[HN Gopher] So you want to compete with Roblox
___________________________________________________________________
So you want to compete with Roblox
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 173 points
Date : 2021-10-01 05:06 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fortressofdoors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fortressofdoors.com)
| foota wrote:
| Looking at changes fortnite has introduced to their game browser,
| I think they're trying to eat roblox.
| leodriesch wrote:
| They would certainly have an easier time than startups because
| the userbase is already there.
| kbrtalan wrote:
| > Roblox first launched in 2006, a full fifteen years ago -
| that's five years before Minecraft
|
| So if Notch pitched the author Minecraft the answer would have
| been to abandon the project? This puts a huge dent in the
| credibility of the article
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Well at that point Roblox wasn't big and Minecraft wasn't a
| competing project so probably not.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Minecraft and Roblox are two fundamentally different
| propositions. So no, it doesn't.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I had my start programming via https://www.byond.com/games/ and
| it makes me really excited to see so many platforms where it's
| easy to hop in and start programming games with modern
| technologies. I don't work in games as an adult but I wouldn't be
| where I am without sites like that.
|
| Here's to the next wave of kids that pick up programming from
| platforms like these.
| thenipper wrote:
| I've got two step kids who play roblox/Minecraft obsessively. The
| network effect in playing what their friends play is super
| strong. That combined with as busy parent there is a reluctance
| to switch to anything else. They don't want to do it because
| their friends don't play it. I don't want them to do it because I
| know roblox/Minecraft are reasonably safe. The idea of having to
| understand another platform seems exhausting.
|
| Plus them playing Minecraft gives me an excuse to play. :)
| gfodor wrote:
| The experiences that come to be understood as "the metaverse"
| will (probably) be web based, in the end, imo. I wrote about this
| thinking that inspired Mozilla Hubs for anyone interested:
| https://gfodor.medium.com/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-pla...
| hyeomans wrote:
| I used to work at Roblox and I confirm the layers upon layers of
| knowledge in code.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Seriously, they built a custom-built physics engine from
| scratch that seems to perform much better than the current ones
| out there (PhysX, Bullet, etc.). This alone is an achievement
| of years and years of R&D... (For examples of the inner details
| see https://youtu.be/P-WP1yMOkc4 or some of their technical
| blog posts)
|
| And the stuff doesn't end there. Nowadays they also have their
| own Lua-derivative language forked from Lua 5.1 (https://luau-
| lang.org/) with many improvements like static typing,
| performance, and sandboxing. And their renderer seems to work
| smoothly on low-end computers too, they've probably done lots
| of optimizations over the years.
| isk517 wrote:
| >"Our platform is like Roblox, but for when kids age out and want
| something mature!"
|
| I feel like a point that the author missed when discussing this
| is that there is a lot of evidence that being more mature may not
| be a strong selling point. The best example would be Fortnite,
| the most profitable game in the world at one point that had a
| sales pitch that could be boiled down to 'Like PUBG but more
| childish'. TF2 is another one that seemed to have plenty of
| competitors that tried to dethrone them by making a more mature
| and serious game, but that only one to succeed was Overwatch that
| went for a even more kid friendly esthetic.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| It's a point I didn't happen to mention, but one I certainly
| agree with.
| cwillu wrote:
| "It lets you do a complete end run around the app stores, and
| lowers friction for users and content creators alike. However,
| it's technically demanding to get full browser compatibility
| across mobile and desktop, and not every "browser-based" solution
| is created equal."
|
| The problem is that you are _completely_ beholden to the same
| companies that are making money off their app stores, to continue
| to develop and maintain their browsers' ability to act as
| competitors to their own app store.
| herbst wrote:
| Reading the article I actually think the slow and planned release
| and build of the sandbox game really does exactly what the
| article wants to see.
|
| https://www.sandbox.game/en/
| ballenf wrote:
| The requirement to have a crypto wallet feels like requiring a
| hunting license in order to watch Netflix.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| But then I go there and it says I should join Snoop Dogg's
| metaverse party with exclusive NFTs.
