What makes Brookhaven a true RPG

ROBLOX's slogan is "powering imagination" and Brookhaven adheres to this ethos. The ability for players to construct their own storyline, characters, quests, and teams from scratch, without needing to pay or possess technical knowledge, is what makes "Brookhaven RP" a true RPG.

What's so special about Brookhaven?

• Freebies

• Regular Updates

• Real time communication

• Small Map compared to other RPG games

• Meant for kids (Brookhaven is Roblox of Roblox)

• How they gained so much popularity (YouTubers)

• Stealing the limelight from old games

Freebies

Brookhaven understands kids love for free items, ensuring there are no barriers to entry, no gatekeeping, and minimal monetization items in the game, it also offers tons of freebies such as houses, cars, emojis, characters, and more. In contrast, other RPG games like BloxBurg charge players just to play and offer fewer number of free UGC assets.

Brookhaven doesn't just offer a handful of free items but provides hundreds across various categories, creating a significant attraction for kids.

Regular Updates

Upon entering the game, you'll notice weekly updates in the right corner of the screen. Last week, they added 70 new props, a significant number considering most of these props are available for free. This is what makes the game engaging— it continually offers something new, ensuring players never get bored.

Some players visit Brookhaven simply to try out the free props, even if they're not interested in the gameplay. This strategy effectively helps in retaining players.

Real time communication

The essence of RPG lies in communication, enhancing the gameplay experience. Brookhaven offers several real-time communication features. The first is a live chat, which allows players to interact. More appealing to Gen Z, however, is the use of emotes, allowing the avatar to express various emotions, providing an immersive form of communication. Emotes are to Gen Z and Alpha what emojis were to previous generations.

Small map size

A crucial element of an RPG is the size of its playing field, which is different from open-world games. For instance, the map of Brookhaven is considerably smaller than those of other RPG games such as LiveTopia and Bloxburg. This smaller map size increases the likelihood of players encountering with each other and making the game more social and engaging. The true essence of RPGs is about players role-playing with each other, not getting lost in expansive maps. RPG games with larger maps can often disorient players.

Meant for kids

Criticism of Brookhaven often comes from adults on social platforms, who argue that the game's graphics are outdated and there's little to do. Despite this, the game consistently maintains over 500,000 concurrent users. This suggests that the negative feedback is coming from the wrong demographic. Specifically designed for children, Brookhaven's aesthetics, graphics, RPG activities, and free props are all carefully crafted with a younger user base in mind. The game's commitment to its young audience is further demonstrated by the decision to disable voice chat for the safety of children.

How they gained popularity

Non-gamers often wonder how Brookhaven amassed over 43B visits. The answer lies in its core gameplay experience and its impact on social platforms.

Brookhaven allows players to express their creativity and assume any identity. As a result, users, particularly YouTubers, have started creating content based on Brookhaven. The ability to customize avatars, use emotes, and participate in RPG activities enables players to create their own gameplay narratives. This has led to a surge of Brookhaven content on YouTube.

Content creators are even producing full-length movies on Brookhaven, attracting millions of viewers.

YouTube - BaconHair Originals

YouTube - Angelazz Brookhaven

Stealing the limelight from vintage games

Adopt Me was once the most popular Roblox game, but it has been overshadowed by Brookhaven. Initially, people played Adopt Me for its RPG elements. However, the game now mostly revolves around pet breeding and trading, leaving the RPG aspects nowhere to be found. As a result, the audience from Adopt Me migrated to Brookhaven. Also, the second most popular Roblox experience, Bloxburg, required paid access. Brookhaven swept away their audience too with freebies.

Another factor contributing to Brookhaven's success is its graphics, which closely resemble the old 2014-15 Roblox aesthetics. This appeals to long-time loyal Roblox users who still care about the bloxy graphics.

So what makes Brookhaven so special?

Everyone has a bit of main character syndrome, where they believe the whole world revolves around them, especially children who often remain lost in their fantasies. Brookhaven has identified this core psychological need of humans and has built a completely user-centric, true role-playing game where the goals and rules of the game are set by the players, resulting in a world that completely revolves around them.

