Have you ever heard of or played the amazing, popular game of Nova Hotels in Roblox? Did you ever dream about meeting the creator of the game? Let’s meet Josh, the creator of this successful game!
How did you discover Roblox?
I discovered Roblox back in 2015, when my sister was asking me to play tycoons and Pizza Place with her.
When and how did you get inspired to create Nova Hotels?
Back in 2017 I used to work at a Roblox group called Solanas Resort, which at the time was one of the biggest roleplay groups on the platform. I had always wanted to create my own group, and decided that making a hotel would be a great option given my experience and connections built from Solanas Resort.
How did you start creating Nova Hotels?
The process of beginning to build a group with no prior development experience in 2017 was a very complicated and trial and error process – I took my connections I had built through working at Solanas Resort and used them to my advantage in order to build a reputable staff team, and also a team of developers (including myself) who were all very new to Roblox Development.
When Nova Hotels got released, did you imagine many people would play the game and become part of the team?
It was always the dream, we all used to say one day the group would be the biggest hotel group on Roblox, as a joke.. we never actually expected it could become a reality. It’s insane how far the group has come, and I definitely did not expect to get this far when we were first starting out. I am thankful for how far the group has come, and will continue to push to innovate the industry.
Did Nova Hotels evolve anyhow throughout the years? If so, how?
The group definitely has evolved through the almost 8 years of its existence. Starting out as a team with no prior development experience in 2017 with a very limited number of tools compared to Roblox today was a lot more difficult than it would have been today. Over the years we’ve had around 6 different versions of the game, with our most recent one being released initially in 2020, and revamped in 2024.
How did Nova Hotels become well known?
A lot of hard work and dedication, from both myself and the team members at the time. We had a very limited advertising budget (around 20,000 robux) which I bought with my birthday money at the time, so we did not have the funds to be able to advertise very often, and the return on investment for roleplay groups at the time was not the best. We were the first group to ever introduce what are now known as “Rank Gamepasses” which offered you a rank in the group for purchasing it. We were also the first group to invent automatic ranking centres for gamepass purchases, which was a huge success, and is still used by hundreds of groups to this day.
How did you feel about Nova Hotels becoming popular? Is there anything that surprised you?
Since I started Nova when I was just 13, with a dream, it was crazy when it all began to come together, and I realised we actually had something. I spent all of my time focusing on building Nova Hotels and focusing a lot on growth and marketing, I had to make sacrifices along the way, like spending less time focusing on my education, however it was definitely worth it! Myself and my friends always used to joke about Nova overtaking (at the time) the biggest hotel group, and we never actually thought there was a chance that one day, it would come true.
How do you envision the future of Nova Hotels?
We have a lot planned for the future of Nova Hotels – it’s a lot harder to maintain a roleplay group in 2024, as the genre is becoming very competitive and you need to age up fast – a lot of the newer generation are not interested as much in roleplay groups, so you need to try compete for the group of players that still are. We plan to release new updates and eventually a whole new version that brings some features never seen before on Roblox. We’re excited to continue building Nova, and we will always continue to strive to be the best hotel on Roblox.
If a future Roblox developer asks you for advice to grow a big group like Nova Hotel, what would be your advice?
Growing groups in 2024 can be a lot more difficult due to the competition, it’s even hard for existing groups (like Nova) to keep up with competition, and is basically a full time job. The best advice I can really give is to look at other groups, and see how they are keeping up with the competition and see if you really believe you could compete, if you can, and you have the time to do so, get started! It’s not an easy process, and it is certainly not a fast one, it can take years to actually make it on Roblox, consistency is key.
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