Roblox Genre Insights: What Will You Create Next?

• Roblox creators have been successful for years in genres like lifesim (roleplay), battlegrounds, and platformers, while others, like horror, are showing extremely high growth.

• We studied what both our new and 77.7 million* daily active users searched for and spotted exciting, untapped areas of demand.

• Data on user interest shows there’s a real opportunity for creators to address latent demand and benefit from growth in Roblox categories like open world action, social co-opetition, driving and racing, and arcade sports.

• Our research also identified ways creators can boost their experiences’ success such as localizing them for a geographic region or building sports games that cater to specific teams.

When people talk about roleplaying games on Roblox, they mean something different from what the broader games industry considers an “RPG.” What we call “roleplaying/lifesim” is a genre unique to Roblox that emerged as a result of our long-term investment in real-time co-experience and real-world simulations.

Coupled with our community’s incredible creativity, this has led to highly-social and emergent gameplay genres on our platform. Examples like Welcome to Bloxburg, Work at a Pizza Place, and Adopt Me! exemplify this. Now, we want to help our creators flourish by identifying the next set of genres we believe will blossom on Roblox. Creators who crack the code for the next genre will build new communities and may enjoy more commercial success. And that’s why we’re sharing the results of research we did recently that shines a light on the genres we think are ripe for innovation.

Roblox creators have always helped innovate and shape the genres we’re most known for, such as roleplay, battlegrounds, and horror. Examples include the Roblox classic Brookhaven, with more than 50 billion visits, team-based competition BedWars, with more than 9 billion visits, and breakout hit DOORS, which garnered more than 5 billion visits in just over two years. They are among the most popular roleplay, battleground, or horror games, respectively, on any platform.

Innovation is in our DNA, and that’s why we recently did some research** to identify growth opportunities and what the next successful genres of Roblox experiences could be. We studied what both our 77.7 million* daily active users and those new to our platform searched for, and in doing so, spotted exciting, untapped areas of demand:

Open world action

Picture players in immersive worlds navigating freely and rapidly around a city’s skyscrapers to complete in-game missions. Our users searched for terms associated with this genre 14 million times in Q1 2024***. This suggests there’s a great opportunity for creators to cater to Roblox users drawn to games like Apocalypse Rising 2 that feature questing, combat, or shooting in open worlds. We also see interest in open environment parkour experiences, which are an evolution of obbies with more radical traversal or jumping mechanics.

Many hit off-platform open world action titles are single-player or have limited multiplayer options, but Roblox is different: it’s an inherently social platform. Our users want games like these where they can explore, connect, and play with friends in real-time.

Sports

Everyone knows that there’s sports fans everywhere, and for them what’s more fun than hitting 3-pointers or taking on friends in heated games of soccer or American football? On Roblox, they can face off with friends across the globe and on their favorite device. And we offer something for diverse tastes—both realistic simulations and arcade versions with simplified gameplay. Examples include Super League Soccer, Ultimate Football, NBA Playgrounds, and Basketball Legends.

During Q1 2024***, Roblox users conducted 13.5 million sports-related searches, and we discovered plenty of unmet demand for soccer, American football, and basketball experiences. And that was in addition to substantial interest we found for volleyball, pool/billiards, boxing, gymnastics, and often, local experiences.

People in Brazil, for example, indicated high interest for experiences set in that country, especially those that let them dive into worlds tied to their local sports teams or competitions. One great example is Copa Roblox, which enthusiastic creators, influencers, players and commentators use to come together to create broadcast-style soccer matches on Roblox.

Driving simulation and racing

Who doesn’t love getting behind the wheel for an adrenaline-pumping race? In this category, players jump into cars, motorcycles, planes, and buses for exciting driving, riding, or even flying simulations. These can be player-versus-player or feature larger group racing. Some great Roblox examples are Emergency Response: Liberty County, Vehicle Legends, and Driving Empire. Globally, we saw nearly 12.5 million related searches in Q1 2024****.

