Interview With Crackop!

 On December 11th, AnimalBot99 got to interview Evan/Crackop!

Animal: Hello, why don’t we begin with what do you do on Roblox?

Evan: I am a Roblox developer that mainly focuses on programming my own games, programming games for others, making graphics in my free time (Which I don’t do as much these days, but it was all I did back then), and I also do some User interface design for a few games here and there as well.

Animal: As I’ve recently seen you released a new game as well. Anything you want to say about it?

Evan: My newest release is “Extreme Bloxikin Hunt”, which is basically an item hunt game like any others on Roblox, but with the twist of hunting for known Roblox players and developers designed as “Bloxikins” and then being able to equip them to as you find them. I used to play a bunch of item hunt games, and was a big fan of Roblox's easter hunt they had a few years back where you had to go around the big map and discover as many eggs as possible. Really just wanted to work on a fun little game for a week or two to see what people would think about it! We’re working on the first update right now, and it should be out within a day or two hopefully :)

Animal: I took some stats down to see the popularity of the game, on Wednesday around 4pm EST it had 20,932 total plays. And right now it sits at 107,105 total plays. Did you expect the game to gain such traction?

Evan: Those are very minimal stats. Normally I try to get the most active players in any games I make, not as much total visits. To do so you have to look at player retention, how fun the game is, how much there is to do in the game, etc. But I don’t think the game has gotten that much traction so far. But I did put a few ads for the first 2 days after release, to try and gain some players. But sadly it didn’t help much :/ Hopefully our next update helps turn things around :D

Animal: I’ve seen that you also have another popular game which is more RPG based. Anything to add to that?

Evan: I’m assuming you’re referring to my RPG world game? I released that game back in 2019, when fighting type simulators were pretty popular. It was one of the games I worked the least amount of time on. I only worked 2 weeks on that game up until the release, and then à few days later, the game blew up! It peaked at 16,000 people playing concurrently (At the same time), and has now gotten over 50,000,000 total visits! It was definitely my most rewarding game by far. So far that is, haha. Always working on new projects! :D

Animal: Of all your places on your profile there’s one that sticks out, a showcase. Most of the others are, no offense, following a popular trend (simulators), what made you go the showcase direction?

Evan: Most of my games would be games that try to follow a trend, or simply fun little personal projects. Most of the reason being that Roblox is my only job and source of income, I need to always be looking for different ways to try to give the players what they will enjoy, while trying to make a living doing it at the same time. But the showcase I made that you’re talking about, which would be the “Abandoned Train Tracks”, was the only showcase I ever made. It was made back in 2016 when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do in Roblox. I made it after being inspired by a real life reference image I saw, and just wanted to try and see what I could do 100% on my own building wise. Since I always mainly focused on graphics or trying to learn coding, I wanted to see if maybe I could try to learn all aspects of game making. After quickly realizing it’s much more worth it to hire other developers who build full time, instead of trying to divide my time into building, programming, and graphics.

Animal: And it’s quite a portfolio you have when it comes to the graphics and UI as you’ve contributed to Jailbreak with the graphics, icons and logos. As you’ve mentioned at the start of the interview with not doing UI/graphics much, are you trying to get back into that sort of “do everything” mindset but toned down a bit?

Evan: Yea for sure. I’m always looking for any good job opportunities that come my way. I even tried learning Blender again recently, but gave up because I don’t think modelling is quite for me haha. But yea, I try to do the most user interface, graphics, and programming that I can, so that if ever a good job opportunity comes up, I would have lots of previous work to show them, and not get too rusty.

Animal: So it’s better to have the experience sort of in all the fields (build, program, UI) as it’ll benefit you more in the long run, even if you don’t try to make a game out of it doing all the work yourself; basically side projects are the way to go to build up the skills.

