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This is how I make my Roblox games go viral every single time. June 14th, I posted on Twitter, "Watch this game blow up." This game had anywhere from 50 to 100 CCU. Guess how much CCU it has. Now,
Tizzy RBLX reveals his strategy for making Roblox games go viral by identifying demand signals, market gaps, and proven mechanics.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Look for clear demand signals on and off Roblox before investing in or developing a game.
- Identify gaps in the market and focus on novel or underserved game concepts.
- Adapt successful game ideas from other platforms like Steam to Roblox for viral potential.
- Use proven game mechanics and systems to build engaging gameplay loops.
- Optimize games for mobile devices to reach the majority of Roblox players.
What the video covers
- Tizzy RBLX shares his approach to making Roblox games go viral by investing in games with clear demand signals both on and off platform.
- He emphasizes analyzing off-platform demand such as Steam wishlists and gameplay content to predict game success on Roblox.
- Identifying gaps in the market and novel game ideas is crucial for standing out and capturing player interest.
- He uses examples like Secure the Airport and firefighter games to illustrate how demand and market gaps lead to viral hits.
- Tizzy highlights the importance of mixing proven game mechanics rather than copying games directly.
- He discusses how popular games on Steam can be adapted for Roblox to tap into unmet demand from younger players.
- The video explains evaluating game systems and mechanics to ensure they are proven and engaging for Roblox players.
- Tizzy warns against overcomplicating games with unnecessary mechanics that detract from the core loop.
- He stresses the importance of mobile optimization since most Roblox players use phones.
- The video concludes with advice on combining research, demand validation, and proven mechanics to increase a game's chance of success.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and viral game example
- 01:08What I look for when investing in games
- 02:20Demand signals from Steam and off-platform
- 03:22Validating game concepts with multiple sources
- 04:35Case study: Secure the Airport game success
- 05:35Adapting popular Steam games to Roblox
- 06:53Identifying market gaps and novel ideas
- 08:00Evaluating game mechanics and systems
- 10:31Avoiding overcomplication and focusing on core loop
- 14:58Mobile optimization and final advice
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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this is not my game, by the way. Look at this. 38k CCU. If you watch some of my previous videos, you know I also made a good call with that game, My Gaming Cafe, which we found at around 1K CCU. It peaked at
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around 15, maybe 20K CCU if I remember correctly. And basically in this video, I want to show you guys what I look for as an investor in games. Because obviously I invest in games. I partner with devs and
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that's how I work on Roblox games. I'm a producer/project manager. I do not code. You guys know this. So I want to show you guys how I can know with certainty if a game will work well or
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not. And this is going to be especially relevant for you if you're working on a game right now and you have some self-doubt and you want to make sure whatever you're sinking all of your time and energy and effort into is actually
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going to bring home the bacon and print a little bit of paper. Right? That's what this video is going to be about.
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What I look for when it comes to investing in games. How I can know with certainty if a game is going to do well on this platform or not. And I'm just going to share what I've learned along
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the way. Now, am I wrong sometimes? 100%, dude. I'm not, you know, the ultimate fortune teller when it comes to games blowing up, but I have started to build an intuition and start to look for patterns. And I have gotten much
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much better at knowing and recognizing if a game can do well. And I want to help you guys build that same intuition in this video. So, without further ado, let's dive straight in. So, first thing I look at is clear demand signals,
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usually off platform. Okay, let's look at the case of Secure the Airport because low-key I made a game like this before this game ever came out using an AI prototype. And the reason I did it is because I found clear demand signals off
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platform. So, I don't know if you guys are aware, but there's this Steam game.
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It's called Totally Secure Airport, which is not even released yet. Dude, let me show you guys this [ __ ] So, I go here, Totally Secure Airport. You can see release date coming soon. It's not even out yet, dude. All right, 200k wish
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lists on Steam. All right, that's a huge demand signal. So, literally this dev, what they did is smart is they just beat them to the punch. They got the game on Roblox. It's blowing up. That's how I knew it was going to blow up. Not just
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that, but this airport game was also proven to be quite interesting to the younger demographic. If I go here to Crazy Games, I'm going to show you guys this because I called this like if you've been watching my videos for a while, you
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know that I called this a while ago. And I'm not making this video to toot my own horn and say like, "Oh, I can predict the future." I really just want to help share my thought process and how you
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guys can use a similar thought process to give your guys' game a better chance at succeeding by doing some of the research before you spend all your time actually building the game. So, if you look on Crazy Games, look at Airport
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Security, right? I scroll down here. So on Crazy Games, just for insight for you guys, they'll often have gameplay videos that are associated with the game that's on the site. So if I look at this, this is again another airport game, very
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similar loop, but it's more of a flash game. Sorry, it's not a flash game, it's a Unity game. But look at this. Four years ago, right? 6.2 million views.
