience it and see what you could potentially build in fact in the main menu we show it off because one of the first things you want to show when the person loves your game is what can they make what is possible to become in this game um and in that scenario you can also show game passes your consequences of the monetization you offer and that's an incentive you can create okay and maybe for you ann and brezza like what are the main things that people buy in your games or just generally on roblox that you're aware of personally i like to give people the

ability to customize their experience in the game that's my main source of monetization so usually i'll just sell ways for you to personalize like a droplet in your game you can buy hats for them you can change their flavors which is what like makes them what they look like um and then also for their houses in the game you can just buy virtual furniture and put it in your house it's really just about like making the experience more personal for you uh but beyond that i don't personally like to do other kinds of practices i kind of feel like loot boxes can be a little funny um i feel like there's better ways for you to monetize your game but yeah that's kind of how i have done it in the past i i second that funny feeling towards loot boxes loot boxes were the primary method of monetization in miners haven when it first released it accounted for a majority of its revenue at first but then i introduced a bunch of really cool membership style game passes uh that you know have taken over a little bit uh it's still in the game

but it's it's a minimal part of it now and i haven't used it in you know my projects after that i i don't like others have said i i don't think it's super ethical and i also don't think it's the most effective way to monetize right it has sort of costs and and the value of it's not that great uh this might be a contentious opinion but i think the best kind of monetization is just the type that lets you pay to get ahead but not pay you know to get content that's strictly unavailable to non-paying players so think the clash of clan style monetization so on roblox we have this problem where a lot of games especially those with higher skill ceilings more skilled players they like to rally against the idea of pay to win monetization like it's just an evil thing uh but i'd pay to win being like any advantage that you can get by paying money but i don't think this is an honest reflection of how the market actually feels i think most players are totally fine with the idea of others paying to get ahead you know as long as they believe that if they put in the time and effort and

skill they can earn their way to the same place and i think in an effort to avoid pay to win uh many developers make the mistake of just selling off their games aesthetic you know making it so there's a clear visual divide between paying and unpaying players and i don't think that's an effective form of monetization anymore in like this social you know digital human co-experience age um and i don't know i i think just monetize just monetizing the aesthetics in your game and just selling cosmetics um can be a bit of a lazy cop-out depending on the game and it might be better for social role-play selling aesthetics is pretty much all you can do uh but uh for a game like an rpg or a tycoon or games that have a clear progression and there's uh you know social interaction that progression people are progressing simultaneously and interacting with each other uh i i think the best way to go is really just you know pay to skip um i think it's going to the most the most effective and you know the most

well received by by actual players both paying and non-paying got it so i have one last question and thanks for hanging on with me but my last question has to do with the growth right which is that in terms of whether it's emerging trends or how roblox will grow whether it's to expand their audience or it seems like dave bazuki's been talking a lot about metaverse but in your opinions how where do you see the growth for the roblox audience or services and starting with you arthur it's always me first thank you for the honor my window well um the metaverse and rolex um the idea of it is like creating a whole social hub you know to bring everyone together in a very connected world in which we already connected with the internet we just don't really have like a primary social verse in that way i believe that's what rolex wants to become um and for rolex growing you know they're trying to go beyond i guess a game

platform you know primarily a social platform we just had concerts on roblox you know roblox a platform where we go play a first person shooter or a tycoon game had a concert on it the entire like goal of rolex is i guess to be another life on the internet like maybe it's a far-fetched idea um but i think that's where they want to go they just want to bring the social interaction globally all to roblox together and host roblox is the platform for that and games are just nothing more but just a aside thing you can do on roblox much much much like you can do in real life in addition to socializing if you're 13 years old you can get past the chat filter got it what do you think ann i feel like i agree with arthur um definitely games on roblox can be more experiences and less like just games um

and i feel like people are getting like a wide variety of things that they can really do on the platform like some of us use it as a career some of us use it as a tool to make friends um and have different experiences and be whoever they want to be in a virtual space especially this year with everyone having to social distance and stay at home i've noticed that it's been really beneficial for a lot of people to like connect with their friends still in their family just through the platform so i definitely see it as being more than just a game platform and more of like a way to be social and um you know going back to the previous question about was the best way to monetize i feel like socially based items is the best way to go i mean uuc has been making bank usuc is where players make their own accessories um it always has been starting with shirts and t-shirts it just it's universal it's the best way to describe it um games are games but having an alpha you can wear everywhere to express your

social self on the virtual platform as well is what really sells and relax if you all monetize well second that even though that's not what the question was about uh because with vistaria one of the things that we tried to do uh before i left was uh we wanted to have these social boosts you could pay to boost yourself and everyone around you we never got around to implementing that but if you want if you want to implement boosters in your game and you want to make it more fair and more social and more fun having it you know actually have an effect in the world and affect the people around you is a really cool idea to try for like rpgs or other similar games right and andrew and then on the actual question that was asked um on roblox's growth uh so dave has been going around for a while talking about the metaverse and for the last two years i was super skeptical of it i was like be real this is a lego game not really but you know be real be reasonable uh focus on you know the the realistic

stuff not the 10 year out uh but i've really seen a shift in my thinking this year especially as i've seen how the wider market is reacting to roblox's ipo uh and the little nos x concert was probably the moment where like just a switch flipped in my head where i was like oh they're totally right like uh the the it was just the right combination of immersive i've never been in an online experience like that where you know the way little nos x's avatar was just dancing and moving around so fluidly and at the end he had a santa costume and it was reflective and it just it just looked so cool and the experience was so immersive i i don't know what the metaverse is i don't think anyone has a clue everyone has their own idea the simplest is just you know ready player one uh but if there is an idea of the metaverse it's whoever gets to it first is is going to have massive growth opportunities massive scale and