| Kinrany wrote:
| The article calls Roblox a "company town" version of the
| metaverse. NFTs are an attempt to extract value from content
| production when everything else is open and free by design.
| herbst wrote:
| I don't like their aggressive crypto advertisment model
| either. I do have some sand tho :)
|
| If you take a deeper look on how it works, the companies and
| game designers that are involved in it. The crazy amount of
| money they paid and pay to early designers to build up
| content...
| [deleted]
| bullen wrote:
| A 3D action MMO is the only interesting project anyone can
| undertake today, everything else consumes too much energy.
|
| Minimalistic open-source is the only way forward. The complexity
| of Unreal and Unity is way to far gone to be able to build
| anything original.
|
| Browsers are way too complex to make 3D scale, even with WASM
| your turnaround will be too long for the kind of iteration speed
| needed.
|
| The author probably bought the stock.
|
| I wrote something on the subject a while back (very biased):
| http://move.rupy.se/file/park_engine.html
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > Browsers are way too complex to make 3D scale, even with WASM
| your turnaround will be too long for the kind of iteration
| speed needed.
|
| I want to challenge this because it's wrong. And the best way
| to do it is to show you how fast iteration times can be:
| https://youtu.be/jvDz72FAOd0
| bullen wrote:
| That does not teach me how this works, what compiles what,
| how, where etc.
|
| I use dynamic .so/.dll hot-deploy, which can reload native
| code in microseconds without disturbing state.
|
| My game can render 600 non-instanced skin meshed characters
| on a 10W Jetson Nano.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Sorry my point in the demo isn't to tell you how it works
| (we're compiling TS to JS, not really mind blowing) but to
| show you what is possible in terms of iteration time with a
| browser native game engine.
|
| I'm also not trying to say you can't have fast iteration
| time in other ways. Just that the statement about the
| browser was incorrect.
| bullen wrote:
| Javascript is not usable, you wont be able to make
| anything useful if that is your underlying VM.
|
| You need fast turnaround AND performance at the same
| time.
|
| You are sinking your cost into a dead-end proving the
| articles point.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| The fact that some of my favorite games that I've paid
| for in the last 5 years have been built using browser
| technologies proves this completely unfounded.
|
| The V8 is an incredibly good VM. It has compute
| performance comparable with Rust in Debug mode for a
| single core, or comparable to the JVM with a single core.
| That's plenty for a great many game genres, and for ALL
| of the game genres that I am personally interested in
| playing.
| bullen wrote:
| I would be very interested in real examples!
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Also, Curse of Monkey Island which was just posted to
| Hacker News earlier today:
|
| Post link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28723689
|
| Game link: https://personal-1094.web.app/scummvm.html
| [deleted]
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Off the top of my head, I bought (and totally loved):
|
| CrossCode, Game Dev Tycoon, Curious Expedition, Screeps,
| FoundryVTT
|
| I feel somewhat confident that there are others, but the
| devs of these games were somewhat public about what
| technologies they used. I can easily imagine other very
| popular games like FTL, Darkest Dungeons, Slay the Spire,
| etc having made use of browser tech, even though I have
| no idea if they did or not.
|
| The fact that I bought these games (in some cases on
| multiple platforms), spent countless hours playing them,
| and never had a complaint about performance, should be
| evidence enough that browser tech is plenty good for
| delivering high quality games that people are happy to
| pay good money for.
|
| Heck, the fact that it was possible to do this _three
| decades ago_ ought to be evidence enough that you don 't
| need something better than V8 (or even a potato) to make
| great games that "scale" in terms of number of players
| and in terms of purchases.
|
| If you mean VM performance, you can always play the
| Computer Language Benchmarks Game:
| https://benchmarksgame-
| team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
|
| You'll find that of course languages like C++ and Rust
| can perform better. But is that level of performance
| _necessary_ to pull off a great game with a big paying
| audience in 2021? Absolutely not.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Does the original Diablo PC demo ported to WebAssembly
| count..?
