Here in North Carolina, it reached a balmy 104° Fahrenheit the other day. (That’s 40°C for everyone who reads the temperature incorrectly.) Safe to say it’s Summer, which means the kids are playing Roblox - and so are we.

You’re reading the newsletter of Old Glory Studios, an independent entertainment studio crafting high-impact games and narrative experiences for global audiences. If this was forwarded to you, hit the link and

As we return to the drawing board with Project Marion, Old Glory Studios is also making a return to UGC (user-generated content).

In games, UGC refers to creating experiences within existing platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite. When we founded OGS, we made rapid iteration a core part of our development philosophy; when we fail, we “fail quickly.” The faster we can test ideas, the faster we can improve them, and UGC allows us to do exactly that.

Those of you who’ve followed us for the last couple years know that the studio’s first release was a free Fortnite Island called Seek and Destroy. Our original intent with Seek and Destroy was to test out certain designs and to get audience feedback.

With Project Marion, we started by building in Arma III’s Eden Editor. In just three days, we were able to make the prototype for a round-based team vs. team experience, complete with a fortification mechanics, objective capture, vehicles, and more weapons than our last project had in over two years of development.

The prototype was everything we designed it to be. But once we started playtesting, we found its fatal flaw: will all of those systems, it was too complicated to be fun. Just like with our past projects, we want Project Marion to be easy to pick up and difficult to master. This iteration is too difficult to pick up.

We failed quickly, and we learned that a platform founded on tactical immersion wouldn’t fit our needs. We adjusted course.

With those learnings in mind, we've decided to continue development in Roblox.

Roblox has a few technical advantages over both the Eden Editor and Fortnite. The platform is more accessible, requiring lower specs and featuring better mobile optimization. It’s much easier to script in Roblox, allowing us to iterate so much faster. And the content pipeline is much more efficient.

(Roblox also has a lot more players. Fortnite’s Daily Active Users (DAU) averages in at 20-30 million people a day. Roblox’s DAU averages 140 million.)

We’re embracing our capabilities as a hybrid Roblox and traditional game developer, following the lead of studios who’ve successfully released experiences on the platform, including Sega, who released Sonic Speed Simulator, and Starbreeze Studios, who released Notoriety: A PAYDAY® Experience.

We’ve already completed the core game loop, and we should be able to release a polished Victory's Grave Roblox experience before the end of the year.

If you're interested in helping shape the future of the project, join us on Discord and let us know you want to playtest.

For the OGS esports fans! Deadlock is Valve’s upcoming hero-shooter MOBA, where two teams of six players battle to destroy the enemy’s base while controlling powerful heroes with unique abilities. Even before its full release, the game’s player base exploded to a peak of over 170,000 concurrent players on Steam, showcasing massive community excitement.

If you’re hungry for the latest on Deadlock esports, community happenings, and big sponsor news, make sure you’re following our very own Community Developer Tone and his excellent newsletter on Medium.

In his latest edition, Tone breaks down how Deadlock Night Shift just landed another massive sponsor, Walmart, for their $12K Night Shift Open, joining Intel and Newegg. He also chats with caster Jake about the challenges and opportunities of building a brand-new esports scene from the ground up.

Check out the article and subscribe. It’s insightful, well-written, and exactly the kind of coverage that helps a community grow.

When the studio was founded over two years ago, this isn’t where we expected to be. The industry has changed, our plans have evolved, and we've adapted along the way. We really appreciate your continued support.

See you in the next Dispatch!

—Lewis Manalo, Executive Producer

Be bold. Be dangerous.