Top 10 Roblox Brand Games (Dec '23)

YouTuber Mark Rober's new educational Roblox experience has strong launch 🚀

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Every week we publish exclusive research about how brands are activating on the Roblox platform. At the start of each month, we gather data on how many visits branded experiences have accumulated during the previous month to see what's currently popular on the platform.

-1% Monthly Decrease Across Top 20 Branded Games

When looking at the top 20 branded games combined, overall visits decreased -1% month-over-month. In November, the top 20 games collectively had 112.9 million visits, versus having 113.1 million visits in October.

Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon Has 2nd Strong Month

Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon had a -19% decrease MoM, but it still managed to reach 32M visits, which is very strong. How strong? 32M is the 2nd highest monthly total we've seen all year, surpassed only by the 43M visits Barbie had last month. Even if Barbie slows down with another decrease next month, the experience should still be able to claim the top spot by a wide margin.

Strong YouTube and Roblox Connection

Most people reading this probably don't know this, but I was a YouTuber between 2011 - 2014. While most of my videos weren't super popular, my channel was part of PBS Digital Studios, and I did manage to film a cool video with Cookie Monster that's at nearly 450K views.

When I look at Roblox now, it reminds me a lot of YouTube back in 2011. You have this growing platform with a lot of scale and engagement that's driven by user-created content. And you have lots of brands trying to figure out how to use the platform to reach young audiences. 12 years ago, brands were turning to YouTube to reach millennials. Now brands are turning to Roblox to reach Gen Z.

But beyond those comparisons, there's a strong, tangible connection between YouTube and Roblox.

In fact, Roblox's Todd Lichten, Head of Entertainment Partnerships, recently posted that there are over 275M+ views of Roblox content on YouTube EVERY SINGLE DAY...

So it should come as no surprise that we've seen our first native YouTube creator break into my top 10 monthly brand rankings list.

YouTuber Mark Rober Has Successful Roblox Launch

Mark Rober is not the first YouTube creator to launch on Roblox.

PocketWatch launched a Ryan's Toys experience that currently has 5.9M lifetime visits.

A couple of months ago, Moonbug Entertainment brought Blippi to the platform, and the Blippi's Playground experience has surpassed 1.1M visits thus far.

Influencer Karl Jacobs partnered with Roblox-focused YouTuber KreekCraft and Misfits Gaming to create a Roblox studio called Pixel Playground, which released the Game Show experience, which has 2.7M visits.

Off of Roblox, top YouTuber Mr Beast launched on Fortnite last year, offering players a massive $1M reward.

Despite all of these previous efforts, Mark Rober appears to be the first YouTuber to really make a successful virtual experience with the potential for serious staying power.

At the time of this writing, Build a Rocket VS Mark Rober on Roblox has 6.3M visits, 19 minute session length, and a 93% user rating. Those are all very strong numbers when compared with other branded experiences.

Clearly, this branded experience has taken off (pun intended). 🚀

What's the Mark Rober Experience About?

A former NASA and Apple engineer, Rober creates video content about science. Within his Roblox STEM-focused experience, players build rocket ships out of a variety of materials. When you start out, you have very basic materials such as mud. But as you level up, you can unlock more sturdy substances.

Here's more from the experience's description:

🚀🚀 1 LIKE = 1 Acorn for Phat Gus 🚀🚀

🔥 More FREE LIMITED UGC at 75,000 LIKES! 🔥

🏗️ Use Your Engineering Skills to Construct Epic Rocket Ships!
🤝 Build Wacky Rockets with Your Friends at CrunchLabs!
🚀 Launch your ship into space and fly through treacherous obstacles
🪐 Discover epic universes and explore unbelievable planets
⛏️ Mine new resources to build even bigger and better ships
⚔️ Help Mark Rober defeat Fat Tail and save Phat Gus

Tags: Build a Rocket, Sandbox Game, Space Travel, Shuttles, Rockets, Mark Rober, Physics, Engineering, Build Box, Buildbox, CrunchLabs

The experience features the branding of CrunchLabs, which is a subscription box company Rober founded that offers children monthly STEM activities to do at home.

Given that CrunchLabs' target user probably spends a lot of time on Roblox, this brand activation makes a lot of sense. CrunchLabs' core target audience is probably hard to reach on other platforms, so Roblox is likely a must-have marketing channel, not a nice-to-have one.

How Has the Mark Rober Roblox Experience Been Successful?

While I've only played the game briefly, it is interesting to see several tactics that the Wonder Works Studio development team, who built this game, employed to optimize it.