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Okay, so now I have two sources of clear demand signals that this kind of fantasy/core loop could work really, really well because people are consuming content of content creators playing the game and also I mean 200k wish lists on Steam
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right now. There is one more place that I want to show you guys how you can further validate just a concept, a fantasy, whatever you want to call it. If you go to Creator Exchange and if I just
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look in here and I look at Airport, right, and I sort by visits and I look at all of the airport games on Roblox and I see what genre they're in. Okay, you can see most of them, if not all,
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are roleplaying. Okay, simulator roleplaying. There's nothing really focused around action/slash checkpoint, which is exactly what this game is.
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Secure the Airport. It's a checkpoint game. Okay, it's a Papers, Please. Now, if I look through here, I mean, look at this game. Just absolutely dominating this fantasy because if you play all the games in this fantasy,
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there are no games like this game, okay? They're all roleplay. This guy came in, he said, "Let me take this fantasy. Let me make it a checkpoint style game." And he's absolutely ripping, right? So, that's the third reason why I was really
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bullish on this idea and why I felt confident enough to call this on Twitter. And I'm glad I did because it's blown up. And I'm sharing the thought process with you guys behind the scenes.
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Okay, another one, like I've said in previous videos, is firefighters. Like, look at this up. Look at this.
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Firefighter. Okay, there's literally only one game that has steadily had 1k CCU for a couple years here, it seems like.
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So, make a game in the firefighter fantasy with a relevant trendy genre. Could be checkpoint, could be extraction was an idea I had. A firefighter extraction game could work really well.
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Now that's that first thing I look for: clear demand signals both on platform and off platform. Okay, again if we look at Mecha Chameleon I mean dude 10 million sales on Steam and then we look, look at what they did, right? They
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brought it to Roblox 55k CCU 42k CCU. I mean this is probably the easiest way to print money is to take a game that's doing well on Steam. You have some kid that lives in Indonesia. He doesn't want
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to pay the $10 USD whatever it costs on Steam to play it. He sees tons of content creators generating this off-platform demand showing content of this core loop, but he doesn't want to burden his parents and beg them for $10
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Steam gift card. So, what does he do? He looks, sees if the game's on Roblox and it is. And they're absolutely printing these games. Okay, it can be that easy if you guys let it be that easy. For
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real. Now, I'm not saying copy these games one for one. I think that's kind of a scapegoat. I think the smarter way to do it is to mix it with multiple different proven mechanics on the Roblox platform, which I'm going to get into
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later in this video. So, let's look at step number two. What do I look for if I'm trying to see if a game is worth investing in or if I think a game is going to blow up or not? And that is a
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clear gap in the market. What the [ __ ] do I mean by that? Okay, basically what I mean is, is the idea novel? aka is the idea fresh/slash new or is there no one really dominating the fantasy well on
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the platform? Again, look at firefighters, dude. I see a huge gap here. Okay, there's clear demand. 225 million visits. This game has been getting players for quite some time.
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Like, if we look on Roblox, okay, created in 2018, bro, this game has been steady at like 1K CCU for a while. So, this fantasy, whatever you want to call it, is just begging to be innovated on.