|
| https://d07riv.github.io/diabloweb/
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > Javascript is not usable, you wont be able to make
| anything useful if that is your underlying VM.
|
| I've been making games professionally across a wide gamut
| of technologies for over sixteen years and that's simply
| not true. Further there are loads of games written in JS
| that prove it's not true! Believe it or not I've actually
| written game code in languages SLOWER than JS for
| shipping titles!
| bullen wrote:
| I would be very interested in real examples!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Well https://dotbigbang.com at the very top of this page
| has loads.
|
| Krunker (https://krunker.io/) is a browser based
| multiplayer shooter.
|
| CrossCode (http://www.cross-code.com/en/home) is another
| pretty famous one that is also on Steam and very popular.
|
| Slither.io (http://slither.io/) and really the whole
| genre that these sorts of games became.
|
| The whole Godot Engine IDE
| (https://editor.godotengine.org/releases/latest/) has a
| web version.
|
| Game Dev Tycoon (https://store.steampowered.com/app/23982
| 0/Game_Dev_Tycoon/) is made with JS.
|
| Curious Expedition (https://store.steampowered.com/app/35
| 8130/Curious_Expedition...) was written in CoffeeScript
| which is compiled to JS.
|
| And so on, and on. There are literally loads including
| umpteen multiplayer ports of Quake 3 and that sort of
| thing. Throw in all the JS13k games. Numerous games
| people have published using the Unity web exporter and so
| on. All the little web games people have released on
| itch.io, all the stuff made with Twine and Bitsy. And on,
| and on.
|
| The idea that JS is too slow to make games with is pretty
| silly and smacks a bit of willful ignorance.
| bullen wrote:
| Ok, which of those have you worked on during those 15
| years?
|
| These prove the point, they don't scale or deliver
| anything that will dislocate roblox. Even wormate (which
| is way better than slither does not run properly on my
| android pad)...
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Come on you keep moving the goal posts. You said:
|
| > Javascript is not usable, you wont be able to make
| anything useful if that is your underlying VM.
|
| And yet all these useful games exist all targeting JS
| backends. Some of which have made oodles of cash.
|
| Of that list I've been making games for dot big bang for
| the last three years.
|
| For other slower languages I worked in for shipping games
| there is EVE Online a large part of which is written in
| Python and then APB which had a lot of code written in
| UnrealScript for Unreal Engine 3 both of which are very
| much definitely slower than JS.
|
| Edit: Another really cool browser based project is this
| fight simulator: https://www.geo-fs.com/
| astlouis44 wrote:
| https://vrland.io/ VRland is another great example to
| check out, lightning fast load times and works across all
| devices such as mobile, PC, and even VR via WebXR.
| Entirely web-based.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Love the author's point that web-based is an untapped blue ocean
| opportunity.
|
| My team is building a sort of "Roblox in WASM/WebGPU" that's
| built in UE4 and compiled to the browser, that will allow anyone
| to easily create virtual words and experiences for HTML5 without
| needing to know how to code. We're even working toward live
| building using editor client side on the web, with hot reloading
| and a simple "publish" button so you can see in real time as you
| push changes.
|
| Furthermore, the metaverse will be born from the web, because it
| "just works", not to mention accessibility is increased when
| anyone can join with a simple link.
|
| And for developers? No 30% tax from monopolistic walled gardens,
| plus only one codebase to worry about.
|
| If anyone is interested in early access to our platform, you can
| join our Discord here:
|
| https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8
| maverwa wrote:
| Are you targeting mobile with that? If yes, how does iOS Safari
| do with WASM and WebGL (since webGPU isnt really supported
| anywhere in factory settings afaik).
| meheleventyone wrote:
| From our experience (we're running on WebGL) iOS Safari is
| very performant and on modern iPhones very, very performant.
| No support for fullscreen and a bunch of other things makes
| me sad though.
