The ROBLOX Dilemma

What You Must Consider in Marketing Games

Content of the Article:

• ABOUT ROBLOX
• ROBLOX as a Marketing Platform
• 3 Roblox Examples – The Good, the Better & the Not So Good

Today, we’ll be discussing Marketing Games and Roblox. Many companies are stepping into the gaming platform, and some even refer to it as the Metaverse (but that’s a different discussion), which I really don’t want to start here.

Unfortunately, on LinkedIn, we often only see what is said about XYZ and not what really lies behind it. It’s all about more appearance than reality, more buzz than actual value! It always depends on what a company focuses on, and some focus on the BUZZ and the appearance – and yes, it works for quite a while… And it’s somehow part of the game. But let’s take a closer look at what Roblox can do in terms of marketing and how individual companies have handled it. Today is ONLY about Roblox, what it is, what it can do, and a few examples.

Let’s get started!

ABOUT ROBLOX

Roblox Games is primarily an online gaming platform and a game development system, allowing users to create and play games made by other users (individuals as well as companies). There are also assets, i.e., items made by users that can be purchased there. The platform enables users to design and program their own games and then share them with a large community. Games range from simple puzzles and adventure games to complex simulations, thus offering a wide range of experiences. In addition to playing and creating, Roblox also offers social interaction opportunities, as users can communicate, form groups, and play together.

Put simply: For the layman, it’s best understood that Roblox is like a giant App Store with social media features. Only, instead of posts, you build interactive games, and additionally, everything that can be used on the platform can also be created by users – everything is, if desired, UGC (User Generated Content). You can also make friends, play games together, and chat.

Roblox is an extremely popular online platform, whose user numbers and demographic data paint an impressive picture of its reach and diversity.

User Numbers and Engagement

• In 2023, Roblox had an average of 67.3 million active users daily, representing an annual increase of 22%. The platform recorded 4.6 billion hours of user engagement during the same period. ➡️ More on this
• Overall, over 214.2 million people play on Roblox monthly, and users spend an average of about 156 minutes per day on the platform. ➡️ More on this

Demographics & Devices Used by Users

• A significant majority of users, about 67%, are under 16 years old. Children under 9 years make up 22% of the user base, while users between 9 and 12 years old comprise 23%, and those between 16 and 24 years old 22%. ➡️ More on this
• The gender distribution on Roblox is relatively balanced, with 51% of players being male and 44% female. 5% of users have not specified their gender. ➡️ More on this
• The platform can be played on various devices, with mobile devices being the preferred choice for over 79% of users. ➡️ Mehr hierzu

This means, on one hand, Roblox appeals to a younger target group that moves around there. In turn, those who want to advertise their brand there should consider whether the target group they want to reach or (re)activate corresponds to their own target group and products. On the other hand, it means that one must use other channels for marketing (which is also possible directly on Roblox) if one wants to attract a different target group to the platform – because the interest in the experience is so great that one registers with the platform. It is also important to note that the experience should work on mobile devices and consoles and is not just designed for desktop use. Unfortunately, this is often the case with marketing games…

ROBLOX as a Marketing Platform

1. Brand Presence: Companies can create their own worlds or games on Roblox to interactively present their brand. These can include products, events, or unique experiences related to the brand or products. Imagine a company creating a game on Roblox that resembles a theme park, where each game or attraction is part of its brand or products. This allows users to interact with the brand in a playful way. The goal on Roblox is to create a BRAND EXPERIENCE, not just any marketing spiel, which unfortunately still occurs from time to time, as we will see in one of the examples. And then there’s always the question: „What is success?“
2. Target Audience Engagement: Roblox has a large and diverse user base, especially in the younger segment. Brands can target specific audiences and engage with them on a platform they are already actively using. As described above in Demographics & Devices Used by Users, brands should consider who their target audience is and how they come to the platform or if they are already there, and what they expect from a Roblox experience.
3. Sponsorship and Partnerships: Companies can sponsor existing, popular games on Roblox or enter into partnerships with successful game developers to promote their products or services. It’s important to consider in-game items (items in the game) or advertising. Instead of traditional advertising, companies on Roblox can create unique, interactive experiences that immerse users directly in the world of the brand.
4. Virtual Events: Companies can organize special events or promotional actions on Roblox. These can be virtual concerts, exhibitions, or product presentations.
5. Merchandising: Companies can sell virtual goods such as clothing, accessories, or other items associated with their brand on Roblox – or bring them in connection with an experience. Likewise, one can work with well-known figures and use UGC (User Generated Content) items, which can then be dropped (made available in the game) depending on user interactions or goals.
6. Data Analysis and Feedback: By interacting with the brand content on Roblox, companies can collect valuable data and feedback to refine their marketing strategies. But please don’t be tempted to sugarcoat things, because in marketing, one tends to do so – and pure bare numbers don’t always say everything – but rather the conclusions that can be drawn from references, comparisons, and insights, etc.
7. Support & Maintenance: Companies should also be aware and consider that a Roblox experience requires support and maintenance, just like many other digital products. A Roblox experience should still be maintained as long as it is accessible to users to ensure playability, and this is a cost and project management factor to consider.