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And if you make a firefighter game, I almost guarantee you will do really well as long as you make it with a genre that is relevant to the current times. Okay, so that's what I mean by gap in the
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market. Now, the second thing kind of here is it's not really necessarily related to the gap in the market. Kind of is. Is the idea fresh/new? So, I want to show you guys this game. And if you guys are watching this, the devs of this
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game, shout out to you guys. But I'm going to explain why I think this game is not doing well and why I think they're really going to struggle to get this game off the ground. So, here we have an FPS game. Really well polished,
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great weapon system. Okay, could use a little b
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shooter, first person. All the guns are pretty much the same. The only thing they have going for them that's a little bit different is they use a lot of old school Call of Duty maps but even some top FPS games also do that. Now if we
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look at the FPS genre for example and we look at this game Bonk and Block this game is really unique dude. This game has some building mechanics. They have kind of like a Mario Kart aspect where you get a mystery box and you can get an
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ability during the game play and they have destruction physics and they also titled it different. So, if you play Strafe and you play Bonkan Block, you'll see what I mean by a fresh slashnew idea. It's no wonder to me why this game
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is doing well. Not only is it polished, but it's a fresh idea, dude. They have new mechanics, things that the players have never seen before. And they're doing well, bro. And we all know FPS games print, right? 3.8K CCU, they might
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be doing anywhere from 30 to 50k month USD depending on how well it it is monetized. So that's the second thing I'm looking for is is there a clear gap in the market? Is the idea, you know, fresh slashnew? Okay. Now, the third
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thing, and I know I've been blueballing you guys for a while with this checklist. The third thing that Cole told me here is, does a popular Roblox game already share a mechanic with this game? Okay, so the third thing I look
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for is, is it readable? What do I mean by readable? I basically mean is it easy to understand the mechanics? This is how I like to think of cuz really when you think about game design, you think about
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a game, a game is literally just a bunch of systems stitched together. Okay? And what I like to do is I like to make sure that each system in one of the games that I'm working on has been proven to
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work well on Roblox. So, let me show you guys an example. So, we look at Hacker Business, right? We look at something as simple as these buttons in the headsup display. Okay, this is proven mechanic to work well. If you look at grow
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garden, you'll know what I'm talking about. This is how grow a garden does it. This is how tons of games have done it. The way I like to look at it is if this mechanic has been used by a top
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game, that top game has already spent how many visits does grow a garden have?
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35 billion visits, 35 billion eyeballs have seen this mechanic and been trained on how to use it. So by the time they come into your game, they immediately know how to use the mechanic. It becomes intuitive for them because they can feel
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that they've seen this same mechanic elsewhere. Now, you never want to copy it one for one, but you want to look at the way the system functions and pretty much have your system function very, very similar. If we look at steal a
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brain run, right? The ability to lock your base. This is very understandable to almost all of Roblox. Like I mean look at how many visits steal a brain rod has had. 70 billion visits. Every single Roblox player understands what it
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means to have a base with a laser door to lock it. Thanks to Stila Brian Rod training Roblox players on how to use this mechanic. Do you guys see where I'm going with this? So, when I'm looking at
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investing in a game or I'm working on designing a game, what I'm looking at is the mechanics we have in the game. Are they readable? Are they understandable?
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Are they easy to use on mobile? Have players seen this mechanic before? This isn't something that's coming from me.
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This is not like a brand new idea. I mean, Cole taught me this a while ago.
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Look at this. Does a popular Roblox game already share a mechanic with this game?
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I look at my entire game and I and I look at all the mechanics and systems in my game and I think, has this mechanic already been used in a popular Roblox game? Because it's going to make your
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onboarding that much easier because it becomes so much more intuitive. Let me show you guys something we did for a recent game that we released. Okay? And shout out to Gage. We're working on this game called Build or Get Robbed. Just
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released it. Go follow this dev. He's goated. He has tons of top games. I mean, he's being super humble here. He's had some games hit up to like 700 million visits if I'm not mistaken. So, in our game that we just launched
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literally last night, there is an upgrade board, right? We've all seen this. This is your typical incremental upgrades. Okay. Now, when we first had this system, what we had was just the ability to upgrade by spamming this buy
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button. Okay. And this leads me to my fourth point which is just mobile UX and user experience overall. All right. So what we did is we actually added this second column here where they can quickly quickly just come in here and
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click buy 100, buy 99, buy 249 because what we noticed during live play testing is some players gave feedback that hey can you just allow me to max out this stat because I don't want to sit here all day and just click and tap tap tap
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tap tap tap my screen. buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one. All of a sudden, next thing you know, the players spent 10 minutes just upgrading one simple stat when they could have spent that time actually engaging with the core loop and
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having fun with the game. So, what did I do? I looked at other very popular incremental games because this is an incremental system. So, I looked at Cut Grass. Shout out Pob. If you watch my videos, you're the goat. I've been
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following you for a long time. I looked at what Pob was doing in Cut Grass. I saw that he has both a buy one or a max button. I said, "That's super smart." That's obviously proven. Tons of people
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have played this game. It's an incremental system. Let's just implement that into our game. So, that's how I like to think about designing and making games readable and understandable is that the mechanic has already been proven in a game within the same genre.
