[Beta] Promotional Text

[Mirrattar (Miratar)]

Key Takeaways

Promotional Text is now in Beta for all creators. It provides a space for brief secondary text information, such as a limited time mode or update, so your game name stays short and important information doesn’t get cut off. A small audience may observe test variants for names and promotional text placements over the coming weeks.

Find it in Creator Hub > Creations > Game > Game details.

---

Hi Creators,

We’re launching Promotional Text in Beta, a new optional field on your game settings page for brief secondary information about your game. It’s available to all creators starting today. The goal is to give you more tools to increase playthrough, particularly on surfaces where space for your game name is limited.

This is a test, so placements and appearance may change during the Beta. We will be running experiments related to promotional text placements and associated game names for a small audience over the coming weeks.

You may see different placements and treatments over the course of the test. Here are two examples showing ‘Fall’ promotional text on the Continue row and game details pages.

Why We’re Testing Promotional Text

Many creators use their game name to show extra information, such as game modes, features, updates, events, or a status. On surfaces with limited space, longer names often get cut off, so players can miss both your name and the details you wanted them to see.

Promotional Text gives that information its own place. Your game name can stay short and recognizable, and players still see that extra information you wanted them to.

What to Expect During the Beta

• Optional to use: try it for secondary information, for example if you’re using (parentheses), [brackets], or emoji inside your current game name.
• Testing on different surfaces: variations of promotional text and game names will be tested for a small audience, starting with new users, so not everyone will see the same thing. If your game name includes information in brackets or parentheses, then for limited test audiences we may shorten how it appears on some tiles.
• Subject to change: placements and how promotional text looks may change as we learn what improves user experience and benefits gameplay.
• Open-ended: The Beta has no set end date. We’ll post an update when it wraps up.

Examples

Name only	Name + promotional text
Name: [] Awesome Game \ Dinosaur Update	Name: Awesome Game Promotional Text: Dinosaurs
Name: Awesome Game (Trading)	Name: Awesome Game Promotional Text: Trading

Get Started

• In Creator Hub, go to Creations > Game > Game details.
• Add Promotional Text. Enter the extra information you want players to see, like a game mode, new feature, update, status, or event.
• Update it as your game changes. Edit it whenever you have something new to highlight.

Share Your Feedback

Please tell us in the replies how you’re using Promotional Text and what’s working for you. Your feedback will help decide where and how it appears.

What’s Next

When the Beta wraps, we’ll share what we learned about placements and treatments and what that means for how Promotional Text works going forward.

FAQs

Do I need to have Promotional Text for my games now?

• No. It’s optional.

What should I put in Promotional Text?

• Any secondary information about your game that you’d otherwise add to its name would work well here. That could be a game mode, feature, status, event, update, or anything else about the game. If you’re using (), [], or emoji in your game name now, try moving that info to promotional text.

Where will Promotional Text appear?

• During the Beta, we’re testing different placements and treatments across the app, but most notably on Home and game details pages. Examples include in Recommended For You and the Continue Row on Home. We may add or change placements during the Beta, and are running several tests related to names for a small audience of new users. Because these are in testing, you may not see all placements.

How long will the Beta last?

• There’s no set end date. We’ll post here when we have results to share.

Will Roblox change my game name?

• No. Your game name stays exactly as you set it. During the Beta, some users may see a shortened version displayed on some tiles during testing, based on whether your name includes emoji or information inside ( ) or [].

[BrightCodes_Dev (Bright CD)]

This is actually a very useful feature. I love these advancements and hope they keep coming in🔥

I wonder if these texts would show on every device, as well as chrome, since many games depend on the usual [UPD NAME] in the game title and switching might hinder clickability.

[RRedshift (Redshift)]

Sweet update! We’ll miss the brackets in the titles tho (and the game rating I guess)

[cloakedyoshi]

This seems neat.

Are there any rules against or plans to experiment something of this sort but for genres? Esp in between game updates, using the real estate to clarify what the game is could be neat.

[TenebrisNoctua (Noctua)]

The placement may need improvement for better user visibility, people join due to updates and the brackets have been the way to highlight them.

[starcitadel]

What could possibly be in crossroads to justify such a high age rating? Surely, they’ve met the requirements for kids and select by now!

In all seriousness, this seems pretty cool. However, it would be nice if the rating^[1] would remain visible from the home page. I’m not sure how many people use it, but I’m sure someone does.

