In this article, you’ll learn my stance on why you need a backup plan as a Roblox developer.
There has been a recent question on X, asking developers if they have backup plans. (I’m not really sure who originally posted it, but if you have the original tweet, please send me A DM on X: @script_ing)
And somehow, this became a controversial take.
There seem to be a few categories of people that have their own sides to take on this question:
- Those who feel that they need backup plans, in case anything goes wrong.
- Those who feel that if you put your mind to Roblox development over everything else and improve, then you will certainly succeed at one point and you don’t need college for that.
- Those who feel that backup plans are useless because they take your mind away from your goal: making a successful game.
- Those who don’t care that much about this controversial take, but are reading for entertainment
I will go ahead and tell you that I currently support #1 – You need backup plans in case anything goes wrong.
And I am going to also tell you that at different points in my life, I was also at #2, #3, and #4 (didn’t care about this question, just wanted to make fun games).
Background
I have been on Roblox since 2011, scripting roblox games and teaching how to script since 2016. I have been at different stages of Roblox development. I am speaking from experience on why you need a backup plan as a Roblox developer.
Elemental Adventures
In 2020, I began a game called Elemental Adventures.
This was a game that mixed Pokemon + RPG + avatar mechanics together, with a bit of fantasy.
At this point in my life, I was at “I want to make a lot of money, and Elemental Adventures is really fun.” I wasn’t really thinking about monetizing this game as much, as it was more of a passion project.” This is basically #4 on the list above.
I worked on this game from March 2020- late 2021.
I wasn’t thinking about backup plans at all. I just knew that the next step in my life was to get this game out and I loved working on it. I just worked on this game every day when I came back from school.
This was a very fun game to make.
The story was original, the UI concepts were copied from Pokemon (we’d change them before release), the concept of the game was original as well.
I thought people would really like it. From the screenshots of this game, a lot of people looked forward to playing it.
But then, in late 2021, school became a little bit harder. I was taking 4 AP classes 1 honors class, and 2 college level classes.
And at the same time, the other games in the genre of turn-based games were dying out. They were at a constant 200 ccu.
Now, if you’ve ever had to develop a large scale story based game, you know how long an update takes.
- You have to plan out a continuation of the story script
- You have to make all the characters, script that script, script all the character animations, etc. in Lua U
- You have to make new assets (swords, effects, trails, accessories) for characters
The longest (but also most rewarding) part is scripting the story script.
It takes so long, because you have to test out ENTIRE part of the story as you script it (shoutout to every developer that makes story games!).
To make 60 minutes of the story for Elemental Adventures, it would take me 12-15 hours, because I obsessed about details. I wanted the best for the players.
Now, as all of the classes were getting tough and I was noticing low player count in my genre, I began seeing these games called “Simulators”, and they were BREAKING ROBLOX BOUNDARIES.
12K CCU used to be seen as being one of the top 10 games.
I began seeing games with 40K CCU out of nowhere.
I’m sure you remember it as well.
And slowly, there was a rise of low effort games that were made in less than a month.
And the quality games that looked like they took years and tons of developers were getting low players.
This was extremely demotivating for me, and I decided that it isn’t worth the time investment to continue working on Elemental Adventures.
So I put it on hiatus.
Elemental Adventures Says You Need a Backup Plan
I had no backup plans, or any plans to make a backup plan.
Later on, you’ll see why this influences my current stance on why you need a backup plan as a Roblox developer.
I decided to go to college. I loved computer science and wanted to get better at programming and mathematics.
At this point, you may be thinking “Oh, he picked a game and didn’t go fully with it. Maybe the game could’ve made him a lot of money. That’s entirely his fault.”
Maybe it could’ve.
Maybe it would’ve resulted in another few years of development to no end.
You may be thinking “This was a good choice. There were obvious signals that it wouldn’t have worked on Roblox and he made the right decision.”
The truth is: I don’t know. Roblox is unpredictable. I hope I made a good choice.
But anyway, I pivoted.
BattleMania
At this point, I was in community college, where the tuition (in America) was about $3K a semester.
And I figured that if I worked on a good Roblox game on the side, then I can help pay it off.