Our research showed players want much more of this genre, especially those who are racing, stunts, and driving tricks enthusiasts. At the same time, we saw demand for extremely local content, like Japanese train simulators and train stations, which blend simulation with role play/lifesim.

Social co-opetition

This is a fast-growing cluster of genres and experiences that typically feature working with others to solve or create something. Visitors often get to vote on others’ designs or creations—like in Salon Makeover or FASHION KLOSSETTE. Or, they might have the chance to partner on a game show or problem solving task like in Outlaster or Eviction Notice. There’s already lots of great experiences in this category, and users want more. They showed us that by searching 7.5 million times for related keywords such as bingo, board game, or fashion in Q1 2024****.

How We Identify High-Demand Genres

At Roblox, our lifeblood is matching users with content they’ll love and creators with their audience. An important way for us to do this is to highlight the genres that have the most promise. And to do that, we studied the searches that took our users to great experiences, while others uncovered genres with unmet need. Based on our analysis, we identified four areas offering creators lots of new opportunity:

• Hidden demand on the platform: People are already searching for specific types of experiences and they want more of that genre.

• Off-platform genre interests: Games similar to those that are successful on other platforms could be big hits on Roblox, and we help creators identify those opportunities.

• Genres that are on Roblox and already growing: Users are already excited about genres like horror, fighting/battlegrounds, and roleplay, which have sustained growth. We’re demonstrating there’s significant upside for creators from users eager for more.

• Things happening in popular culture: Roblox users are hungry for experiences based on pop culture moments driving global conversations like memes from TV shows, sporting events, or holidays.

Three Research-Based Tips for Finding an Audience

As we analyzed the genres we believe have the greatest growth potential, we spotted several levers creators can pull when thinking about building an audience for what to create next:

1. Grow community

The more Roblox users who love a creator’s experiences, the more they’ll invite their friends. So creators can grow and connect with their communities on Roblox with tools like Guilded and new community-building features recently added to Groups like Announcements and the ability to highlight Marketplace items.

Creators can also build excitement around their experiences by encouraging users to make and share content based on what they do when they visit.

2. Consistently iterate and involve the community

We’re proud that many top experiences on Roblox started small, and grew over time by listening to its users, monitoring analytics, and iterating constantly. This is a core superpower of Roblox—our users are extremely passionate and vocal, and creators can easily give their community what they want by releasing global updates to all devices quickly. That’s unlike many other platforms, where getting iterations approved can take days or weeks.

There are many other ways to engage your community. For example, Twin Atlas invites fans of Creatures of Sonaria to submit artwork that might be featured on its social media pages.

3. Identify Ways to Make Experiences Stream- and Meme-Worthy

Roblox content is huge on major social video platforms. That’s because people love short, emotionally-engaging clips and streamable gameplay moments. These can quickly become memes and generate buzz. Examples include funny physics that lead to humorous interactions, jump scares in horror games, or intense powers or abilities that can be unleashed in action RPGs. Creators can also work with influencers to stream gameplay sessions from their experiences.

For more best practices for game mechanics and other tips on getting started, check out the following resources:

• Everything you need to create, scale and monetize

• Roblox Creator Events

• Create on Roblox documentation

• Designing Experiences on Roblox

Throughout our history, what’s made Roblox unique is the compelling range of experiences where users can connect, create, play, learn, shop, explore, and more. This has always been driven by our community of creators who constantly surprise us with their inventiveness. And we always want to empower our creators to make amazing content. It’s essential to our vision of connecting a billion people with optimism, civility, and safety.

We're excited to see the innovations from our community based on the research we’re sharing today. After all, four of our top 10 experiences**** broke out in the last year, often by innovating and iterating on genres with unmet needs. And that’s why we’re also considering ongoing recurring insights based on the feedback we get that creators can leverage to make amazing things.