Devon Thome

February 17, 2024

Windows to a future

Safe to say, the Vision Pro hype got to me. But this isn't a review. It's not article number 500 of why you should buy it or why you shouldn't. You need to make that decision for yourself. It's just a glimpse into MY glimpse of what feels like a true taste of a future. Last weekend, I booked a demo at my local Apple Store to try it out...

January 20, 2024

Level Up: AI's role in elevating game dev

When you think of AI in gaming - you probably think of that dumb NPC character you had to escort across the map that kept running into walls and getting itself killed. You also probably think about those in-game dialog trees you'd navigate or the bosses you'd figure out how to defeat after your tenth attempt when you finally stopped be...

January 13, 2024

The future of gaming is high in the skies

Cloud gaming is rapidly transitioning from a niche novelty to a mainstream market force. Just last month, Microsoft expanded its gaming horizon by integrating Xbox Game Pass with the Quest series of VR headsets -- giving players a whole new way to experience ultra high-fidelity AAA games. However, the reality of cloud gaming extends fa...

January 6, 2024

How you win the race for "Best UGC Platform"

I always wanted to build games when I was younger. Some of my earliest memories of it were building parkour-like challenges in the Tony Hawk games for the PS2 (something the editor definitely wasn’t made for). Now, the opportunities to build a level, world, or even full game are endless. Not only are we seeing visual fidelity capabilit...

January 23, 2022

Everyone hates NFTs, and Twitter isn't helping

Twitter announced the ability to connect NFTs to profile pictures for Twitter Blue users the other day. On the surface level, it seems incredible. Finally! NFTs are going mainstream! Woo! Everyone celebrate! Finally, it looks like NFTs are getting more significant adoption rates and support from mainstream social networks. Except, it d...

January 10, 2022

Blockchain Games: Consumers don't care

New games are popping up that run on blockchain tech faster than they can get funded. So they're all over - and they all promise the same insane vision of creating a thriving ecosystem for THEIR virtual assets and ecosystem - oh, which is SO MUCH BETTER than that other game that came out 42 seconds before. They'll tell you day and nigh...

December 24, 2021

My self-made tool to stay on track

Merry Christmas Eve to those that celebrate! 2021 was a big year. For me, it meant having to get better with time management to ensure that the many things requiring my attention all got done ad prioritized. Different methods work for different people, and I tried a couple of them this year. Where I've found the most success, though, i...

December 3, 2021

When do you stop supporting old devices?

At what point is it fair to call a device "too old" to support? 3 years? 4? 5? It's so impressive what you can do in experiences with modern hardware and graphical capabilities. But it's all a balance of give and take. How many potential users are you alienating by upping the minimum hardware requirements? It's a broad question, but fo...

November 5, 2021

Decade Non-Competes

In the era of the internet, remote work, social gaming, and the metaverse - you'd think that companies would naturally be increasing their flexibility associated with their workforce. Letting employees work flexible hours from where they like. Giving them the freedom to get quality work done. Cut the micromanagement, restrictive practi...

November 1, 2021

How we gave away $1M of burritos with Chipotle

In case you missed it, we launched our partnership game with Chipotle last weekend. Granted, this overlapped the most extended outage that Roblox had seen to date, but it was still a fantastic achievement for our team - specifically, our web team. Roblox experiences typically live entirely on the platform. Roblox does a great job at pr...

October 11, 2021

Game 101: Reducing Music Fatigue

You know when you find that one song you like, so you loop it all day, night, and everything in between for a week straight? Then, undoubtedly, you get sick of it. The song that got you super excited every time it came on your playlist, you now skip after 5 seconds once you hear the familiar intro. The same thing will happen to the mus...

September 4, 2021

Game 101: New Player Experience

Roblox games and many mobile games are notorious for offering a poor new player experience. Many spawn new players into the same game area that returning players get with minimal direction. They’ll throw up UI windows without care and spew various buttons and elements all over their screen with little explanation. Yuck. Poor New Player...

August 31, 2021

Game 101: Habitual Players

Hey, it's been a while. We've been busy, specifically with building some of the craziest experiences on Roblox. While doing so, we've also been working on some super cool secret projects - of which I'd love to share some of the thought processes for how we design our core game concepts. You'll see some of these in action in some of our...

June 1, 2021

Let's get rid of passwords already

Data breaches happen constantly. It's become one of those things that nobody is surprised about. It's so common that even some of the top password manager apps have built-in functions to notify you about compromised logins. In a world of encryption, built-in device trust systems, and more ways to authenticate who you are than ever befo...