One tactic they leveraged is offering a reward of Free UGC at 75K Likes. This has been effective in driving a strong user rating, which is at 93%. Lots of Roblox players want free UGC, and giving an experience a like to get closer to free UGC is not a big ask.

In addition to LIKE rewards, the game employs some interesting tactics to encourage long session times. For example, this Free UGC of an Octopus Head (pictured below), requires players to level up and play the game for 30 minutes.

The need to play the game and spend time in the experience can have positive impacts on organic discovery via the Roblox algorithm. And that organic discovery can unlock millions of free visits.

On the right side of the Heads Up Display, I noticed a button that says, "AFK," which stands for "away from keyboard." This is a term used to describe player behavior where players step away from their keyboards or device in order to do something else. While they are AFK, their accounts accrue more credit in the game, whether from collecting in-game currency or something else beneficial, such as the ability to unlock free UGC.

Here's a look at the AFK mode description that rewards players with a special in-game Octopus Cannon item for being in AFK mode.

After clicking the "continue" button, players are then teleported to another area, where the screen shows this avatar and on-screen clock...

This AFK mode is certainly helping the experience get long session times, which (yet again) is likely helping it get surfaced organically by the Roblox algorithm.

Since this AFK mode doesn't lead to actual engagement, it will be interesting to see how this experience performs in the coming months. That's because I imagine that the AFK Mode is good at driving longer session times, but not necessarily retention. If a player spends a lot of time in AFK Mode, will they necessarily want to come back? I'm not so sure.

However, if the game is able to sustain its strong visit and engagement numbers in the coming months, we might see more games offering AFK modes in order to gain favor with the mighty algorithm.

Brands Ranked 11-20

Here are the remaining top-performing brands from this past month:

11. e.l.f. Up! - 2.5 million

12. Alo Sanctuary - 2.1 million

13. Squishmallows - 1.9 million

14. Cartoon Network Game On - 1.8 million

15. Sesame Street Mecha Builders - 1.7 million

16. NERF Extraction - 1.68 million

17. Twice Square - 1.6 million

18. NERF Strike - 1.3 million

19. NFL Super Tycoon - 1.1 million

20. Tommy Play - 1 million

e.l.f. UP!

Another notable branded experience to enter the platform is e.l.f. UP! from beauty brand e.l.f. cosmetics.

Here's more about it from the description:

🎉[UGC Countdown] Next e.l.f.~ing UGC being announced in 2 days! 

It’s time to turn your side hustle into your e.l.f.~ing dream business! Welcome to e.l.f. UP!, a dynamic tycoon adventure where you can unleash your creativity as a change maker and become a force for good in the world!

🛍️ Create your own super store to attract customers!
🙌 Collaborate with others to reach community goals!
✨ Upgrade and personalize for max income!
💪 Disrupt the norm and expand to new heights!
🏦 Rebirth to earn keys and unlock new shops!
💖 Transform your dream business!
👑 Craft a diverse and unique e.l.f.vironment!
🌟 Earn tickets and redeem them for FREE UGC!
 👍 LIKE and JOIN our group to ☸️ SPIN THE WHEEL and earn rewards and boosters daily 🎁

Built by Supersocial
Brought to you by e.l.f.
 
This experience may contain advertising. Some items and features may require payment using Robux.

This experience has caught my attention by being actively promoted across Roblox's on-platform ad units. Here's a look at a Roblox portal ad, featuring e.l.f. UP!, that's within the popular game Obby But You're on a Bike.

Roblox Paid Advertising Is Important to Successfully Launch a Branded Experience

This e.l.f. example shows how paid advertising is playing more and more of a role in branded experiences finding an audience and surpassing millions of visits.

Previously, brands were able to give away unlimited quantities of 5 free UGC items, which was huge in driving discovery and player acquisition.

But now brands must pay to mint free items, which drastically impacts the amount they can give away. To mint 10K items to give away for free can cost between $2500 - $3500, depending on what type of item it is.

Not having budget to pay for this free UGC limited minting fees can hurt brands looking to amass lots of visits to their experiences. Therefore, brands need to consider having UGC minting fee budget and/or budget for running paid portal ads or sponsored experience ads to drive traffic to their games.

Lots of brands are building custom experiences on Roblox, but not all of them are leveraging paid ads to reach the massive Roblox audience, which is currently 70M DAUs. For those smart brands that do set aside meaningful marketing budgets (of at least $25K-50K) to promote their experiences, successfully connecting with Gen Z players is virtually guaranteed.