Companies approach you wanting to be part of this Metaverse. I must disappoint you, even if Roblox is referred to as a Metaverse, it is not really one yet. It’s a platform among many, and that’s something to consider in marketing, as there are many other platforms to choose from. However, what’s crucial is the closed experience and the freedom of the company to be creative. The best way to imagine these game platforms, which include Minecraft and Fortnite, both of which have a Creative Mode, is as a universe where each game or experience is like its own planet. Each planet has its own rules but follows the same physical conditions.

3 Roblox Examples – The Good, the Better & the Not So Good

I would like to introduce you to three experiences and evaluate them from my personal perspective – here are the criteria:

• Data & Facts: What do the numbers look like and what can potentially be inferred from them?
• Playability: How well does the game play?
• Design & UX: General appearance and experience of the game
• Game & Gamification: Which mechanisms were chosen and how do I evaluate them?
• Brand Fit for Target Audience: What does the experience do for the brand and the target audience?

THE GOOD

Money Genius Island – Not a pure marketing game, but rather a serious game (edutainment) combined with marketing. Small but mighty. You don’t always need extreme visitor numbers; sometimes it’s about what is done at the core. Not everyone has a marketing budget and a trendy brand to help push the game (which brings us to another point, if no one knows about your Roblox experience, then no one will play it). Who’s behind the game? BW-Bank und Sparkassen, aiming to bring financial literacy closer to children and teenagers. The whole thing was implemented by the EventPunks, a team around Sandra Kiel. Interestingly, the experience seems to be repeatedly adapted and used for various events, which is clever, especially in terms of replayability and maintenance.

Data & Facts: 86.21% positive rating, which is a very good result for the launch of a Roblox game. With 3,686 visits, the game or experience received 47 player favorites. This corresponds to a percentage of about 1.28%.

Playability: The game is easy and well-controlled, which I think is also due to the target audience of children and tweens. Easy to handle, and even if you fall down something more difficult, you don’t die (known from game design as „perceived fairness“). There are quite a few information points and small hints about what to do next. There isn’t exactly a guiding system or wizard, but there is a lot to discover. The user is led through the game with the greatest possible freedom – discovery, I think, has a high value in this game.

Design & UX: The UX and appearance are really sweet and the world is quite large and extensive. The map helps to navigate the world, and there are several mini-games that can also be discovered. I would have wished that when something appears for the first time, one is guided, like a small in-game tutorial, making it easier to understand the basic tasks.

Game & Gamification: This game places a lot of value on curiosity and exploration. It’s not about a leaderboard, but about enjoying playing and through the fun, also developing an interest in financial literacy, or at least understanding a little more of it. No quests are used (at least none that I discovered), which I think would benefit the game at one point or another, but it’s not strictly necessary. However, I think quests would help those who don’t like to discover everything themselves to continue playing and exploring the game.

Brand Fit for Target Audience: Meme potential meets serious banking, which is somehow quite present in this game. From the Japan world, which currently appeals to Gen Z and many others, to no info in the game and not to forget Maxwell the cat (known from TikTok), the experience with its rainbow appearance in a winter wonderland suit is a welcome change from the usual sameness of banks for kids.

THE BETTER

Lamborghini Lanzador Lab was implemented with Flaunt (as far as I could research) and was specifically developed for a product, namely the Lanzador. According to Innovando, the target audience for the experience is between 17 and 24 years old, thus in the older range of Roblox users. However, for Lamborghini, it’s clear that they want to offer fans access that goes beyond a normal configurator, and for this, they use Roblox, where you can not only configure the car but also drive it.