| cma wrote:
| The fullscreen thing is gross, it is them batantly saying
| pay us 30% of gross revenue to enable.
| Jensson wrote:
| Didn't they just add support for webgl 2.0? That is the
| important one.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| It was there behind a OS setting, but most features were
| available by extension anyway. Still no float
| rendertargets, which is more of a pain than anything else
| herbst wrote:
| Any other way to track this than discord? Sounds interesting.
|
| Why do you mention 'no code'? To little coding opportunity is
| one things that made many metaverses after second Life boring.
| mentos wrote:
| UE4 dropped support for HTML5 a few builds back are you guys
| using an old build or did you work to add compiling for HTML5
| to the latest?
| astlouis44 wrote:
| We built a new and improved pipeline for UE targeting the
| web.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| Genuine query; why aren't you just building it directly for the
| web, instead of inside UE?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What other engines are available for building 3D games for
| the web?
|
| Building games is hard enough already; thinking you can build
| the whole toolchain on top of that is hubris.
| Tossrock wrote:
| Unity can target web as a platform. AFrame is a web-native
| engine built on top of three.js
| pjmlp wrote:
| So far I haven't seen a use for WebGL other than shadertoy like
| experiences and product visualisation on online commerce.
|
| Mostly because it is like doing PS2/Amiga games, and dealing
| with browser blacklisting is even worse than just driver issues
| on native code.
|
| At least with driver issues one can work around them, with
| browser blacklisting there is no idea what is happening, while
| the user gets a single digit FPS.
|
| Additionally WebGPU is now getting some kind of MSL/HLSL/Rust
| inspired shader language, yet another one to master, with
| plenty features only after 1.0 MVP.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I was one of WebGL's early users. I was working with a team
| doing renderings of 3d models from World of Warcraft online
| for a WoW fansite database. We could only do it in Flash
| before webgl became a thing.
| pjmlp wrote:
| We have lost 10 years catching up to Flash.
|
| 2 generations of game developers were able to get a degree
| during that time.
|
| No wonder everyone is now yet again going for streaming
| with server side rendering using the 2021 hardware
| capabilities via Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I mean, even at the time flash wasn't a good experience.
| It was proprietary, nonstandard, buggy, riddled with
| security holes, didn't work well on Linux at all,
| required installing a plugin that more often than not
| came bundled with malware, and I'm forgetting a lot.
|
| I see flash as the MVP of the modern web. It showed us a
| glimpse of the possibilities if we were to make the
| tooling available. And it worked: the modern web has more
| than caught up with Flash and there are absolutely
| incredible things being done with modern tech.
|
| Google Maps on the web is one of those, by the way. If
| you look closely and consider everything they are doing
| with these "catch-up" specs... Well, i for one am glad
| they're not doing it in Flash :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| See that is something I don't care at all, it is 1% and
| still trying.
|
| An MVP that 10 years later there is yet tooling to
| properly match it.
|
| Unless one goes to Animator, Unreal, Unity, PlayCanvas.
|
| And then regardless of how much everyone tries, it is an
| API for 2012 hardware capabilities, with constraints.
|
| In 10 years no one was able to produce something like
| NSight, PIX or Instruments for WebGL.
|
| The best we could get was SpectorJS, really?
| scrollaway wrote:
| I think you're comparing apples to oranges. The tooling
| we have on the modern web is leagues ahead of what was
| available in flash, and it's generally free and open
| source.
|
| It's just that the web can do so much more today than
| flash could back then, so you need so much more tooling
| as well.
|
| And yeah, the web wasn't really picked up by game
| developers very much. But that is because there is no
| value appeal to it, it's not due to a lack of
| capabilities. Web distribution doesn't make sense for
| most games when apps are a thing for mobile where most
| players are, and where more involved gamers either have
| their own consoles or hardware you can distribute
| executables to directly.
|
| So why would you need such solid tooling for something
| that doesn't have any market demand? This isn't a case of
| "build it and they will come",some of it does exist and
| is used, it's just unpopular.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Where is the miles ahead version of Flash tooling on
| modern Web?
