Gamefam announced back in August that Sonic Speed Simulator, a branded Sega game that Gamefam built for Roblox, had hit more than a billion lifetime visits.
Developed in partnership with Sega, the open-world online multiplayer game allows users to play the iconic blue hedgehog and friends, speed through lovingly-recreated maps from the franchise, and collect unique Sonic-themed items for their Roblox avatars. It’s targeted at Gen Z and Gen Alpha players who may not have the same nostaligic view of growing up with Sonic.
Gamefam specializes in this kind of work. It’s a specialized skill: making something that is appropriate for the Roblox audience — many of whom are kids but with increasing numbers of adults — to get familiar brands in front of new kind of audience. We talked with Joe Ferencz, CEO of Gamefam, about this.
The game’s success is pretty unique. Out of nearly 110 Roblox games that have achieved over 1 billion visits, Sonic Speed Simulator is the only branded one – it continues to be the No. 1 licensed/branded game in Roblox history. And while there are 400 brands on Roblox today, not all are as successful.
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“What Sega did is it was so smart, right? We built this game. It doesn’t deliver the same experience that they deliver on console, but it builds huge awareness in a way that these younger players enjoy, and then they want to upgrade to the console. They you run multiple campaigns to support their console launches in our Sonic Roblox game. That’s franchise strategy that’s making Roblox work for Sega,” Ferencz said.
And Sega hits a generation of fans who can’t be surfaced through any other kind of advertising. Perhaps the only place to reach them over time could be Roblox or Fortnite, much like you have to reach such fans on social videos through TikTok and YouTube.
“Where else are you going to connect with these players?” Ferencz said.
In April 2022, Gamefam and Sega came together for Sonic’s debut on Roblox, marking the first time any triple-A gaming character was officially featured on the platform. Since then, Sonic Speed Simulator has grown to become the most popular branded game on the platform by visits, as well as engagement including:
- 16.2 billion minutes of gameplay
- 92% user like ratio with over a million “thumbs up” given
- three billion views of game content on YouTube
- two million Sonic-themed virtual merch items sold and redeemed in-game
This kind of “metaverse” engagement has driven meaningful results for the Sonic franchise off-platform as well.
Sega is happy
Ivo Gerscovich, head of Sega Brands, said in a message to GamesBeat that Roblox attracts various players by opening up an engaging, easily accessible virtual world for its users, encompassing a metaverse featuring unique gameplay and other types of entertainment.
“By partnering with iconic IPs like Sonic the Hedgehog, Roblox brings imaginative, crossover content to fans and truly offers something for everyone,” Gerscovich said. “The broad audience Roblox delivers presents an opportunity for us to engage with our existing fanbase and a new group of players who may not play Sonic as a traditional console experience but are fans of Roblox. Additionally, the virtual space gives us an arena to stage fun events like the first-ever Netflix screening of Sonic Prime.”
He also said that one of the unique things about Roblox is that it spans multiple age groups, including adults, similar to Sonic the Hedgehog’s breakthrough appeal. It’s always been Sega’s goal to bring Sonic to multiple generations of fans in new, innovative ways.
“We saw Roblox as a fun, fresh opportunity to keep Sonic current with not only a younger demographic but also adults worldwide,” Gersovich said. “It’s great to see how this has become a metaverse destination where our fans meet up, interact, and celebrate a Sonic-branded experience together. Sonic Speed Simulator showcases the franchise’s wide-reaching appeal, and we hope to continue evolving and finding new avenues for fans to engage with Sonic.”
Ferencz said, “What we would advise brands is to understand, ‘What are your goals on Roblox?’ Roblox is the biggest platform for Gen Z and Gen Alpha entertainment consumers and there are huge engagement numbers to be reached from participating in the platform, and there are interesting revenue opportunities emerging as well. All so we would encourage brands to connect with ourselves at Gamefam and to connect with other partners around the space to understand what are reasonable and achievable goals and what is a long-term growth strategy that can benefit your business on Roblox.”
The brand part of the equation is valuable if it leads to discoverability and higher revenue per user through the prestige for that brand, he said.