May 27, 2021

One month later

Has it been a month already? I feel like May was only like 5 minutes long... but at the same time, so much has happened. At the start of May, I talked about taking a break from socials -- primarily Twitter. Almost 1 month later, I'm happy to say I did. Besides, for a couple minutes on the @MelonDev account, I haven't touched my persona...

May 25, 2021

Don't forget the instruction manual

"APIs" make much of the technical world work. It's a way of letting pieces of code talk to each other when they're otherwise wholly independent codebases. Does your site process credit cards? It uses a Credit Card Processing API. Are you teleporting a user in a game engine? You're probably using a Teleport or Player API. Querying for t...

May 23, 2021

Knowing your audience

There's no single formula to follow when designing digital experiences and Roblox content is no different. After being involved publicly (and behind the scenes) in some of the most significant projects on the Roblox platform, we've learned a lot about optimizing, designing, and creating the best experiences we possibly could. Some stan...

May 13, 2021

Design creator-friendly games

Influencers have changed video game marketing. Not in the wrong way, either. Instead of a TV ad, you get a complete playthrough. Instead of a billboard, you get fan engagement. Instead of a website article, you get direct attention from a social media celebrity in your world. Your project becomes organic, natural, and associated with s...

May 7, 2021

Technical skill goes beyond whiteboards

In my senior year of high school, I met with a recruiter from a major tech company based in New York City. It was a super exciting opportunity to work at my then-dream job. At that point, I was only doing freelance and working from my bedroom. It was fun and paid the bills, but it's hard to turn down an office with a firepole to go bet...

May 1, 2021

Keeping May distraction-free

A lot is going on now. A lot more than when I usually say there's a lot. It's manageable, and most of it is fun, but it's still time-consuming. I previously talked about how I significantly cut back on social media for 2021 (and I still do), and it's fantastic. I probably spent at most 20 minutes on socials each day over the last few m...

April 14, 2021

Schedule everything (Really)

Go go go go go go go go go go! That's everything. Work. Life. Everything. Everything is always in the pace to get things done as quickly a possible and get to the next goal. Check it off the list. Be done with it. Once you finish that, make sure to do this. Check off that and go there. Let me know as soon as you're done with all that. ...

April 8, 2021

Async Work Works

Lots of companies call themselves remote-friendly without actually being remote-friendly. Sure, you may run your company remotely. But, do you ask your team to install invasive tracking software? Attend meetings every 20 minutes (or worse... require them to be in one call all day)? Base their activity on an online/offline indicator? En...

April 2, 2021

Feature creep is real.

Launching new stuff is exciting! It could be a new product, game, service, anything. The important part is you got it into the world. You have it out there. You're showing everyone your best. Or are you? Maybe it's not ready yet. Perhaps you can add *just* that one more feature. There's one quick change that would make this all SO much...

March 17, 2021

Roblox Needs a "Guest" feature

Extra steps can kill conversions. I'm a big fan of Roblox - as a company and as a platform. It's incredible what's built daily in the engine, from gaming to virtual experiences. Still, something that drags down the experience - at least in my opinion is the new user onboarding, specifically for those that want to play a Roblox game tha...

March 14, 2021

You should delete Twitter.

(From your phone, that is.) One of my personal goals for 2020 was to use social media less. And now, in March of 2021, we're about a year into that. I've spent so much time in the creator and influencer community, so social media became a natural addiction for me. Tapping into Twitter became the first thing I did every morning, the las...

March 11, 2021

Change doesn't have to be loud.

When you're pursuing a project or idea, the first thought many have is usually "how can I make change happen as quickly as possible." Usually, the solution is a lot of advertising dollars and waves made. There's nothing wrong with that, of course - it's just noisy. I've always preferred the more subtle approach. Take general, slower-pa...

March 6, 2021

Moving quickly without breaking things.

Innovation, memorability, and engagement. Those are the three key factors we target when we embark on a new virtual experience. Usually, these goals aren't unreasonable to achieve; spend 4-6 weeks planning out a solid creative, layout your groundwork, and build upon it to create something unique. Except, imagine instead of 4-6 weeks to...

March 4, 2021

You deserve the (virtual) world.

It's no surprise that due to COVID-19, businesses had to face the challenge of jumping into the future to ensure they were able to continue operations as usual. Firms that didn't use computers for much more than email and Excel suddenly had to telecommute daily. Employees had to learn to balance family challenges with a busy workday. B...