|
| Unity and Unreal don't count, it is just another
| backwend, where rendering needs to be downgraded to GL ES
| 3.0 subset.
|
| Yet few Web games can replicate an Infinite Blade
| experience, other than a couple of demos like the flow.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| All the reasons you listed are why I didn't use flash
| during its heydey. What do I have to show for shunning
| flash? Well, a bunch of projects that never got out of
| the idea stages, that's what. And a Pygame game that
| won't run on Py3.
|
| My contemporaries wrote amazing games, finished, and
| published them.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Here, https://leaningtech.com/cheerpx-for-flash/
| roca wrote:
| I guess you don't use Google Maps then?
| pjmlp wrote:
| The exception to the rule.
|
| Maps could be done in a PS2.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Which GPUs do you find blacklisted?
|
| Usually with our users the biggest issue we find graphics
| performance wise is that they have manually disabled hardware
| acceleration. I don't think we've seen a single instance of
| being forced into software rendering for another reason in
| the wild.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In general.
|
| Just yesterday I sent a an example to someone, on their
| computer they got nothing instead of a couple of nice balls
| rendered with a fragment shader.
|
| Reason, their browser just dropped into software rendering
| and instead of progressive rendering, they got a black
| canvas with pixels slowly coming up.
|
| No idea about the specific card, an integrated one in a
| Windows 8 white label PC.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| That's interesting, I suppose there are quite a few older
| machines floating about.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| > Second, running in a browser makes the top of your user
| acquisition funnel wider, because all it costs to try your
| platform is a click. No downloading an executable, no installing
| anything, and no App store. Just please, for the love of all
| that's holy, don't throw your advantage away by making guest
| users register and sign into an account before they can play.
|
| There are way too many web games/apps that don't get this.
| 10000truths wrote:
| agar.io (as well as Matheus's subsequent io games) understood
| the need for this lack of friction very well. Literally type a
| name and press enter to start playing. Once you have a large
| playerbase where network effects come into play, then you can
| start thinking about things like registration.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Yep. Friendly shoutout to generals.io and slither.io too for
| quick browser games.
| simplify wrote:
| Also quite a few here https://quickparty.games
| Pxtl wrote:
| My kid begged me to play Roblox with her friends when she was 7,
| and I looked into it and immediately recoiled...
|
| Why is so much children's content crowdsourced and MMO these
| days? AI-based moderation and whack-a-mole approach to letting
| strangers play with my kid and what content my kid sees is not a
| good plan.
|
| I honestly don't understand how this is the business model of so
| many companies - so much that submitter has to create a post
| dissuading more from cramming into a crowded space.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| In fairness to Roblox, it does at the very least encourage
| creativity and not just button mashing.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I like the creativity, it's just the "everything is public"
| approach that's crazy for primary school kids.
| novok wrote:
| My guess is if you want to compete with roblox, you make a good
| independent multiplayer game that has a world aspect, get popular
| and then start adding user editing, vs starting with user editing
| first.
|
| Basically minecraft with a first class modding engine as a second
| expansion that kids can use eventually.
|
| The first and most important part is a game that people want to
| play.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's kind of like with "edutainment" - authors try to make
| education more palatable to kids by sprinkling some game
| aspects in, as if it made more sense than sprinkling a bit of
| sugar on top of broccoli to get a kid coerced to eat it to like
| it.
|
| You need to start with a game that's fun, in a context that's
| fun (i.e. not coerced by outside authority), and only then you
| can sneak in some extra value.
| saulpw wrote:
| That may be how you make kids enjoy learning, but edutainment
| doesn't sell based on fun. It sells based on curriculum. You
| need to target a specific known study path and be maximally
| efficient in presenting those concepts and offering a way to
| grade performance that translates to standardized tests.
| Anything else is DOA because neither parents nor teachers nor
| kids will buy it.
