The Retention Playbook: Turning Players into Fans | RDC 2025 transcript

Please welcome Lauren Freeman, Eric from Evade, Alex from Jailbreak, Pearson from Beastwarm Simulator, and Colin from Gunfight Arena. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] >> A nice turnout. Yeah, >> we got our plant. We requested that specifically. >> I wanted a fern, but hi everybody. Thank you so so much for being here. Um, I am here with an amazing panel of developers. I think all of you probably don't need an introduction, but let's do that anyway.

If there's like one person in the audience who doesn't know who you are, Colin, can you kick us off? >> Yeah. Um, my name is Colin Denatov. I go by CD Development on the platform. I've been making games on Roblox for coming on about 14 years now. Um, I primarily have worked on games like Recoil, Rolling Thunder, and most recently Gunfight Arena. And, um, yeah, that's like literally my life story right there. >> Thank you. >> Um, yeah.

Hi. Sorry, my voice is is cracking, so bear with me. I'm Pearson Harvet. I'm Onet, the developer, uh, the sole developer of Beastwarm Simulator. Um, I joined Roblox in 2009. Um, I worked on my own mobile games for many years and finally made my first Roblox game in uh, 2018, Borm. And, uh, I've been at it ever since. Yeah, >> I'm Alex and I've been on the platform for about 17 close to 17 years now. back in 2000 early 2009 uh created Jailbreak and launched that with Asimo about uh eight years ago now a little over eight years ago. >> Hi guys, I'm Henry uh known as the Henry 101 on the platform.

Um I've been also on the platform for 17 years. Damn, I'm old. But um I I've started um development in 2009. One of the first games that I worked on was Space Wars, an oldie for those veterans. Um, for uh some of those zombie fans, I created Day Z Remade in 2016 and now I'm on. >> Thank you so much. I forgot to introduce myself because I was so excited to get to these guys. I'm Lauren. I'm the head of creator feedback at Roblox.

Let's get started. We have a ton to cover in a short amount of time. So today you're going to hear about how to run live services, how to, you know, continue to delight your players, bring them back to your game for years and years. Um, we're going to walk you through the development life cycle starting from like early ideation before you launch and following that all the way through to, you know, having your game out for for many many years as you all have.

Um, let's start with that early pre-launch phase. Um, love to hear about like what were you thinking about at that point? Were you planning for live services? Did you have a plan for the content that you wanted to release after you launched? Um let's take the audience back many many years ago and where you were at at that point. >> Yeah, jump in. >> Um yeah, so in the early stage um I was directly inspired by a trend, the snowshoeing simulator game, the in the incremental clicker collecting uh trend at the time.

And my entire conception was that I wanted to take this uh very addictive and visceral mechanic and turn it into a more proper world. And uh I reflected in in the early stages on uh my favorite games growing up, MMOs. And I had pretty thorough spirals. And uh I think I had a pretty good conception um because the the uh initial the initial reason for making the game was so straightforward. What was going to make mine stand out was uh the elaborate stuff.

So >> yeah. Did you like was your intuition right? So once you launched the kind of content that you had planned did that was that the content your players wanted or did >> um absolutely >> I think so uh what Beastm added was basically just uh more complex mechanics to something that people already knew were very familiar with and um and that's why it stood out uh I mean on top of also just having a unique style and stuff.

Uh, but I think from the start I had a game plan of, okay, I'm going to hook them in like this and then I'm going to sink a couple more hooks into them once they unlock this gate, once they discover this new mechanic. And um, that was a very conscious uh, plan and and I just kept adding layers to those hooks. And yeah, >> Alex, let's jump to you, not to put you on the spot, but you told me, you know, maybe you didn't plan quite as much as Onette did.

What was your your story back before you launched? Yeah. So, back in about 2016, 2017, uh there was a game called Prison Life. Uh maybe you guys remember that and it was like huge game on the platform. Um and I remember finding that game and a couple other like it uh Redwood Prison and and I I love those games and those games were all about, you know, life inside the prison and the roleplay and all this sort of thing.