Game Mechanics

One of the most interesting things about Brookhaven is that it has no visible core loop. This means that as soon as the user hops into the game, the algorithm does not forces the user to perform certain tasks, but rather allows the users to craft their own journey.

Let's understand this better with an example. We have seen kids at a park. What do they do there? They run around, tag each other, and come up with their own games and stories. This tells you a lot about kids; all they need is the freedom to express themselves, and they can come up with the most creative ideas. Brookhaven mirrors this concept. It's like a digital playground for children, offering boundless opportunities and numerous free accessories to help them bring their ideas to life.

Core Mechanics

The core mechanics of Brookhaven encourage players to explore, whether it's the map, avatar customizations, or made-up activities. Exploration is the key mechanic of the game, and everything revolves around it.

User onboarding

Consider this intro screen of Brookhaven. As soon as any player opens the game and clicks on the "Play" button, this is where they land.

Are there any walkthrough guides, NPCs, or taglines to guide you?

No, the game doesn't provide these because it doesn't aim to control your journey. Instead, it encourages you to explore and personalize the environment to create your own adventure.

So, exploration is essential here, but how does the game motivate users to explore?

This is where Brookhaven's real brilliance comes in. It promotes exploration by enabling access to tons of free customization features (sub-mechanics of the game). This is a significant reason why they've included a customization tab on the home screen, rather than a walkthrough guide.

The game offers many customization features that appeal to kids. These include options such as playing your own choice of music, changing the speed and color of your car, having a companion pet, earning free badges, and creating your own role-play activities. These features ensure the platform remains engaging and encourages users to explore more.

The core loop of the game is about exploration, with customization serving as sub-loops. The more time users spend building characters, the more likely they are to showcase them to others. This brings us to a crucial question:

How does Brookhaven brings back half a million users everyday to explore the game?

The short answer: By linking player’s identity to the game.

User Retention Strategy

The core mechanics of Brookhaven make the game engaging for the users, while the sub-mechanics focus on user retention. The game employs psychological elements to keep the user hooked and bring them back to platform.

Humans become deeply attached to things they put effort into building. Their houses, jobs, families, relationships, etc., all require effort on their part to come into existence. Spending time building something leaves a little piece of you in it, which is why you become so deeply attached to it.

Importance of customization

Brookhaven and many other games use this psychology to keep users engaged. Offering free customizations helps users form a connection with the game. Consider a child spending an hour creating their avatar, customizing hair color, facial features, and buying virtual clothes and accessories. As they do this, they link their identity with the avatar, there's a part of them in the avatar!

This explains why Brookhaven offers numerous free customizations. Users can modify not just their avatars, but also the game's aesthetics, environment, and their roles. The more they personalize, the stronger their connection gets with the game.

Besides the psychological aspect, the social component is also crucial for user retention. As we've observed, Brookhaven has evolved into a social platform for children to interact with their peers, acting like their version of Facebook or Instagram.

Brookhaven users develop a virtual persona through in-game customizations. As they build upon this virtual persona, their identity becomes tied to the game. This bond only strengthens over time, continually drawing them back to the platform.

Where attention goes, commerce follows

Every era of the Internet has had its favorite child. In the early 2000s, it was blogging platforms. Then, in the late 2000s, the rise of social platforms made the Internet more immersive with visuals. In the mid-2010s, YouTube and TikTok skyrocketed the growth by featuring immersive short videos. Now, platforms like Roblox and Fortnite are taking immersion to a whole new level with experience-based activities, rather than relying on image/video format.

One thing that is common among all of these platforms is that as soon as they started to grab people's attention, brands followed immediately to monetize that attention. Gamified social experience platforms are the next generation of attention grabbers!

On the contrary, social media is evolving to become more immersive and expressive, with each generation shaping it to reflect their preferences. Roblox is the social media of generation alpha (kids <12), a platform that has redefined the way people connect.

