One of the best ways to grow your Roblox game is by letting Roblox recommend it to other players that might be interested in playing your game.
In this article, I’ll dive into the Roblox algorithm and explain each stat and why it matters for your game.
What is the Roblox Algorithm?
Before we can understand the Roblox algorithm let’s talk about what a regular algorithm is.
The Concept of an Algorithm
An algorithm is essentially a series of steps that you can take to achieve a goal.
Think about brushing your teeth.
The algorithm to brush your teeth is:
- Get the brush
- Put toothpaste on it
- Brush your teeth
- Wash your brush
- Rinse
- Put your brush away
Remember, that the goal is to get your teeth brushed, and the algorithm is the series of steps that you’d take to achieve that goal.
The Roblox Algorithm
So now, let’s apply this notion of an algorithm to Roblox.
The Roblox Algorithm has one job: to match Roblox games to players that are most likely to play them.
As developers, our job is to create games that others would enjoy.
If we create a great game that players enjoy, then the Roblox algorithm will show our game to other players that may be interested in playing it.
How the Roblox Algorithm Works
The Recommended For You Section
In a player’s homepage, there’s a section called “Recommended For You.”
You can find your Recommended for You section by going to your home page, at https://www.roblox.com/home and scrolling down.
In this section, Roblox shows the player a bunch of games that they may be interested in playing.
As Roblox developers and game owners, we want Roblox to show our game on this section.
If Roblox shows our game to players on this “Recommended” section, then they are likely to play our game.
So, how do we get our game on this “Recommended For You” section?
How to Get Roblox to Recommend Your Game
For us to grow our game using the Roblox algorithm, we have to understand the stats that the Roblox algorithm cares the most about.
The Roblox algorithm categorizes your game based off 6 basic stats.
These stats are the following:
- Average Session Time (AST)
- Day 1 Retention (D1 Retention)
- Day 7 Retention (D7 Retention)
- Payer Conversion Rate (PCR)
- Average Revenue per Paying Users (ARPPU)
- Unique User Qualified Play Through Rate (UUQPTR)
Let’s understand each stat.
Grow Your Roblox Game with Average Session Time
Average session time is essentially how long players play your game before they get bored and quit on average.
Roblox cares about average session time because it’s an indicator of how fun your game is. If your game is really fun and players enjoy playing it, then your average session time will be higher. On the other hand, if players are leaving your game very fast, then it’s an indicator that your game isn’t that fun and players are unhappy with it.
Roblox wants to promote games with large session times.
In this example, the game has an average session time of 7.3 minutes.
This means that when a new player plays this game, on average, they stay for 7 minutes before they get bored and leave.
This might seem like a long time. 7 whole minutes must mean that the game is fun, right?
Not according to the Roblox algorithm.
According to the image, the game is in the 31st percentile of all Roblox games in that genre (Action).
This means that this game’s average session time is better than 31% of Roblox games in the same genre.
However, to the algorithm this is a low value, which will have a negative impact when you’re trying to grow your game.
In the image, you can see that the 90th percentile of Roblox games in the action genre have an average session time of 17.1 minutes, and the game above only has an average session time of 7.3 minutes.
As a result, Roblox won’t show this game to as many players.
In order for this game to get more players, the developers have to focus on increasing that average session time mark.
Grow your Roblox Game with Day 1 Retention
Day 1 Retention is the % of players that play your game and decide to return 1 day after they first played.
Example of D1 Retention
This game has a D1 retention of 5.83%.
This is pretty bad.
This means that out of 100 new users, only 5.83% of them (around 6 new users) decided to come back on the next day to keep playing the game.
Can you imagine that?
100 players thought the game was going to be great and played it.
But only 6 of them came back to play again. This indicates that they were unhappy with the game.
Out of all of the people, 6 players (in green) thought the game was fun and came back on the next day. But the remaining 94 players (in red) didn’t want to keep playing.
To the Roblox algorithm, this means that the game was not fun enough for players to come back and play again.
For the developers to get more players, they have to focus on getting the D1 retention higher – aim to get D1 retention up to 12.17%, meaning that 12.17% of new players decide to come back to play again the next day.
The picture above shows a graphic of an improved day 1 retention.
Use Day 7 Retention to Grow Your Game
Day 7 Retention (D7 Retention) in a Roblox game is very similar to D1 Retention.
This is the % of players that come back to play your game 7 days after they first played.
In this example, D7 Retention is at 0.90%, meaning that out of 100 players, barely 1 decided to come back to play again on the 8th day.
This means that the game wasn’t fun enough for players to want to keep playing it over and over again. It wasn’t even able to get a player to come back to play 7 days later.
The developers of this game should focus on getting it to 2.92%, meaning that out of 100 players, 3 of them are still coming back to play on the 8th day.
Having good retention is key when trying to grow your Roblox game.
Understanding Payer Conversion Rate
Payer Conversion Rate is the percentage of players that decide to spend robux in your game.
In this example, the payer conversion rate is 0.65%, meaning that, out of 1,000 players, 6 or 7 of them decided to spend money on the game.
The best games have a payer conversion rate of 1.82%, meaning that out of 1,000 players, 18 of them decided to spend money on the game.
Average Revenue per Paying Users (ARPPU)
Average Revenue per Paying Users is how much total robux your game has made divided by the amount of paying users your game has.
Let’s say that your game made 1,000 robux today, and you had 5 people buy things in your game in total.
Then, your game would have an ARPPU of 1000/5=200.
What if it made 1,000 robux but it was 20 different people that bought items?
Then, your game would have an ARPPU of 1000/20=50
What if it made 10,000 robux and it was 5 people that bought items?
Then, your game would have an ARPPU of 10000/5=2,000, which is wayyy above the 90th percentile of 455.
As you can see, to increase this stat, you need people to be spending more robux.
Roblox likes games that make robux, so you should aim to monetize your game well enough that people decide to spend a lot of robux on it.
Unique User Qualified Play Through Rate
Remember how Roblox shows a bunch of games on the “Recommended For You” section?
Unique User Qualified Play Through Rate (QPTR for short) is the percentage of people that click on your game and decide to play it after seeing the thumbnail.
In this case, it’s 2.35%.
This means that, out of 1000 people that Roblox showed the thumbnail to, about 24 people thought that it was interesting and decided to play it.
The top games (90th percentile) in this genre have a QPTR of 3.63%, meaning that 36 people out of 1,000 people clicked the game when it was shown in the “Recommended For You” section and played it because of how interesting they thought the thumbnail was.
How the Roblox Algorithm Uses This Data to Grow Your Game
Every Roblox game has these stats.
Your game is competing with all of them.
Remember what I said in the beginning?
The Roblox algorithm has one job: to match fun games with players that want to play them.
The Roblox algorithm evaluates how good your game is based off the aforementioned stats.
The higher the stats are, the more likely it is to show players your game in the “Recommended For You” section.
Really great games have these stats all the way in the green or at the edge of the yellow.
… And those are the games that end up getting all the players.
That’s it!
I hope you learned something from this.
If you’re looking to hire a professional scripter for your Roblox game, that knows the intricacies of the algorithm, contact me here.
Thanks for reading!