I played them so much and I was so eager for what was next. I wanted to escape the prison. and I wanted to to go rob things and and so Jailbreak is kind of the perfect complement to all those games where it's like it's like the actual starting of the game in the prison is a very small part of jailbreak. It's all about what's left after. Um so I didn't really plan a lot intentionally because I kind of just had this feeling of what I wanted out of the game myself.

So I I think the lesson is like you know make something that you find fun. I also think and this is something we learned from trying to launch successive things uh after jail. like you can do a lot of planning, you can think a lot about retention. Um, but you know, if you spend if you if you find a way to do, you know, 2x your retention or something, it's like if the game isn't fun, like 2x of zero is still zero. So, I think it's really important to to find that fun in the early game and make sure you're testing the core loop and just um get something out there and, you know, plan plan for the fun, but but don't worry too much about optimizing every single thing. >> Feel like it's easier said than done though.

How did you know that you had nailed the core loop? We didn't I mean we had no idea Jailbreak was going to be the success that it was. I but I think there's something about you know you if you find it fun then like maybe other people find it fun and uh and getting people into the game and getting people to play it and you know I I think there's probably people in the audience that we had in even in the first week to just try out the game.

Um so thank for any old friends that have that have done that. Just get your friends in and like try it out and see if it's fun and just follow the fun. I think that's the most important thing. Okay, Henry or Colin, either of you want to add. >> Yeah, sure. I think I agree with that 100%. I was definitely going to say like when we were planning Gunfight Arena, like we just started by making it a fun game that we wanted to play and kind of make it the way that we enjoy the game.

And I think that puts you in like a really good position when you're talking about a game that has broader appeal because if you find it fun in that way, then it kind of puts you in this position to almost predict what the community most wants out of it. And you can plan ahead your updates and plan things uh before players even really come up with it. And it allows you to release updates almost preemptively and get a lot of good feedback on that.

I also will say it's probably best to acknowledge that no matter what your roadmap plan is, it's not always going to be like 100% on the money. So, you should leave some room for player feedback to influence some of your future updates and be ready to just like up this week we're doing something different because that's what the players want. >> Thank you. And for evade um when evade launched uh you know we thought uh we were really inspired by Nex bots and what we thought was hey why don't we just add some creativity to that uh we added a lot of features that the players can they can earn cosmetics they can interact with their friends with emotes uh and voice chat was added so they could play with them and just be chased around and uh be very expressive in voice chat.

Um you know a lot of um where Vade was where it first started and where it is now. Uh we started with a narrow mindset and just took a lot of perseverance and here we are today. >> Henry, how quickly after you launched did you ship emotes and aesthetics? Was that like an immediate right after or did it take a while? Uh it >> took a little bit. Okay, cool. Let's jump to the next stage. So, you know, you've been post-launch for a little while.

How did you prioritize subsequent content updates or running events? I'd love to hear a little bit about how things, you know, changed once you have players coming into your experience at higher volumes. >> Yeah. Okay. So, so like I said, we did not anticipate Jailbreak, you know, blowing up like it did. I think day one we had 70,000 peak concurrent players and that was at the time ridiculous. And I I remember being so overwhelmed like my social media feeds where I was originally just getting, you know, tens of replies a day, I was now getting like thousands an hour and I was like everything about my life has changed.

Like there's a new like priority and I I need to figure this out. Um the first thing for us was to really just dive in and like figure out how to digest the the like swarms of information we were getting. Uh, so you'll find the people making YouTube videos, read the comments and it's overwhelming too because the game you know the game was not perfect. There's lots of bugs and so it was actually quite difficult to to look at some of that early feedback and you know even the YouTube videos there's lots of things wrong and was like clearly people were liking it.

So, um, just getting a grapple on like kind of setting up like I had some friends and I I said like can you help me curate some of this content or like curate what ideas people have and then uh from there it was just making a a list of like what what were the problems let's fix those immediately what do people want out of the game like what is the potential directions of the game and then you know that's one part of the vin diagram and the other is like what do I want to work on and it's like choosing right in the middle like what do people want out of the game what do I want to work on and then keep adding those things and we decided kind spur of the moment.