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So, like our game is not an incremental, but this is an incremental system. So, I looked at a game in the incremental genre that uses a similar system that's proven, if that makes sense. Okay. So, what I want you guys to understand when
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it comes to just like user experience in general, one of the biggest hacks is just have your little cousin play the game. Don't teach them how to play the game. Just watch what they do on their phone. Just literally watch in real
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time. This is like the biggest hack of all time. Okay. Something else you should also understand is that it can quickly become death by a thousand cuts.
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What I mean by that is if your game has tons of little points of friction, those points of friction can add up and create an overall bad user experience. Okay, so if we look at just our game builder get
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robbed for example, this one simple ad that we did that removed the friction because previously the friction was player had to sit there and spam buy one, buy one, buy one, buy one. That was just one point of friction in the game.
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Now imagine we have a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth. Imagine we have 10 points of friction. All of a sudden the game is no longer fun. The game becomes a chore and it's not fun. So all of
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these little points of friction really matter and the details really, really matter. And I think a lot of devs overlook these tiny little details because it can quickly become death by a thousand cuts and tons of little points
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of friction can add up to just make a bad overall user experience. And I think user experience, especially on mobile, is very overlooked. Dude, I can't tell you how many devs haven't even played their own game on a phone or a tablet.
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Like they don't even check their own games on phone. And that's where 80% of Roblox players are. Okay, one more thing I want to show you guys cuz you can't just use this for systems. Also with a level design. Okay, so when we first
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started working on this game, right, I started working with Gage. This map originally was very big. Okay, it was not this size. It was spread out. It was separated by water and there was boats and you had to take a boat to travel to
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other player plots. Okay, it's an interesting, innovative idea, but I thought, hey, it would just be easier if we use a proven level design. So, we landed upon this, which has been super fun. Like, you can hit players into the
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void, they fly off the map. It's just hilarious and it's mad fun. So, what I did is I looked at, okay, this is how Grow a Garden 2 does their level design.
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I took note of how the player plots are spaced and I'm just like, okay, this is interesting. This is giving me inspiration. This game obviously has tons of players, tons of visits. Again, players intuitively understand this type of level design. I then also looked at
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Bedw Wars, right? If you guys have played Minecraft Bedwars, and I thought, okay, floating islands, that's interesting. I didn't see any games where you had to steal a character, steal a brain rot, whatever it was, where there was water separating the
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plots, but I thought a lot of players have also played bedwars. Like, if I go to Roblox and I type in bedwars, right?
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I mean, you can see just how many people have played this game. 11.3 billion visits. So, the way we landed on this level design is basically took inspiration from Gro Garden 2, which is proven. players like it, they engage
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with it and mixed it with a bedwars and we landed kind of on this skybased feeling where the player is in the sky.
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Each plot is separated by little bridges. You can smack people into the void and it added a lot of nuance to what is originally like if you look at steel brain rot, you hit people, they just go flying across the map. But now
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that you can actually hit people off into the void, it makes it a lot more satisfying. We add a little bit of nuance there. But you guys see how I combined two kind of proven concepts to come up with a somewhat fresh idea.
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Okay? And this is something called the Pareto principle. Pareto principle. Okay. What is the Purto principle? Let's just Google search this real quick. The Pareto principle, commonly known as the 8020 rule, is the observation that roughly 80% of consequences or results
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come from 20% of causes or inputs. So, when you're making a game, the way I like to think of it is you take a proven game loop, proven concept. You've done all the research. You look at the demand
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signals, everything we've talked about in this video, and think about how can I just make this game 20% better, right?
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So, we have the grow a garden to map layout. Now, obviously, it's proven to copy it one for one. That's kind of like a copout, right? It's kind of boring. I wanted to innovate. We also have bedwars, right? So, we take a proven map
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layout and we change 20% of it. Now, it's in the sky. Okay? And now it's meaningfully different enough where our game now has its own identity. People aren't going to join our game and be like, "Oh, this is
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just grow a garden, right? But it has clear inspiration." So, that's basically all I wanted to put in this video. These are all the things that I like to look at when I'm deciding if a game is either
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worth investing in or if I think a game's going to blow up. Because people hit me up all the time in Discord saying, you know, Tizzy, help me with my game. What's going on with my game? And if you're one of those people, dude,
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just rewatch this video because I really think there's there's a method to this madness. All right, and hope you guys got value from this. Peace and love as always. Talk to you later.
Topics:Robloxgame developmentgame investingviral gamesgame designmarket researchgaming trendsRoblox gamesgame mechanicsmobile optimization
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