I also worked a part-time job teaching Roblox scripting, Python, Unity, and a whole bunch of other programming languages.
So I began BattleMania in 2023. This was a game based off “Totally Accurate BattleSimulator.”
The audience on Roblox is a bunch of younger kids, so they’d probably enjoy a game like this, right?
And now, my focus was “If I put some of my time into BattleMania, and work the part-time job and go to college, I’ll at least have a few plans in case things go south.
Long story short, I developed BattleMania for just over a year.
In the beginning, I thought “this is so much fun to script.”
In the middle and end, I thought “this is going to make so much money.”
By the end, I was solely focused on the amount of money it was going to make.
But deep down, I knew that it wasn’t going to get that many players on release.
I had posted TikToks and YouTube videos about the game consistently for over a year. People absolutely loved the concept.
Honestly, I would’ve been happy with 10 CCU. For the first day, that sounded like a reasonable goal.
Now, I hadn’t advertised a single game using the Roblox sponsoring system since 2017 at the time.
In 2017, you were able to sponsor 7K Robux and get 700 CCU all day long.
It is no longer the case. Lol.
I spent about 30 ad credits and ended up getting 200 CCU, which made me feel really happy…. and they all left 5 minutes later.
Here’s a screenshot of the 30 CCU that remained, out of the 200 that were playing.
I thought something was wrong with the settings, so I tried to sponsor again, and the same thing happened. (In retrospect, this was because Roblox’s ad system shows your game to a whole lot of players all at once to figure out what audience it’s meant for).
I remember that I used to think 200 CCU was nothing, because our attention is always focused on those games that have 1K+ CCU. But to a small developer, it means a lot.
A few weeks later…
At this point, BattleMania was averaging about 10 CCU. A disappointment indeed.
One Saturday, I left home to go somewhere, and I wasn’t checking BattleMania at all.
On the car ride back home, I checked it.
It was the Roblox algorithm.
It did its thing.
And it stayed at these numbers for quite a while.
Averaging about 30K robux a day.
There were quite a few bugs, but I was waking up at 4 AM and working until 8 AM to fix those bugs for the players.
This is where I tell you that you don’t need a backup plan and you just have to put your mind into it.
I had put my mind into BattleMania. I had a few backup plans, like college.
For a whole week, it was increasing players and I had received DMs about acquisitions (if you know, you know).
Why would I need a backup plan as a Roblox developer?
I figured that I can just work on this game full-time and it would be the life of my dreams. I would use the money to make another game.
Not really though.
It died down as quickly as it came up. Within 2 weeks, it had settled at 10-20 CCU.
So, for the next 6 months, I frantically tried to figure out why it died down. I learned the intricacies of the Roblox algorithm, used onboarding funnels, added daily rewards, a TON of features, but to no avail.
I was obsessively evaluating the funnel system to figure out why people aren’t coming back to play.
I still haven’t figured out what’s causing the large drops, but it’s a lot better than it used to be.
As you can see, from “Clicked Fight” to “Floor 1 Level 1 Won”, there’s a huge drop. Why? Still not sure.
Maybe there’s a bug preventing them from winning. If there is, I haven’t found it. And I’ve tested this onboarding stuff probably 10,000 times in the last 6 months. It will win every single time. I will figure this out eventually in my lifetime though, lol.
But anyway, at this point, I was even more into college debt, and had begun life at a larger university, where tuition is in the multiple tens of thousands of dollars.
I still have some hope that if I were to fix this onboarding funnel, it will help the game.
But after all those months, I started seeing games that were made in a few weeks that blew up. In some cases, a few days.
Why did I spend so much time on these games? I should’ve just created a quick game. That’s what works nowadays.
As a Roblox developer, I should’ve had a backup plan.
Be a Pirate
I had a month long winter break, where I was grinding working on this new game, Be a Pirate!
14 hours of work every single day on this game for a month.
My mindset was “this game has to succeed. I will just focus on this game with everything. Doing anything else will take away the focus I have on this game.”
We had a LOT of features.
But it clearly wasn’t made for Roblox. We pushed a lot of updates into this.
Another reason why you need a backup plan as a Roblox developer: Because you don’t know for sure how well your game will do.