just looking at all the looking at the competitive landscape looking at all the companies uh in the world today i don't think anyone has a shot but roblox and i think roblox is a real shot and i think there's still potential for big growth big improvements on social features and just a lot of unexplored potential and a lot of potential to surprise people still i think so we'll have to see the concert was very surprising like it was well done yes okay josh take us home here with andrew on the definition of the whole metaverse thing i think it's in the eye of the beholder um my boss has a definition of metaverse and david has a vision of what his metaverse is i don't think there's like a really solidified definition i tried looking it up on wikipedia earlier today but that's obviously so that's someone's view and stuff like that um so i think mainly focusing on how roblox is gonna grow i think branching out to the more mature audiences would be the number one

thing they can do because yeah kids spend their parents money but grown you know men and women obviously they spend money too um one example of a mature game on roblox is called phantom forces and it's like um inspired by call of duty and it's very it's it's beautifully executed overall and it's it's great it's geared towards young you know young adults obviously and then adults alike but roblox has already grown in terms of their audience i've had grown men approach me at gas stations and be like oh my gosh you're the guy who made vehicle simulator i've had little kids approach me before and be like oh my gosh you're the guy that made vehicle simulator because they recognize me and stuff like that um i think the number one thing roblox can do is obviously branch out first of all make their game more accessible like if they were to launch on playstation or nintendo switch that'd be great obviously we already have xbox and mobile and stuff like that um but it would be great if they would

start allowing a little bit some more mature games and stuff and mature themes overall i think that would be the biggest way they can grow and then bringing in new players via these events like the little nasa x concert um that brought in so many players like 40 million play sessions it was as big if not bigger than the travis scott fortnite event um i really think that's another good way to bring in players and stuff of it or you can just have it with friends and stuff like that so okay yeah i mean that's that's all the questions that i have so maybe in terms of like final words if you have any final advice and then to to our audience and if people wanted to get in touch with you how could they get in touch with you uh and again sorry arthur starting with you i'm just messed with you um some more advice if you're starting on roblox or anywhere be passionate about it because you know i want to become a mechanical engineer when i was growing up because i thought that stuff was cool i thought cars were cool and then my very russian father was like

yeah um you know you can like cars you can look at them but can you like do you have the guts the passion to make them just as much as you like them you know and the same applies like game development roblox you know i've seen this many times where i'm passionate developers try to make a profitable game for money only um it always fails and never comes to fruition so always always be passionate about what you're doing here you don't have to do real life because you want the money from it you can find on any other field easily do rolex if you like making games if you want to make games and that's all i can give you just be passionate and best way to reach me if you want more life advice on being developer in roblox i'll be your rolex coach i guess is just reach me out on twitter twitter is the best way to give me it's at trusty trust t-r-u-s um i'll tell you advice passionate yeah passionate that's all i could give you

and ann and do you have any internships anne um not personally but i i have to agree with what arthur said like it's not always about earning money it's about like having something that you're really passionate about and um bringing it to life and the money part of it is nice and it definitely is a tool to help you do things that you are passionate about but it's not always about it so if you're going to be a roblox developer do it because you want to share experiences with the world great and is there a good way for people to reach out to you also twitter yeah all right um brezza uh well i think it's a really simple way of saying it is just uh don't do it for the money do it for the passion but that's also not a very realistic saying so i think a better way to rephrase that is just that your end goal can't just be money like you have to have a solid vision that drives you uh you need to have cohesion between your team not in structure but in shared ideals and

shared things that you want to see you know in this world that aren't in this world yet that's how good games get made and if you make a good game then the money will come it's it's when your end goal is just money uh it it's very obvious to people who play the game or see what's going on i i've seen some you know companies try to get on roadblocks and it's obvious when a game doesn't have that spark doesn't have that vision so if you do have that spark if you do have that passion on roblox that's really more valuable than anything else and it's about figuring out how to make something out of that um besides that this has been super fun podcasts love talking about roblox if you want to reach me unfortunately i deleted my twitter account a couple days ago and i probably am not going to reinstate it uh i'm not a fan of twitter i'll just say that now yes i don't like how divisive it is i don't like what it does to people i don't like what it's done to me uh and i mainly just used to complain about roblox so given that my complaints have dried up i figured i don't need a twitter

account anymore uh you guys can reach me on my email it's just andrew at bear.gg b-e-r pretty straightforward to remember you can just google me and my website will come up or something super happy to talk more about roblox great josh i agree with what everyone else has said the number one thing i've given advice is don't get discouraged it's really easy to get discouraged when you when you look at all this interface and all the tools and apis that are to you it's easy to get discouraged in this giant wave of information that you have to process but take it one step at a time don't come into roblox because you want to become a millionaire do it because you have an idea and want to be passionate about it i came onto roblox because i'm on the autistic spectrum and i've always had trouble with creative mediums i can't draw i can't paint i can't 3d model i can't do any of that but i'm able to paint with words via programming and that's how i make my visions become a reality along with my boss

um we did it just for fun originally i was i was making a couple hundred dollars a month working on this video game at the time and then it just kind of blew up so do what you love and then the money will come naturally so that's kind of my advice you can also reach me by the way on twitter i know andrew hates twitter but my twitter handle is artemis rbx so that's a-r-t-t-e-m-i-s-r-b-x and then you can also reach me via email it's my old username it's b-e-l-z-e b-a-s-s at summit s-u-m-m-i-t studios s-t-u-d ios games.com all right cool well guys thank you so much for your time and all the insights about roblox appreciate it and uh yeah goodbye everybody thanks thank you all right thank you so much for the podcast this is fun bye

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