I don't even really remember that we would start doing these weekly updates. Um because we didn't have this long-term plan of what we wanted out of the game. We just said, you know, people are having fun. Let's let's keep adding things to keep them coming back. >> Uh yeah, I'll build off that. So, uh kind of like I mentioned in the early stages of Beast Form, I started with mostly like doodling and and planning out. So, I I noticed those first few weeks and those first few months were really just bringing the game to fruition, like uh like giving bees leveling or even equipments and stat stats, like more complicated stuff like that.

I knew from the from the start that it should be there, but like Alex kind of mentioned as well, like I didn't want to waste my time on something that was just fundamentally not fun. I released Beast Swarm and I would say like it looks it looked very much like it does today, but I knew that sorry again. I knew that it was going to flesh out into something else. And so it became it was much easier um to do those first few updates because I knew exactly what it had to be.

As I got a few months in uh you know I I started they were these were bottom of the barrel type not bottom of the barrel or ones that were a little more ambitious and stuff or that not quite as essential and I could become more experimental because Borm had more solid and solid base. Um, but you know, it went from weekly to bi-weekly to monthly to annually. But >> were these like major features you're shipping? >> Very major features.

Like if I if I do a update on Beasttorm, I want it to feel substantial. And I want it I wanted to add something that is unlike all the other mechanics in the game, but still feels like it essentially should have been there from the start. Like you would be like, man, I can't imagine beast without this. Um, but yeah, uh, that early stage I would say was just coming into fruition. So, okay. quite quite easy but extremely stressful and the emotional toll of having all these people yelling at you and going from hermit life to um to basically yeah like you know social media and YouTubers hitting you up uh that was the hardest part.

Yeah. >> So it sounds like early days you had a really you had a pretty clear idea of what you wanted on your road map and you were following some you know existing paradigms that were out there in terms of the features that were needed but after that you got a little bit more experimental the months to come. >> Yeah. Colin how about you? Um, I think we were kind of in a little bit of a fortunate position because we had released our game a little bit unfinished.

I would say like as bad as that sounds, it is important to save some stuff for updates and just acknowledge that users are going to be interested in content later. And then in addition to that, with that initial roadmap, we also were fortunate to release right around like holiday season. Like we released Gunfight Arena pretty much right before Halloween. So it kind of left us in this very fortunate position where even if we hit a week where we're like, I don't really know what to work on this week, there was a holiday coming up.

So we were just like, oh well, let's do Halloween or we've run out of ideas. Let's do Thanksgiving. And uh just having that kind of real world events influencing little live ops and things that we can do in the game at that same time helped us a lot, especially when we were struggling to figure out what to do next. And um then later on we just kind of got I think a lot better about planning things in the future. For sure. >> Tell me a little bit more about these seasonal events.

So were they seasonal events tied? Like did you have um it limited items that came up with those events too? >> Yes, most definitely. We played around a lot with just doing like oh maybe for this event we want there to be like a boss fight that people do or maybe for this event we just want it to be like a simple quest to get specific in-game items. I think one of the fortunate things about our game is that we left ourselves a lot of room to add a lot of different types of seasonal content.

So, it always felt like there was something fresh and new every individual holiday. >> Okay. And one thing you had shared with me previously was about your like content cadence, right? Because for a firsterson shooter, I think you told me you were getting a lot of feedback from players. They want like more guns, heavier artillery, like just give us more more more more. But you intentionally decided to pace that back.

Most definitely. Yeah, we were at a point where it was actually kind of somewhat easy for us to add new guns to the game. So, if we really wanted to, and there were some weeks where we were excited and we were like, we want to add these like 10 guns all at once. And it was uh it took a little bit of mental anguish to just kind of convince ourselves that, well, the players are really just not going to notice much of a difference that week between like two and 10 guns.

So, it's better to just save those and pace them out. So instead of having one week of like kind of a large update, you have 10 weeks of just an update. And that's definitely very helpful, I think, for upkeeping community interest. For sure. >> I think it's a good lesson, too, cuz you shared like to produce those guns, it's not terribly complicated. Like your team's capable of producing them, but just because you're capable of doing it doesn't mean you necessarily should.

Alex, did you want to add on? >> Yeah, I was going to add on. We really had this problem, too. you know, and and the game is entirely monetized and kind of the scarcity of cars and u but we wanted to figure out a way that we could uh like there there's fun ways you can kind of put it all in at the same time as well. And I think you've probably done this too, but like with a with a season pass system. >> Exactly. Yes. >> Yeah.

