Last year was a huge learning experience for me. I ventured outside my typical game genres and tried new things. Here's the top 5 things I learned about Roblox games in 2024: 1⃣ Minimize Text In most cases, the majority of the general potential audience for your game will not want to read a lot of text (or any text at all). Obviously this can vary based on the target audience of your game, but keeping the text in my games to a minimum has been something I've learned to do this year. I used to have tutorials with a lot of text that explained how to play the game really well, but was confused why people still weren't understanding how to play. I realized that substituting text for visual guides like images and arrows works better to direct your players' attention where you want it to go. A fundamental thing I've noticed is that your game should ideally be understandable with no text at all. If your game takes a lot of explanation, it's probably too complicated for the majority of the audience to understand. Think about the top games right now: they all have a single clear objective. Fisch: Catch fish. Dress To Impress: dress up and vote. Jailbreak: be a cop or prisoner. The trend with these games is that you already know how to play even if it's your first time. This leads me onto the second point though... 2⃣ Know Your Audience One of the hardest things for me to accept this year was that some games just aren't a good fit for the general Roblox audience, regardless of how much work you put into it. I used to get quite demotivated when my ideas didn't work out, but I have began to realize that knowing your audience is one of the most important things about creating games. Creating the wrong type of games is often a reason why games fail. Whilst sticking to cash-grab trends is sometimes frowned upon, it's what a lot of people have to do in order to actually make money. It's nice to try new ideas and be a trendsetter, but it's also riskier than going for the proven concepts. Some people just don't have the money to risk going against the grain. You'll know by your statistics if your game is suitable for the Roblox audience or not. When I created my first game of the year (Cliffside Summer Camp), it turned out just not to be suitable for general Roblox players in its current state. I've gotten better at being less sentimental about projects - when it's time to move on, sometimes it's necessary to accept it in order to focus on better opportunities. The next point ties in with this nicely. 3⃣ Quantity Over Quality, Sometimes You'll often hear the saying "quality over quantity" when talking about games, suggesting that it's better to focus time towards making one really high quality game than many games where quality isn't the biggest focus. The title of this point is somewhat misleading though, as I do believe quality is important. Whilst some "quality" aspects are sometimes underappreciated by players, I still think that as a developer your best work speaks a lot louder than any sloppy series of cash-grab games. I have a lot of respect for developers who clearly have pride in their work and put a lot of effort into little details that make the game more enjoyable. However, I would argue that your efforts to make a game "perfect" will go unnoticed by many players. I always wonder why people spend years trying to make a project perfect before it releases go to that length without any proven track record. I like to think of every game I release as a learning opportunity, and as you create more games, you learn more about the algorithm. Almost ANY big developer who you ask for advice will tell you to make lots of games. It's the same as YouTube: quality is important, because it gets you a long-lasting audience, but most YouTubers gain initial success because they pump out many videos all the time. I've found that balancing quality and quantity allows me to make games that I am proud of whilst putting minor details/enhancements behind me. Understanding this helped me understand the next point... 4⃣ Time Is Money I truly believe that time is money. Most people have limited time throughout the year to work on games. Whilst I am fortunate enough to do Roblox development as a job, I still go to university full-time during the year and it can be hard to balance my time between life and work. Since my time is scarce, I've learned that you have to make good use of the time you do have. If you get caught up on an idea that isn't working, don't be afraid to move on from it. Whilst it can be disappointing when you've poured money and effort into a project just for it to fail, sometimes it's better to start something new than continue something that's not working. I got caught up for the first 6 months of the year working on a project that ultimately wasn't suited to Roblox. I was really proud of the game and spent a lot of time developing it, but despite our best efforts to grow it, it ended up failing. Looking back, I wish I had focused on other things throughout my summer rather than working on one game for the entire break. I've learned to value my time more highly and going into 2025, staying true to the belief that time is money is a big goal for me. 5⃣ Never Underestimate Community The best Roblox games have a dedicated fanbase that keeps coming back to play. Their fanbases respect their developers and often may ONLY have a Roblox account to play their game. Two studios with great community focus are Dress To Impress and BIG Games. Both of these groups know the importance of community and have a growing fanbase that is dedicated to their games. When PS99 came out, almost all the PSX players started playing it. Community is often the reason why a game can do well even years after it is created. I was fortunate enough to be able to work on My Salon Tycoon in 2024, and whilst it had its peak of ~20k CCU in 2022, it still has over 100 CCU all the time and generates a good amount of passive income regardless of whether we update it or not. The community the game fostered when it was in its golden era is lasting and still plays the game. My top game, Kohaú Hibachi Restaurant, is a testament to what a dedicated community can really bring to the table. Generating six figures in revenue every year is insane for a game that averages 500 CCU, but we've built such a dedicated community that there are seriously some people who continue to play and support the game just because they respect us as developers. Whilst you do need to perfect your game before focusing on growing a community, if you are able to grow a long-lasting community, you often have guaranteed players from day 1 who will support your games because you're you, and that's pretty cool. As a Roblox developer, I think that every day is a new opportunity for learning. In 2025, I'm going to try to learn one new thing about myself, programming or Roblox development every week. Some weeks it'll be small, whilst other weeks will be big. But I hope that this time next year, I can post here again talking about the 52 things I learned in 2025, because I truly believe that there is always an opportunity to learn or try something new. Happy new year to everyone, and here's to another good one! 🥳🍾