A new era of socialization

We live in an age where a person's virtual identity matters more than their real-life identity. People care deeply about how their Instagram profile looks, or how many followers/subscribers they have on Twitter/YouTube. Brands understand that people are deeply connected with these platforms. That's why they advertise there; they know that people will show up.

Roblox is the Instagram of the new generation, and its most popular page is Brookhaven. It presents an untapped opportunity for brands to grab the attention of the next generation of consumers. However, this audience does not perceive the Internet the same way we do. The new generation has its own unique way of socializing.

Know the Generation Alpha

How the new generation socializes:

Instead of profile pictures, they have virtual avatars. Instead of photo filters, they customize the avatar. Instead of home feed, they have virtual home space. Instead of texting, they communicate in gamified human co-experiences.

Brookhaven receives an average of around 50M daily visits, with an estimated session length of 15 minutes. A lot of attention is generated within the game, and this attention is a pathway for brands to establish their identity with a younger audience. However, it's crucial to identify which category of brands can leverage Brookhaven the most effectively.

Ideal brands for Brookhaven

There are specific set of brand categories that can extract most value via Brookhaven integration.

Luxury brands

Most of the Brookhaven customizations are related to avatar accessories, and kids spend millions every year to buy these UGC accessories in the game. ****This means there's a high demand for custom avatar accessories, and consumers also have strong purchasing power, presenting a great opportunity for apparel brands. All they have to do is come up with avatar accessories that resonate with kids.

Gucci, H&M, and elf Beauty have gained an enormous amount of success with their native experiences. However, if luxury brands want to make a gentle start on Roblox without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on native experiences, then partnering with a game like Brookhaven to sell custom UGC assets would be an ideal start for them.

Automobile brands

After avatar accessories, vehicles are the second most important customizable assets in Brookhaven. Most users explore the game using a vehicle. Also, considering the fact that Brookhaven provides free vehicles to kids and allows them to customize its color and speed, shows how important vehicles are to the game.

This presents a wonderful opportunity for any automobile brands that want to build recognition among the next generations of consumers. They can either integrate custom UGC cars within Brookhaven or can use an immersive ad portals to navigate kids from Brookhaven to their native experience.

Furniture brands

Household furniture brands could greatly benefit from Brookhaven. Houses, like vehicles, play a pivotal role in keeping users engaged in the game. Brookhaven offers these houses for free, all of which are customizable and filled with a variety of furniture - much like real homes. This presents a unique opportunity for furniture brands.

Kids take pleasure in crafting their dream house. They want specific shaped couches, unique looking TVs, and maybe a rainbow-colored house. Kids want their houses to be unique, and furniture brands can cater to this need. Perhaps a curved Sony LED TV placed on top of Italian marble could make the difference for them?

The integration of custom furniture may be a peculiar form of brand advertisement in Brookhaven, but it effectively provides insight into the future generation's interior design preferences.

Custom shops

When players spawn in the middle of Brookhaven, they are surrounded by numerous shops just seconds away. These shops span various categories, such as Ice Cream Parlors, Gaming Arcades, Coffee Houses, Salons, Libraries, etc. Each of these shops offers free products and role-playing activities for the users. The free products attract users to the shop, while the role-playing activities keep them engaged.

Brands can also leverage this unique opportunity by opening a virtual shop inside Brookhaven, selling their free products, and offering some role-playing activities for kids. This concept closely resembles the idea of Second Life and presents an opportunity for brands to make kids feel they’re not just consumers, but the ones who are building the brand.

How to launch your brand on Roblox

After understanding the psychology, mechanics, and opportunities presented by Brookhaven, it's crucial to learn how your brand can navigate its path inside the game. We recognize that establishing an identity on Roblox can be difficult for new brands due to its complex system.

This is where Metakey come into the play. We help brands build native experiences, identify the perfect game partners, establish communities, and plan custom UGC launches on Roblox. For example, we recently assisted the New Zealand national rugby team in launching a native experience on Roblox. Additionally, we launched our native experience, "Thor's Forge," on the platform. We are truly committed to our mission of helping brands engage with the younger generation.

Want to learn how we can integrate your brand into Roblox? Connect with us now!