Defined possibly like: simple fun, accessible to the most amount of people possible.
Simple game loops with natural variation, but runway for expansion and updates. Longevity can be built naturally through the gameplay loop, community, the economy, or all three.
The most durable games on the platform hardly require updates, if at all.
There are Roblox games, and there are games on other platforms. Games on Steam and elsewhere look different because the end demographic is different. It’s the difference between gamers and people who play games. On Roblox, what works is simple, not complex. A litmus test of a good Roblox game idea is the speed with which a demo can be developed. If the prototype will take longer than a few weeks to build, the game won’t work well on the platform.
Study the classics. Natural Disaster Survival, Murder Mystery 2, Jailbreak, Work At a Pizza Place, Build a Boat For Treasure are all still around for a reason. Nostalgia may play a part for some, but more than anything, the games are fun-first, designed around simple concepts.
Don’t try and make the 1M CCU game. Exponential growth is explosive, unpredictable, and over determined. Lower graphics and easy to understood fun concepts can increase a games reach, but there’s no perfect or great idea, simply follow your inspiration, iterating as you go, not just in game design but in your process for making games. Great ideas only look great in retrospect anyway. Everything big started small, and everything small started as nothing.
It’s always this question of: is the additional complexity worth it? Does it mean a proportional amount of fun or increased replayability? If the answer is no, it’s more work for you and will go unappreciated by players, so save your time.
Every game will see peaks and valleys. To the extent that large games have had downfalls, it’s almost always been:
- A flaw in the core loop (initially fun but not replayable in the long term, for example)
- Update related (too many, too little, low quality/unbalanced updates)
- Community related (little to no connection w/community, ensuring to listen to their feedback and suggestions)
- Greed (overly monetizing)
The most egregious is num. 4, the over monetization. The rest can likely be sorted, but the others are reputation damaging typically beyond repair. Greed backfires because no money is easy money. It’s the difference between short-term profits vs. the long-term.
The most special thing you can have is a community of people. You must treat them like kings. They might not know your game better than you do, but the spectator can understand art from a different perspective than the artist themselves.