“Sonic and Barbie are perfect examples of that. Sonic is an outsized hit in terms of Roblox games, not many games cross the 1 billion threshold,” Ferencz said. “Brands are valuable when they when they drive discoverability and higher revenue per user than developers could achieve with original IP.”
Keeping it going
Working with Mattel, Gamefam launched The Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon game, and it’s the No. 6 all-time IP game on Roblox. It has also worked with SpongeBob and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too.
“We’re trying to bridge the IP world with the UGC driven world that is becoming the dominant force in gaming and media in real time and will continue to gain traction and momentum over the coming 10 years,” Ferencz said. “We pride ourselves on our production capabilities and our partnership service orientation, and that has led to three of the top 10 all time IP games on Roblox.
To leverage its massive Gen Z and Alpha fan base, Sonic Speed Simulator has hosted first-of-their-kind in-game show airings for Sonic streaming series, including Netflix’s Sonic Prime and Paramount’s Knuckles. As a result, Sonic Prime became the most popular animated series on Netflix during its first week, and Knuckles became the most-watched original series on Paramount+ over its premiere weekend. Sonic Speed Simulator was also nominated for Best New Experience at the 2022 Roblox Innovation Awards.
Started in 2019 as a rare Roblox-focused professional game studio, Gamefam now has more than 30 games in its portfolion with over 11 million average daily visits, 2.6 million average daily hours of gameplay and surpassing 30 billion visits to date. It makes games across Roblox, Fortnite and other platforms.
Gamefam has delivered winning metaverse strategies, games and campaigns with top IP partners including Paramount, Warner Music Group, the NFL, Netflix, Mattel, Sony, Sega, Samsung and Crunchyroll.
“Roblox is now the biggest media platform for Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers,” Ferencz said. “They spend more time on it than on YouTube, Tiktok or Fortnite. So if you’re not building brand relevancy on Roblox, you are losing brand relevancy to Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.”
He aded, “Other brands are taking up that mind share. Other IPs are taking up that mind share. That’s disruption. If you’re EA, if you’re Ubisoft, if you’re Sony, you need to be thinking about how do I make sure that my core business doesn’t get cannibalized by the Roblox revenue share over the next 10 years. That’s a real question you need to be asking yourself. You need to be making Roblox work for you. The roadblock isn’t working for you. It is disruptive.”
Gamefam’s other top branded and original franchises include Twilight Daycare, Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon, SpongeBob Simulator, Deadpines: Zombie Survival, Obby But on a Bike HD, Super League Soccer and Car Dealership Tycoon. Gamefam has also opened its own fund to invest in Roblox games.
Ferencz is hopeful fans will start making a lot more money themselves with their own fan-generated games that take advantage of different brands that make themselves available.
Meanwhile, Gamefam is working on My Hero Academia, which has had one of the biggest budgets the company has ever had, with a game focused on anime multiplayer. That one has been in the works for about 18 months.
“We’ve learned so much on running Sonic successfully for two and a half years. It continues to be in the top 100 earning games on Roblox, month after month. We’re 2.5 years out from a game that we made as an innovation project very quickly to test the waters and ended up becoming the number one brand and IP game of all time,” Ferencz said.
More competition?
It will be interesting to see if traditional game developers will start making games for Roblox, now that Roblox announced that it will give as much as 70% of the share of royalties for games that are priced at $50. But that’s a faraway notion, as the traditional game companies have not shown up yet, and Roblox gamers have embraced free-to-play games, rather than paid titles.
In the future, Ferencz sees Gamefam taking over other Roblox games, making them stronger, and then injecting brands into them, much like rival Voldex has done with Ultimate Football, a hit on Roblox that it acquired and then added the NFL brand to it.
“It’s usually hard to get the IP owners to kind of go along with it, but that’s a great move,” Ferencz said. “We’ve brought official brand IP content into other games. We’ve never fully rebranded a game as a third-party licensed IP game.”
Roblox has taken hits about safety for children on its platform. Ferencz said his company is committed to children’s safety and it has partnerships in place to protect kids as well.
Ferencz said Roblox’s announcement that developers will be able to embed Shopify in their experiences and enable commerce transactions from directly within the experience.
“With the Shopify integration, we now have more options to measure and show brands the value that they are getting on the Roblox platform, and that’s very exciting for our business,” Ferencz said.
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