Retrospect
In a world where you mostly see successes online, I wanted to be the one to post my failures to help you learn why you need a backup plan as a Roblox developer.
Maybe one day, I will have a very successful game. Maybe then, I can direct people to this article, so they can see all of the different attempts at making a successful game.
Now, I’m nearly done with college. And remember, in the beginning, I thought I didn’t even need it. This is why my stance to help new developers is to have backup plans.
The part time jobs actually were the ones that helped me pay for college a lot more than Roblox.
The games didn’t work too well on Roblox, but they did help me learn a lot about what may and may not work.
You might be thinking “he just needs to add some updates to his games and it might help.” That may be the case. I’ve added a lot of updates. None of them seemed to help much.
Roblox is 80% game design, anyway. Maybe the games just aren’t the best fit.
Maybe you’re thinking “he’s just really bad at Roblox game design.” If you are, you’re right. I can script really well. But I’m still very new to this game design thing. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to design better games.
Also, BattleMania was actually a huge success for me. I would’ve been happy for 10 people to play my game. The game ended up getting 1 million+ visits, which I’m very thankful for.
Of course, it wasn’t enough to sustain a full-time income long-term though.
At this point, let’s revisit the categories:
4. Those who don’t care that much about this controversial take, but are reading for entertainment
During Elemental Adventures, I didn’t care about having backup plans or not having backup plans. I just wanted to create the game of my dreams.
3. Those who feel that backup plans are useless because they take your mind away from your goal: making a successful game.
This was me during BattleMania. It didn’t work out for me. It may work out for you. You are probably a better game designer than I am.
1. Those who feel that if you put your mind to Roblox development over everything else and improve, then you will certainly succeed at one point and you don’t need college for that.
This was me during Be a Pirate. I just neglected everything to grind that game. It didn’t work out for me.
For you, it might be different.
You might succeed at one point. But that may not happen for a very very long time.
I believe in you, and I truly hope that you do succeed and create an awesome game.
But I’m just looking out for you in case that it doesn’t, like in my story.
If it does, then that’s great. But remember that if you are committing to SOLELY roblox development, then you’re probably looking for it to be your primary source of income for DECADES.
$5K a month might seem like a lot to a kid.
But as you get older, it seems more and more necessary.
Once you have a family and kids, you’ll have to make a lot more money.
If anything unexpected happens to your income stream (i.e updates not helping the game, game dying out), you will at least have a backup plan and multiple streams to support yourself and your family.
I’m not saying that your game won’t succeed. Believe that it will and continue working towards it. I believe in you.
But you should have a backup plan as a Roblox game developer.
Those who feel that they need backup plans, in case anything goes wrong.
With all of my new knowledge, I stand by this statement.
Make sure that you have a backup plan *just in case* things go south.
For me, it’s a degree, expertise in other programming languages, and my channel.
There are a lot of ups and downs in life.
My advice: Have a backup plan as a Roblox developer.
Your future you will thank you.
What Kinds of Backup Plans Should I Have?
I would recommend having a backup plan that is capable of making enough to cover your cost of living.
For example, maybe right now, that’s $5K a month. But when you have a family and kids, you might need $10K+ a month.
Maybe you’re doing Roblox development and you’re in college right now, studying computer science.
Then, with that degree and your Roblox experience, you could get yourself a job that will pay you that $5K a month in the event that many years down the road, something happens with your Roblox games. Remember, it’s just a backup plan. Try your best with Roblox. But it’ll be there in case you need it.
Maybe you’re doing Roblox development on your game, but you’re also learning different programming languages. That is also a good backup plan.
Or maybe you are looking to start a new online business as your backup plan.
Remember, it’s just a plan, incase things don’t work out.
If I had just focused on Roblox development and hadn’t gone to college, I would probably be considering it a lot right now.
But I’m almost done with my degree. So I’m thankful for that backup plan.
If I hadn’t had part-time jobs in between, I would probably be in a lot of debt.
But I did, which I’m also thankful for.
Think in decades, not in months.
Thank you for reading. I hope this can help some people.
Check out this article on how Roblox scripting led me to a career in software development.