| 63 wrote:
| I'm interested to see where Hytale goes since this seems to be
| their approach, roughly and with pre existing community support
| to boot. Unfortunately they've been pretty unresponsive since
| their acquisition so I hope the eventual release keeps same
| spirit they started with.
| roca wrote:
| I would love to see a Web-based RPG environment with similar play
| and creation capabilities (and community) to NWN.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| One project I've spotted along these lines is:
| https://www.playmultiverse.com/
|
| Some of the stuff they've been posting on Twitter looks rad.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Since other people are popping their projects up here that meet
| these criteria have ours as well. It's a full game making/playing
| platform called dot big bang where everything is done in the
| browser.
|
| https://dotbigbang.com/
|
| We're about to release a new social hub today and our user facing
| release of our TypeScript based scripting very soon.
|
| One really nice thing about the web is that it works anywhere you
| can find a browser. So we run on smart fridges and thanks to MS
| including Edge on the XBox accidentally launched on console last
| week. Was a pleasant surprise to find full controller support and
| all our editors working!
|
| Web games also let you do other neat things. We built a game with
| Day[9] one of the OG streamers and due the wonders of deep
| linking could open up the game to his entire chat. A short
| highlight video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs1p22oI_V4
|
| We're also hiring a bunch of roles here:
| https://controlzee.com/#jobs
| rewq4321 wrote:
| I've told two people about your site (in person, verbally) and
| both of them have been confused about the "dot" in the name -
| thinking that it's a single character "dot big bang dot com".
| Why not Big Bang? More memorable and easier to communicate.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the site!
|
| As for the name it's a historical accident as far as I know.
| Our CEO began dot big bang as a hobby project back in 2012ish
| and wanted to call it big bang at the time but obviously
| that's a very hard name to get a good URL for. So he
| prepended a dot which has since stuck. I think we're keeping
| it for the foreseeable but other URLs are definitely worth a
| thought.
| elefanten wrote:
| Oh boy, and when a subdomain is needed...
|
| "support dot dot big bang dot com"
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Clearly it should be spelled .big!
| Kinrany wrote:
| How do authors program their objects and worlds?
|
| Edit: oh, so scripting is not even there yet.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| So a basic voxel editor and world editor are live on the
| site. You can access them here but you need to be signed in
| (for now):
|
| World Editor: https://dotbigbang.com/game
|
| Voxel Editor: https://dotbigbang.com/voxelobjecteditor
|
| Currently game functionality is made in a Unity style
| component system using components written in TypeScript. All
| the games on the site right now were built in our editors. So
| with the release of scripting to the public we'll be enabling
| people with existing game dev or programming experience to
| make their own games. For an example one of our Incubator
| program members, who is high school aged with some basic
| prior programming experience modded our FPS game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Cklg-3EBM
|
| We're also working on lowering that bar to entry. Both with
| elements users can drag and drop into their games to create
| functionality and simplified scripting environments.
|
| > Edit: oh, so scripting is not even there yet.
|
| Yup, releasing soon but we've been making games internally
| with it for quite some time.
| thunderbong wrote:
| This is really a fantastic article. And IMHO, it should be must
| read by every startup founder out there. The nuggets of knowledge
| shared here are truly incredible.
|
| He writes about startup hubris, about the meaning of an open web,
| about empowering your users.
|
| Amazing article. Thanks for posting it.
| roca wrote:
| One key point that this article makes indirectly: this is why the
| open Web still matters a very great deal.
| Micrococonut wrote:
| Garry Newman, creator of Garry's Mod, is taking a shot at it
| https://sbox.facepunch.com/. If anybody is going to succeed in
| dethroning Roblox, it's Facepunch.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Absolutely. Plus Garrys mod pre dates the official Roblox
| release (the free versions of gmod at least), so Roblox kind of
| copied him.
| Jensson wrote:
| People here seems to miss the main point of the article: Don't
| compete with Roblox!
|
| Why do so many try to make something that is so hard to do?
