Gaining a perspective about your early projects
Though the beginning of your development career may vary, one thing is typically standard: your first game project will not be number one on the popular page, and that's okay! As frustrating as it may be that you are not granted the instant gratification everyone craves, this is the best outcome. Speaking from personal experience, maintaining a popular game that is played by tens of thousands of players concurrently (or more) is quite stressful. It is best that new developers have time to gain additional experience in order to first acclimatize to the platform before producing popular titles. Figure 1.1 depicts the thumbnail of my first game, Endure; it almost immediately tells an onlooker that the project was made by an amateur:
Figure 1.1 – Endure was one of my first titles and lacked refinement
Many new developers often run into what I've coined the Roadblocks on Roblox, where they begin to create a project that they have a passionate but loosely defined vision for and are forced to abandon it as they struggle to accomplish everything that they had originally imagined. The best way to move past these issues is to lay out a development plan and solidify the features and mechanics that should be included in your project. With this, you can review and restructure your vision as needed, keeping in mind what is popular with Roblox consumers, as well as what can be realistically accomplished with your personal abilities and that of your team for a project.
Ultimately, motivation and dedication are key; without these, projects simply do not come to fruition. It is important to remember that games are not often enjoyable to players if they were not enjoyable for the developers to create. If you are collaborating with other people, make sure that everyone on the team is on the same page for the direction and rough roadmap for the development of the game. The optimal goal, for both your mental health and the quality of your projects, is simply to make each new game better than your last. You may spend months developing a game only to have it perform at a mediocre level, but this is part of building your foundation. From each project, you gain a bit more experience and recognition. Figure 1.2 shows a direct result of following these practices; Power Simulator has been played more than 100 million times and its thumbnail is much more engaging to potential players due to its professional level of design:
Figure 1.2 – Power Simulator is my most successful title to date, a result of 2 years of experience
No matter what becomes of your early projects, always look forward to the future and try to improve the gaming experience for your players while improving the development process for yourself; only with repeated effort will you find success.