Data & Facts: 86.96% positive rating, which is a very good result for the launch of a Roblox game. With 448,900 visits, the game or experience received 6,782 favorites, which corresponds to a percentage of about 1.51%. This value shows that a small, but significant portion of the visitors rated the experience so positively that they added it to their favorites.

Playability: The experience is both a game and an adventure, and players are guided through it with small tasks (quests). Some details are not so intuitive, such as needing to unlock different colors or gimmicks first, but yes. The open quests also encourage players to explore the experience and interact with various brand information and articles. The shop is more like an exhibition or luxury boutique, which corresponds very well to the brand core.

Design & UX: A really beautiful and appealing 3D look that is lovingly designed. The trailer, which is played at the beginning of the game experience, already gives the player an overview of the highlights. UX is simple, intuitive, and not confusing, you can find everything quite easily, as it should be. You repeatedly get help with displays of what to do next if you don’t know what to do; this is called a wizard system, a helper that guides you through the experience. The language is translated into your language.

Game & Gamification: A mix of various mechanics is used. On the one hand, there’s the concept of quests, tasks that guide you through the game and make up the key features, elements, and the main game; after that, you can clearly continue playing. The quests are kept quite simple, like „Drive 1 lap,“ „Drive 5 laps,“ but that’s completely okay for such a game that primarily serves marketing. It would have been nice to do more around the car and the story of the car and the brand, as the experience would have allowed for it.

Of course, there are also leaderboards and the obligatory social media strategies „Follow me and you get…“ „At XYZ followers, <unicorn> drops“ – false loyalty and engagement, which of course serve only one purpose on Roblox: „credibility“ experience. Because if it’s well-rated, people check it out, or sometimes, if it’s poorly rated, they want to convince themselves. In this case, the numbers speak for themselves, indicating that it is a good experience and is enjoyed playing, or that the extrinsic incentives are large enough to play it again.

Brand Fit for Target Audience: Good brand fit from my perspective. Well done with the merch, the presentation of the car, and the products. Also, the racing game that takes place in the experience. There are different ways for users to interact with the brand and the experience, and one doesn’t have to stupidly follow a single way of playing. Especially nice is that the user is guided through the game at the beginning, which, I think, not everyone likes since some prefer to explore on their own.

For those interested in Roblox and marketing for a specific product, there is much to learn from Lamborghini, not for nothing almost 90% likes.

THE NOT SO GOOD

Let’s move on to Nivea Tower Run.The experience was officially launched a day before Lamborghini and was promoted with its own marketing on the Roblox platform, as well as on LinkedIn by the creators and PR. Which is totally legitimate and good, as I would say the target audience, after playing, is rather mixed, and it’s essential to have a lighthouse project on the Roblox platform from Beiersdorf, in my interpretation – since Minecraft was deemed too uncool and Fortnite too shoot-‚em-up like (which is the case for many companies, and I personally find it very unfortunate, as Fortnite in Creative Mode offers more than just Battle Royale, as you can see mega from the LEGO Group x Fortnite). The creators behind it all are Jung von Matt NERD, who want to reach Gen Z with the experience. Whether this has been successful and whether the expensive marketing and PR with HORIZONT, W&V, Werben & Verkaufen has paid off, let’s take a closer look at it in detail.

Data & Facts: Only 61% find the experience good. On the second day after the launch, it even fell below 50% (which is unfortunately really bad for a Roblox experience). With 383,400 visits, the game or experience received 1,906 favorites. This corresponds to a percentage of about 0.50%. A third compared to Lamborghini’s experience with about 60,000 visitors difference – this tells us a lot about the value of replayability, which was already considered in this experience according to the description. So, what was the issue?

Playability: The outside world is okayish to play, but inside the tower, terrible! Not well playable – how can you build a 3D platformer with such controls?! Not optimal at all – a huge point deduction for house JvM Nerds (I played to much Hogwarts Legacy by Warner Bros. Games recently) .

Outside, the physics are somewhat hard to control since the jumps are quite „lofty“ and long, you tend to fly more. It takes a while to get used to, but the jumps have to be like that, as everything takes place on round islands (probably a nod to Nivea Cream). For players who are not so good at handling everything and also rather new, it is quite frustrating, as you often fall to your death (which may deter someone who is just looking at it from a marketing aspect, causing them to leave the game after a while).