You can like uh progress through. It's like even though you launch 10 new guns, maybe they're not all in the shop at the same time. It's like it you naturally unlock that. So, we started doing that for Jailbreing. That's been really nice way to like get a get all the content out and let people like work towards and see the vision of like what they're working towards. >> I I will say though in our studio specifically, working on season passes was so stressful because we went from adding like one gun a week to this week, let's add 60 guns.

It's like >> really hard. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That's fair. >> And you know, similar enough to Colin, we did also um things seasonally. uh we still are uh and our updates um we don't do like monthly updates. We don't do um you know quarterly updates but our updates are strong. It's player first. We do think about you know what um the players may want to see in the next update especially if it ties to a holiday or um even a collaboration. >> What are you using for signal to kind of determine what you need to do?

Are you looking to your analytics? Are you like >> taking >> between I would say between analytics we also have a large testing team >> and those are actually made up of u our past players from the previous title tower blitz and from those early supporters that did support us in our first few weeks before we took off as a title. All right, let's um let's spend a little bit of time on we've kind of covered on this or Onette, did you want to add something? >> I think there's a tidbit that could be useful.

So, like in regards to how much you're releasing content and stuff, I think we've seen it clear as day with certain trends that have come and gone that >> you can quickly by caving to demands of the community and what seems so obvious follow trends without even realizing you're doing it and tacking stuff on until your game becomes topheavy and caves in on itself. I think the reason beast swarm has lasted relative to other incrementals, other simulators and stuff is because I built a trust with the players that they knew like, okay, I'm not giving you what's the most obvious update right now.

You want the weekly five new views. You want this or that, but I'm giving you what I think you will you will um desire more in the end. And that's what allowed me to go get away with a slower cadence and gave the game more longevity. Uh so many games don't even realize that they're chasing trends that players will go to other games and get their fix there and and your game just becomes a hollow um kind of just representation of a moment as opposed to its own product.

So you had to I my philosophy I mean I work really slowly but my philosophy is to really think about your updates before you put them out there and don't just chase you know the the the short term. >> Yeah. Whenever you talk about this it really strikes a cord. It seems like you've done a great job maintaining your initial hypothesis of what the game should be and what it needs to be and not pandering to like the noise.

Like you factor it in, but it's not what's driving. >> You know, I'm very stubborn about that. I'm very sensitive. So, I do listen to the noise and I watch my Discord, I watch YouTube and stuff, but I think the reason Beastform has remained its own thing and remained alive was because I chose to stay on the the the path that I I I took when I started. I haven't brought on help. So, there's been no um dissolution dissolution of accountability or creative vision.

And um I think that that's one of the special things about Roblox. I don't have to work with the team. I have this invisible team behind me that is taking care of all the technical stuff and I'm allowed to do the more fun and simple and naive side of design and drawing and music and and uh that's what's made it uh retain its core. Yeah. >> Did any of you ever ship an event or content pack or feature that you were like, "Oops, like this is not aligned with what our players want." And they told you about it and you had to do something about it >> all the time.

All the time. >> Tell us more about that, Colin. >> I would say it's it's really difficult because it's usually the features that you find yourself working hardest on and that you're most excited about that the player base is just not jing with. And um yeah, it's it's it's a bit painful to learn that lesson and to learn that occasionally it might help to listen to more people. Um and I will say that yeah, it's also difficult immediately after that process because then you're like, do I roll back?

Do I pull this out or do I just kind of like smooth it over and hope it goes well? So I think in our approach, we've gone more smooth over and just kind of hope how it goes. But I think looking back there were some things that I would definitely just roll back. >> Yeah. Anybody else? >> Well, actually now think about it there just thinking about it just we have released some, you know, updates and uh obviously there are it's rather than the players being upset of the things that we release, it's more so misusing the things that we release.

Okay. So then we quickly, you know, just jump on it and, you know, we call that the first 48 hours. Um, you know, just being up and making sure that uh the update is just going smoothly. >> What is they're like gaining an unfair competitive advantage or what what are they >> uh it could be that it could also be with anything that's emote related. >> Okay. Yeah. So, you have to pay close attention. Make sure that >> everything's safe and that what they're how they're engaging is, you know, sometimes you can't anticipate it. >> I got you. >> All right.