| Basically every other game genre is easier to make money with,
| and non-game startup ideas are easier than making a game. This is
| about as hard as it can get if you want your project to succeed.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| People do this because it is the most fun thing to do.
| Jensson wrote:
| Makes sense as a hobby. Hope people aren't investing anything
| on these projects.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| People do this because they think Roblox looks like shit and
| they can do better.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Roblox looks like shit for a reason though. Because of
| that, the game has insanely low system requirements, since
| most of the players are kids and only have access to
| potato-level hardware without good GPUs.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's not even, Minecraft has low system requirements and
| although it has a low-tech aesthetic it's a beautiful
| game. League of Legends runs on a potato and looks fine.
|
| Think the roughness and how everything is a hodgepodge
| appeals to kids in some way. It's more like the Flash era
| where you visit Kongregate, NewGrounds etc and although
| some of the games looked bad they were still fun and the
| rougher graphic style sometimes added to the charm.
| munificent wrote:
| The article talks about this explicitly. It's a valuable
| design choice. When you have a graphical _ceiling_ it
| means that even the best, most skilled Roblox games don
| 't look better than the amateurish games kids first
| makes. That in turn means that a kids' first experience
| making a Roblox game feels like "my game looks like a
| real game!". That sensation is _priceless_.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| It's basically the startup equivalent of "indie gamedev wanting
| to make an MMORPG". You need every edge in technology that you
| can get (which you will never achieve), and you still need to
| actually make your game fun enough!
|
| A lot of times, technology isn't really that important in
| making a good game. Amazon has all the technology they need but
| still can't understand why people play games, it's hilarious
| seeing them fail even after all those years of investment.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Games are hard because they are a complicated mishmash of
| software and entertainment, both of which are notoriously
| hard to do well.
| throwawaywindev wrote:
| " Second, running in a browser makes the top of your user
| acquisition funnel wider, because all it costs to try your
| platform is a click."
|
| While often cited, I don't think that's as much of an advantage
| anymore in the age of app stores, Steam, game streaming, and
| downloadable games on consoles, where all it costs is a tap or
| two.
| 63 wrote:
| Sure, when your target audience knows how to install Steam it's
| not, but when you're Roblox, your target audience is about 10
| years old
| dahart wrote:
| How do you get yourself in front of a 10 year old? Both my
| kids played _way_ more Steam games when they were 10 than
| they did rando web games.
| foobarian wrote:
| You make your 10 year old's friends make your 10 year old
| feel bad / FOMO that they are not playing your game, until
| they beg their parents to help them install it on their
| device, or they just do it themselves if they have access.
| josefresco wrote:
| OT (slightly): The Roblox captcha system is INSANE. I witnessed
| one of my kids' friends attempting to solve one and it was
| hilariously difficult.
|
| It's a 2x3 grid of floating 3D objects and you need to click the
| square where two of the constantly moving object collide.
|
| The login/account creation process must be attacked frequently
| and intensely to warrant making this captcha tool so difficult.
| I'll never bitch about "finding all the bicycles" again.
| sriram_sun wrote:
| Does that mean all the other captcha systems are "broken"?
| idealmedtech wrote:
| More likely that Roblox didn't want the Google dependency,
| they seem to love building things in house.
| MBCook wrote:
| Not only that but I imagine at Roblox's scale they'd have
| to pay Google an absolute fortune for the service.
| novok wrote:
| Games and consoles have this security issue that I call the
| "bored teenager effect". They get pummeled security & cheat
| wise way more than is warranted for their market size, and
| their user base is way more technically sophisticated and
| more willing to put up with BS to play their games.
|
| As a result, the average multiplayer game has better security
| than the typical bank, because thousands of bored and
| emotionally immature teenagers are trying some pretty
| sophisticated crap to just get more points in a fucking
| online game.
|
| So totally not surprised that roblox's captcha is extra hard.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Do you have any idea of how big Roblox is? There are few,
| if any, games that are more popular.