Design & UX: The design itself is really mega beautiful, and the assets are also nicely and appealingly designed. The shop is cute but somewhat loveless, especially compared to Lamborghini, where you can look at and try on items (at the first level of interaction) and get more information about the products, a nice interaction. There are small boxes with information, but only in English. The design is small and nicely adapted to the brand, maybe a bit too much in some places, and reminds more of a candy shop than Nivea (but opinions may differ, I think).

The Tower Run itself, the 3D platformer, is controlled differently than the rest of the game, at least on PC (the same is true for the racing game at Lamborghini). The huge difference is that the controls in the racing game are explicitly shown, what each key does, and not in Nivea Tower Run, which is a pity. It would have been easy to solve and would have absolutely helped to find your way around faster, especially when under time pressure!

Game & Gamification: Mechanics that contradict each other, and points, points, points. Yes, it’s all about one thing: points, high score, and leaderboards.

Sorry, but it would have been a bit better to design the game a bit simpler – like a good Jump ’n‘ Run. Sure, the target group Gen Z likes competition and challenges, especially with friends, but that’s also a matter of the game and genre – right, dear Fortnite 🙂 However, Roblox is played for different reasons than Fortnite, which should be considered in a game and its gamification. Unfortunately, here it’s very much based on extrinsic motivation (do this, then Lala drops, like here, then this comes, reach X, then Y) and the game is partly too complicated in terms of game design and game mechanics and not playable, which leads to simply dropping it.

Besides the hunt for points, as mentioned above, there’s also a leaderboard, and that’s based on time. In the Tower Run, the main game so to speak, there are coins that you can collect – so, what does a player do? Beat the countdown or collect the coins – from a game design aspect, it’s not advisable to mix both if it’s not a 2D platformer. The problem lies in the word DEPTH, then you have to run back and forth if you want to collect the coins and don’t automatically pick them up while running, as in Super Mario or similar.

Unfortunately, the game is quite unbalanced with a lot of frustration potential and is not really fun and enjoyable to play, which does not really do the brand any good.

Brand Fit for Target Audience: I’ll make it short and painless here. Nice idea, cool design. Brand fit for target audience rather meh… What does Nivea want to communicate to Gen Z? I don’t know, a real experience doesn’t come up, I doubt the brand values really found their place and resonance here, and especially a shame I find that everything is based on extrinsic motivation, all on „quickly attainable“ fame for Nivea, to be able to present an externally „successful“ case. Unfortunately, this is an example I would give to my students as a negative example when it comes to marketing games and gamification, and you need those too, from which you can learn a lot without having to make the mistakes yourself.

Therefore, I am very glad and grateful that we now have such a game, from which we all can learn that good marketing can really bring a lot, even though the experience or product behind it is just so-so.

A Brief Personal Note:

Many companies approach us „specialists“ and ask for our opinions – unfortunately, they often end up working with firms that have big names, rather than with people who might not carry big titles but still have a lot of knowledge because they are REAL nerds, not just because they portray themselves or label themselves as such.

I experience this all the time: „Jasmin, can you give us your opinion on this?“ „Jasmin, can we talk about XYZ?“ These are often free consulting requests. I have nothing against such inquiries, but I do have something against exploiting my person or others in this context – hence my aversion to free content for individuals. And this can be called gatekeeping if someone needs to label it for their own peace of mind, be my guest…

Well, it’s up to everyone to decide whether they see me as a nerd, geek, gamer, or show-off (I have my own opinion on that), but I don’t let anything slide about certain people in my network when it comes to topics like Web 3.0, Metaverse, or gaming on platforms, and these people are:

• Falk Ebert (he knows everything)
• Sandra Kiel (Serious & Marketing Games on Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite)
• David Bundi (in the legal field, but oh so much more with NFTs and more)
• Fatih Inan (simply the greatest in doing)
• Niklas Timmermann (also active on Roblox and Co.)

There are many other nerds in other areas in my network, more on that some other time.

They are knowledgeable and aware of the real issues and challenges on various platforms, how to implement advertising measures and marketing on these platforms, and much more.

Quelle:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/roblox-dilemma-jasmin-jaykays-karatas-bpmce/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via