Let's talk a little bit about I mean, you all have relatively different um team structures kind of coming from different backgrounds, different disciplines. How has your team evolved if at all from like pre-launch to you know later after you know launch say couple months six months later a year later did you grow your team did you find yourselves like having to hire new disciplines would love to hear a bit about that >> yeah I can go um yeah so we we've pretty much maintained our same team size actually so it launched just the two of us but you know the things that we do now I I would they are would be impossible truly with just the two of us.

And the reason I say that and what I mean by that is like the community that has grown up around us and between the QA team and our Jailbreak Creations season contest me uh members and like all these communities that do like the Jailbreak Motorsports like there's all these sub communities and all of them have their own part of the game that they care the most about and um you know so it goes all the way from like the QA team who you know will send me an Excel sheet of like every bug that I've introduced into the game in the in the past update and like double-checking, you know, uh I have Mark when I fix it, they like double check it.

E either it fixed or it didn't, they tell me to recheck it, this sort of thing or people of course are sending their ideas in all the time or the creators are like literally giving us assets and this sort of thing. And so, you know, even though it's just the two of us and and we we've had a couple contractors here and there, it's really the team is, you know, hundreds hundreds of the community and, you know, all the way to, you know, exploit and security research and and all this sort of thing.

And so, it is a beautiful thing and the YouTube creators like it it all comes together as this one big team and um it's quite fun how that just self-organizes around. >> I love that the >> I sympathize with you. Uh absolutely. Uh the team started as two, we moved to three. uh but I would say all our testers are part of the core team all our community uh you know even not being testers that we've had so many bug reports we have a section just for bugs u and we just get a lot of feedback from our community equally enough we also get some of our maps we get emotes from some of our community which are absolutely awesome some things weren't even thinking about which >> are they self organ organized, Henry, or like how much of that was you kind of setting up the mechanisms for testers versus them doing it on their own? >> We leave that option open for them.

Uh, and then we go through a process of selecting, you know, what could be seen in the next update. >> Okay. Alex, do you want to add? >> Yeah, I want to add real quick. I want to say I think um and I'm curious actually for all of your thoughts, but it it was kind of an intentional decision for us to to stay the small team. I I think very early on when we were having the success, we realized that we, you know, there's kind of this diverging path of like we could we could start hiring a bunch of people and grow into this huge studio or we could just stay kind of the two of us and and then, you know, have this uh community that that's helping us.

And I think what we thought at least at the time was that there was something unique about the two of us working together, me and Asimo. And and that that was something special. We' made something special because of that. I think you're probably >> Oh, absolutely. I mean to build off like I was I didn't think about this in rehearsal or anything but when you're talking about like the team kind it just naturally coalesing like my discord just manifested and they had to force me to get ownership of it.

Um and beast form is the way it it grew uh mechanically. It wasn't like a typical RPG with like typical stats and stuff. uh there's this huge macro community and really brilliant people like the natural macro guy that transformed the the community transformed the game and I had to demand I had to adapt to how they play and I found that so so um engaging for me. It was fun to to for me to put out my cards like these certain mechanics and see like wow instant conversion does this when they do this and I never would have thought that and to try to save mechanics that I thought were essential like capacity or whatever.

But but but essentially beworm grew into this crazy kind of hyper minmaxed um macroing game with with spreadsheets and stuff that I never anticipated. And so it wouldn't be fair to say that I designed it all myself. I think on team scale though, I don't like a contract. I don't like I don't I don't want to, you know, go a corporate route because I've seen it pan out where where like you said, when it when it's an individual or it's a friendship, there's there's a soul there, there's something infinitely accountable.

As soon as it's an arrangement to make some money between people, you will start to inevitably lose it. And uh but but the nature of you know social media and all of this is that we have that you know that back and forth and we have those guiding hands and those brilliant people that rise up and out of their own will and passion and love for your game put countless hours into these auxiliary tools and just I don't know setting up Discords and stuff and and that feels way more um more natural and better you know. >> It's so cool this concept of the broader community and influencers as an extension of your team.

