Mothership hosted its first Developer talk of the year!

We had the pleasure of hanging out with Kyle Senebouttarath, a seasoned Roblox developer and business owner. He is the creator of the game Michael’s Zombies. The topic of this talk was How to Build a Community. 

First things first, we got a taste of his game with a live demo. Then he took us on a tour behind the scenes, introducing his trusty development, admin, and moderation teams, along with the other folks he collaborates with. Believe it or not, Kyle started his Roblox developing journey solo at the ripe old age of 12! In his senior year of high school, Kyle met his co-founder, Joe, through Twitter. Joe was looking for someone to create a game with. Together, they became a dynamic duo. Michael’s Zombies now boasts a whopping 128 million visits! Kyle spoke about Concurrent Users, Daily Active Users, Monthy Active Users, Stickiness, and more. He even shared the secrets of revenue analytics and how revenue is divvied up among the team.

Kyle showed some ads he created with Joe, in the beginning, to accrue traffic to their game. He spoke on how important building a community for people to find is. He stressed the importance of creating a welcoming community where players can hang out, including a Discord server complete with chat filters, bots, and trusty moderators to keep the peace. It’s on this platform that users hear about announcements, sneak peeks, updates, find gaming buddies, and a whole lot more. On top of that, Kyle uses his Twitter to post work in progress. As his game naturally grew from his efforts, content creators began to make videos on their own behalf. He talked about how this occurred naturally for him and helped Michael’s Zombies gain popularity. Kyle supports these creators with resources like a wiki page, sneak peeks, and public assets for their videos and thumbnails. He also stressed the importance of clear communication with content creators, as they’re basically free advertising.

All in all, our first dev talk was a blast! A bunch of eager students joined us, ready to soak up the knowledge about the importance of community building and how a successful developer can supercharge their community. Kyle’s success story was nothing short of inspiring and left everyone fired up for more! 🚀🎮

Check out Michael’s Zombies and more about Kyle here:

• Michael’s Zombies
• Wiki Page
• Kyle’s Twitter