| josefresco wrote:
| From my experience, as a web guy who implements CAPTCHA at
| least once a week for a client being spammed - yes it's
| broken. reCAPTCHA rarely slows down bots, it only stops the
| lowest tech/efforts. v1/v2/v3 doesn't matter, I implement
| them all and clients still get spammed.
| kevingadd wrote:
| They may have just decided to NIH, there are other large-
| scale games like Genshin Impact that use much simpler captcha
| systems despite the amount of money at stake.
|
| Perhaps the off-the-shelf captchas people are using are too
| expensive for Roblox's tastes.
| [deleted]
| DeathArrow wrote:
| You don't compete with Roblox by creating another Roblox. You
| will fail.
|
| You compete with Roblox by creating another game the users will
| want to spend time on.
|
| Apple won the competition with PC and Microsoft when they
| discovered a new paradigm. Macs lose the battle but iPhone won.
|
| Create new markets, create new needs.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > You compete with Roblox by creating another game the users
| will want to spend time on.
|
| And if the past 5-10 years of video games gone viral is
| anything to go by, none of them did it on purpose.
|
| Minecraft (at least in my opinion) kickstarted the indie game
| market, and years later slowly grew in popularity with a new
| generation of gamers.
|
| Fortnite was a(nother) failed project from Epic, after they
| tried to do another Unreal Tournament. For a laugh they added a
| Battle Royale mode on top of what they already made for what
| they first thought would be popular, and the rest is history.
| They added a battle royale mode after the unexpected success of
| the shit looking PUBG, built in a shit engine with shitty
| looking assets by a half-assed developer. Which in turn was
| based on dayz, standalone version of a survival mod for the
| pretty obscure military game ARMA.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Listened to a podcast about it recently on Hansel Minutes pretty
| crazy the tech involved with Roblox and the meta verse thing.
|
| I don't see myself playing it but when I was younger Runescape
| was my thing, lost in that world. Philosophically (ha) question
| of what matters in life ultimately guess it's having fun since
| time is one directional (what you own/sentience) and fun is
| subjective. This is my neg comment on how (playing) video games
| could be considered a waste of time for not being "real" but it's
| about the experience. West World vs. reality too.
|
| I do play video games, like a few hours a week of some
| multiplayer game like BFV or watch TV when I'm burnt/can't think
| anymore.
|
| Also a tangent, space travel (probably impossible in our life
| time eg. stars) vs. going inwards eg. virtual reality/brain jar.
| dahart wrote:
| This whole thing rings very true for just about any startup
| business idea. The bit on education was especially fun to
| revisit, and by fun I mean painful, because I've made that
| mistake of trying to sell software to education. It's unending
| amounts of work for no commitments, especially if you are
| targeting kids or classrooms. I'm now suspecting the only way to
| sell to education markets reliably is to convince a state
| legislator or a board member somewhere. Schools just don't
| approve or buy their own things no matter how much they like
| them.
|
| Other mistakes I've actually made myself that this article is
| right about - technically superior, better graphics, quirky
| features, lower prices. Don't compete with X, where X is any
| large entrenched business. It's more or less guaranteed that you
| don't know _why_ that business is successful. If it looks like
| they have bad graphics or are technically inferior or lacking
| features, the assumption should be that these things are a
| competitive advantage. But that never stops most of us from
| making the wrong assumption, does it?
| Jensson wrote:
| Roblox is a social network, a technical tool those persons have
| already familiarised themselves with and a game.
|
| Meaning, you have to overcome the network effects of social,
| the lock-in effects of a popular programming environments in
| addition to all the usual problems with trying to make a
| successful game. All of those challenges are hard to overcome
| on their own, overcoming all three at once isn't something
| anyone should bet on.
|
| And worst of all, there is no need for multiple products in
| this space. You only need one game maker game, making more
| doesn't add more value. This is why the other things matters,
| it would be easer to replace World of Warcraft or Fortnite or
| Unity etc, since there are fewer entrenching effects.
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