But I also know for you Onette, you shared that like you show your community knows who you are. You engage directly. You shared that like you show up in events sometimes. Tell us about that. >> I'm talking about those types of things. So I mean I when I made Beastwarm I had Onet like sitting on the hives. I had on it as an NPC in one of the earliest quests. And I knew from my interactions with with like game masters in um like MMO RPGs that it was that human element and that human connection to the people steering the ship that made it feel like you were part of something communally.

And um so yeah, I would I would spawn monsters in on people. I'd spawn sprouts and stuff and in real time in real time like before measuring service like sending messages out or role playing as the bears during Christmas and stuff. what we've seen though and I knew that mechanic is was powerful but now it is so um perfected by Janzen by you know Sammy and and we just we we we we knew that it's that human um part of design that more more um I don't know just irreverent and more immediate and personal part but they systematized it and and it's just so crazy to see sorry see it blow into record-breaking uh mechanics yeah it's just insane >> thank you Colin did you have anything to add about this like your team size? >> Oh yeah, just on team size.

I think something that we've learned as a studio and also just learning talking to everybody on this panel is that it seems like when you want to start a project and you want your project to be longlasting, it can be extremely helpful to have a very passionate team who really wants to work on it on day one. And then during the course of the game's life cycle, you will bring on additional members to do additional jobs.

You'll bring on QA teams to test events and stuff, but ultimately it will always wrap down to that day one team because they are the most passionate people and they are the people who will will be most likely to stay on that project. And that usually results in just a small team size. It's easier to accomplish that when there's only a couple of people that need to get on that same page. And that cohesion is also really important to the identity and vision of your game.

If you have too many ideas clashing on the development side, the players are going to feel that. So, it's really important to just have your creative vision like unified and solid as your game continues to evolve over time. >> It sounds like kind of avoid the temptation just to scale the team for the sake of it, but really stay true to like make sure that your team is representing the values of the game and able to delivery quality >> and that is retention.

Retention is loyalty. So, they have to trust you. Yeah. >> Let's dig into another topic. So, your all of your titles have been in the market for quite some time. Let's talk about how you've got new players coming in for the first time, but you've got, you know, players who have been around for a really long time. How do you balance that? Cuz that seems really hard. How do you make sure you're not alienating a certain player? >> I I would say this is probably the one superpower that every developer wishes they could have is like see your game with a fresh set of eyes for the first time again.

It's so hard. Um, it it's difficult. I I don't have a good answer and I I think honestly we've you know for example in Jailbreak we've you know people love more robberies, more cars and it's bloated the game with like faster cars. it's harder to rob uh harder to stop them and more robberies now. Everyone's like spread thin and everyone's all across the map because they're all doing different robberies. And it's something that we just, you know, you have to look at the watch the analytics and and keep like I said even at the beginning like watch the YouTube videos like figure out what people are thinking of the game the first time because you might have designed that first- time user experience and it is so hard.

It's so easy to lose it and it's so hard to see it for the first time and it really takes intentional effort to to go back and zoom out I think. >> Thanks Henry. You shared that you've kind of incorporated some non-competitive elements to the game. >> Right. Exactly. So what we give the players at least in some of our custom servers is you know ability to you know kind of keep up with some uh trends that's going on. So we have things like uh like a hot potato game mode. we have a prop hunt.

Uh, you know, a lot of people don't really know that the um like these features actually exist in the game until they actually really get into it. And um being able to just open that up to the player and now just they're thinking, "Wow, there's a whole lot more to this than, you know, VCI." So I would just for or at least evade and for the new user experience at least where I come from on this is I play with family young family members those that are in the demographic that um you know they haven't you know they probably are playing the top five five top 10 studios they're probably playing jailbreak right now and don't know what a VAT is and I you know hey let's just join me let's play this game together and tell me how you feel about it a little afterwards >> so you can see for the first time how they're experiencing it. >> I could be biased but you know I know my little brother would absolutely brutalize whatever I say about this >> and it's it's difficult because the people we test with like our testing team they become set in their old ways and you got to find the new people.