---

1. as in the like/dislike ratio ↩︎

[PysephDEV (Pyseph)]

Bit confused as to how much this would help, if at all, as it may end up with a worse effect instead – the “Fall” promotional text is below the title, is not bold, and is a smaller text size. Games (including ours) add promotional text in the title, and even add it before the game’s name, because we assume players already know the game and what it is (at least for returning players), and want to instead capture their attention by putting the new feature or content at the start, at the same level of importance as the title.

By having the promotional text in a smaller size & design language below the name it seems counterintuitive to that intent? Personally at least I do not see our studio using this feature as it is.

[NuggetLua (Nugget)]

finally we can let players know about updates without having to change the game name
thank you roblox

[Th3_avocad0]

@TenebrisNoctua

The placement may need improvement for better user visibility, people join due to updates and the brackets have been the way to highlight them.

Thank you for the feedback! We’ll be testing various placements to determine which lead to the best game performance. The ones within the post are not final.

[Mirrattar (Miratar)]

Thank you, we are are considering how this will support games when shown to new users vs. for returning users. For returning players, we have also heard feedback that the inconsistency in where this kind of information is placed in titles can also lead to names being much more hidden on home tiles due to truncation. We’re going to be experimenting here to see what leads to the best game performance, so the exact placement and treatments may evolve over time.

[Mr_Xeno (Xeno)]

Mainly in regards to the second image the promotion text ‘Fall’ might be mistaken for a creator/group field in some cases. Though the placement looks tricky to get right.

[LegionMason]

Very good update, altough I’ll miss seeing them with brackets in the titles

[Aetherium_Core (AetCore)]

It’s just an example, it’s not actually 16+.

[Mirrattar (Miratar)]

We’re looking at this specific field as providing maximum flexibility. A few prohibitions that already exist for game names still apply here, but otherwise promotional text is designed to be used however you want!

[starcitadel]

you understand the concept of a joke right

[DevPig]

this is a great update, would like to see more of creator page based updates

[Scullgaming962]

The text looks hard to see or notice, it should be bold or made more obvious in some way

[marmalade32_real]

cartman sweet.png goes here

this is peak

[Real_Daytern (Daytern)]

Might be a turning point, here’s why:

@Real_Daytern

Finally, now there is no excuse anymore for any game to be called [UPD 21​:beach_with_umbrella:] Anime Adventures (Anomaly).

A game title is one of its most valuable pieces of branding. It should be recognizable, memorable and consistent. Temporary announcements, development labels and update information belong in places specifically designed for them, such as the description, update logs, events, thumbnails or the new promotional text.

Every use case for modifying titles is at least now obsolete, here’s why:

1. Emojis in title
Example: Bug Evolution []
Why it is not useful: Although the emoji adds something visual to the text, you already have one or more visuals: the game’s icon / thumbnails. If there is an update, just change the game icon as it doesn’t clutter the title with any symbols. While changing the game’s title reranks it into the algorithm, creating an event for the update can promote it, so why not create that? This is the least dramatic of all of them as it is just a small symbol and it can still add some playfulness, I would still not consider it in most cases.

2. Putting the game’s development stage into the title
Example: Criminal Simulator [ALPHA]
Why it is not useful: If your game is broken or the core loop isn’t polished, don’t release it. Players drift away and the algorithm could possibly think the game itself is bad. Wait at least until the Beta of your game is ready and activate the Beta switch during this phase in the Creator Dashboard on Roblox. If you really want to tell the player that it is a Beta, put it into the description. Only when really necessary, put it into the title. Most developers — like in the case of Piggy back in the early days — even forget to remove it when the game is polished and it just clutters the title. This is pretty bad, but we still have more extreme cases.

3. Putting changes into the title
Example: [INJECTIONS] Ragdoll Playground
Why it is not useful: You may notice that the word “INJECTIONS” all in caps with the square brackets AND the emoji is quite long and you’re exactly right. The actual name of the game gets cut off and you end up with a game called “[INJECTIONS] …” or, if the developer decides to be smarter and put it after the game’s actual name, the update gets cut off. You only see the full title on the game’s detail page where the description AND the events are shown too, so why not display updates there? This can mess up your game’s name and is near the worst use case.

AND FINALLY, THE MOST USELESS OF THEM ALL

4. Saying that there was an update. Just… an update…
Example: [Update] Beat Obbies For Friends!
Why it is not useful: Besides the fact that this doesn’t contribute anything to the title, the player’s expectations or evoke any curiosity, it doesn’t even tell you what the update is. A halloween update, a new species or a new game mode? You can’t tell. And worse of all: When you see the title again, you can’t tell if there was another update or if it’s still referring to the previous one. Can someone tell me why developers do this, out of pure excitement or about what?

Finally, some more examples of badly named games:

Notice that they even have the title’s name in the game’s icon? Also often redundant.