Evan: Yes exactly! In any Roblox development domain, whether it be animating, building, programming etc, there’s always so much more you can learn and experiment with to improve your overall skills, or simply learn new skills entirely to open more doors for you. For example, you got a very skilled 3d modeller. Someone who is making a big game will contact you to model various things for him. But while he’s trying to decide between hiring you and another 3d modeller, he finds out that even though you’re better, the other modeller is able to rig his models, animate them, and create custom detailed textures. They are both 3d modellers, but one of them is limited to 3d modelling, the other can 3d model, create rigs for his 3d models, create amazing textures to bring them to life, and even possibly know how to animate them! So no matter what domain you work in, expanding your knowledge and capabilities for either get bigger jobs, work on multiple jobs at once, or even just making your own games the best they can be, I would recommend any developers to try to learn as much as possible and build their skills, it’ll always be worth it in the long run.

Animal: That was very well said. I think I can give you a break with all these questions and move to some “get to know ya” questions: What’s your favorite Roblox game that was not made by you?

Evan: I love so many Roblox games! There are so many talented developers, and game designers, it would be impossible for me to tell you my 1 favorite game. But if I had to choose, it would be jailbreak for more personal reasons. I used to play that game all the time, but that is the only game that has helped me in my career, and really got me known in the community. But almost all games you see on the discover page I'm a fan of haha. Though right now I really enjoy playing Epic minigames, Arsenal, and those other minigame type games.

Animal: You’ve been on Roblox for quite a while, have you had any favorite Roblox features (lighting, terrains, etc) since you started development?

Evan: Roblox is doing an amazing job at keeping their services modern, easy to use. very exciting, and they just seem to keep getting better and better. But, I have had a few favorite features. One of them being more of a programming feature; the addition of “Attributes”, which allows you to set custom properties for parts, folders, models, etc. (Which basically just makes programming easier and more fun). As well as their new lighting technology, which I find mind-blowing having seen some of the creations on twitter of other experienced Roblox developers. They’re adding so much every year, I can’t even remember everything they add haha. But they’ve definitely added some game changing features in the last few years. Really excited to see what they release next!

Animal: I must ask, how did you enjoy the great shutdown of Roblox back in October?

Evan: Oof… That was a rough one. A lot of people were lost without Roblox, Twitter was being flooded with rumors, tweets all day every day about people guessing when it’ll be back up, people complaining, etc. The only down side for me though was I lost a good few days of game development haha. Which wasn’t the biggest issue for me, but I feel kinda bad for the people who had planned to release their game at that time, and was set back weeks just because of the outage. Was glad to see that all developers were refunded the approximate amount they had lost during the outage though.

Animal: I remember asking Asimo if he thought Roblox did enough to compensate developers, do you think Roblox did enough or should’ve taken a different approach?

Evan: I think they did a great job handling the situation! Although I still don’t quite understand how a week long outage happens, I’m glad they got it resolved and hope it doesn’t happen again. But yea, I think they paid fair amounts to the developers who lost money during that time, and they might have been able to do a better job keeping us updated on the situation, but I think they did à great job compensating developers and making sure it won't happen again.

Animal: Well I think that that pretty much sums the shutdown up. But back to you, do you have any specific advice for game developers out there with the “I can do everything” mindset or just anyone first starting out trying to find their role on Roblox?

Evan: My most useful advice, which everyone has probably already heard, is definitely just to never give up. No matter how long it takes you to learn a new skill, release that new game, get in contact with the right people, just keep trying, and never give up. I’ve been learning to code since I was like 11-12 years old, and starting learning graphics since like 9-10 years old. But I never stopped practicing and trying to improve my skills; Whether that be making fan art for Jailbreak back in the day because I loved the game, to learning to code my first game, I learnt so much along the way, but I’m most proud about never having given up. It took me a good few years before I was making any decent money from Roblox, but I kept trying to make fun games, kept trying to make cool art, and eventually, things just worked out on their own! So whether you’re just starting out, or if you’re trying to be the best you can be. Keep practicing, doing research, learning new skills, whatever you can to make yourself the best dev you can be. And even if it takes weeks, months, or even years. Your hard work will pay off 100% of the time if you stay focused and motivated.

Animal: Thank you Evan for your time, I wish you the best of luck with your new Bloxikin game & any other projects you may start further down the road!

Evan: Thank you so much! It was a pleasure talking with you! :)