So >> exactly. >> Yeah, you mentioned that that sometimes your own testers can get like entrenched and that you need fresh perspective outside of that. How about you Colin? I would say that our game has always tried to take an approach of just don't mess with the first-time user experience. I think we hit really well on it at one point and we just wanted to like keep that the same as long as possible, but that's not always realistic and that's not always going to be possible when you're adding so many things like features and season passes and that kind of thing.

So, in those circumstances, we've definitely taken an approach to just try and make the first few items of those new features as fun as possible and then balanced the same as our first items. So, like a great example is our first gun in season 3 does the same damage as some of the original guns you get as a new time player, but we've just made it really fun to use, so our existing players use it anyways. So there's novelty, but then there's like practical applications and how that helps you progress in the game and you kind of balance that. >> Exactly.

Yes. >> Okay, cool. How about you, Onette? >> Um, yeah. Wait, what were we just talking about? Oh, yeah. Okay, so how do you make the like the late game players and the new players? I think that's I kind of touched on this a little bit. I think when you play when you join Beastworm for the first time, the act what you do at first is very similar to what it was in 2018. Beastworm was already constructed in such a way that you have to unlock gates. you have you're hidden away in buildings and hidden away by talking to bears and stuff.

Uh it it un unravels the more complex stuff to you. So I could just hide those further in. Even stuff like dialogue and stuff becomes at first it's very literal and very children's book and then it becomes more like I don't know just teasing or longer and you know and more narrative and stuff but deeper in and so as I did updates I would just allow some sometimes you know try to smooth out the early stage but mostly I would just elaborate on those deeper layers um which you don't really become apparent to you until you've played Borm for weeks or months sometimes.

So, so it really wasn't a problem. And when you join, it still just looks as simple as it did day one, which I think most many simulators, many other games, uh, you know, they become so bloated that when players join, the the first 90% of the game is irrelevant and they're trying to rush you to the the most recent content and then the entire world kind of hollows out and collapses in on itself and and >> trying to rush them to >> and also you join and you're overwhelmed obviously like you were saying, Colin, it's like uh and that just scares people away.

So, you have to meditate on it a lot. Yeah. >> Yeah. You have to be careful about, you know, because I think Jailbreak being eight years old now, we have so many players that have really earned everything in the game. And so when we're thinking about what new content to add, it's like, okay, do we cater to these these people that have like infinite amounts of money and like keep them around or do we focus more on the people that are just starting out?

And it's uh yeah, it's a tough decision to make, especially in an open world game. And I I still haven't quite figured out how to do it, but it's important to to be intentional about thinking about that. >> We're almost up at time. Do any of you have like parting advice? There's folks in the audience that would love to hear any best practice or advice that you have that you didn't get to share so far. >> I could start.

Um, honestly guys, uh, time optimization very big. Um, you can have a really solid team starting off and they may not be as passionate as you. Be sure that you are fully aware that some people need breaks. Burnout happens a lot and honestly if you keep a good schedule, you guys will be able to push that game that you really wanted to release. >> That's really good advice. >> Yeah, I would add on uh mine's always just have fun, you know.

I I think Jailbreak I made senior year in high school. I would come home from school and just work on it two hours a day and four months later we launched the first version of Jailbreak and it was just always fun. Every day was fun working on it. I think having that constrained time like you don't need to grind yourself for for 12 hours a day. You might not find it fun to do the work anymore. Um so yeah, just uh yeah, time management and and keep it fun.

Keep it fun. >> Yeah, I would say my parting advice is keeping it fun is extremely important. I think that that's definitely something I would agree with. I would also agree that like I think when you're thinking about what your players are up to and you're trying to like listen to what they want, for every player that comes to you, there are hundreds that have just refused to talk to you or leave a comment or anything like that.

So, it's extremely important to go into your game and watch what players are doing and try and go on like YouTube and see how people are playing it and really pay attention to what the community as a whole is doing because if you try to listen to just those loudest voices, they can lead you astray. >> Thank you so much. I think that's time. There's a blinking red light, so I'm assuming that means we need to go. But how about a round of applause for our amazing developers?

Thank you so much, you guys. >> Awesome. >> We're done. All right, let's take our plant. [Laughter] It's It's a personal joke. >> Y [Music]