Now, Roblox…
…can’t be boring.
Roblox is here to change the game.
Hello my friends,
Welcome back to another post on the “Now this… Can’t be boring” series. In this series I present a company, concept, or startup idea on the daily then break it down, give my two cents, and leave some food for thought for you, my reader.
I’m here to talk business, technology, disruption, cool stuff, and crazy shit. My hypothesises is: If there are so many great things happening as we speak and not enough light is shone on them, then someone should.
To address that, my business partner and I have decided to “Build in Public” and make it central to our startup, so we’ll be sharing what we read, like, invest in, build, and how we work. Building shit is hard and we want to make sure we keep ourselves accountable to each other and to you, our consumer, reader, listener, and like-minded tribe member.
Alright, first off, here’s a playlist of the beats I’m vibing to as I write this.
That said, let’s get into it!
What’s on call for today?
The topic is one and only one: Roblox.
“An imagination platform” and “The architects of play” are the two of the ways in which Roblox’s CEO David Baszucki refers to his creation… and dare I say, he is absolutely spot on.
Roblox is a user-generated content platform for video games where users can create or play video games made by them or by other players in the platform. It is a free game to play and a free game to create with. Roblox had its biggest growth spur and boomed during 2020 with its MAU base growing past 164M unique monthly active users. As a “quaint” badge of success, this January 2021 Roblox raised a series H investment round of $520 million giving the company an estimated valuation of $29.9 billion. Roblox came in and took the gaming world by storm surpassing the most successful games on all levels in cross-platform gaming. The game is available for people of all ages, from kids to teens and adults.
Roblox was created in 2004 and launched in 2016, but its origins are actually way long before that. In 1981, David Baszucki launched Interactive Physics to serve as a platform that allowed consumers to become digital creators through the use of the program’s toolbox that included physical objects and other parameters like gravitational acceleration, torque, and various forces. A digital creator on Interactive Physics would be able to simulate their creation by simply clicking RUN.
When Baszucki realised that the digital world was developing faster than we even imagined, he came to the conclusion that the future of digitization and gaming was massive and that we have, to this day, barely dip our toes in all its possibilities. His vision? To create the largest digital platform for creators and consumers where they could live, work, earn money, create, interact, and enjoy. In other words, to build a digital world from the creation of the largest user-generated content platform for the video game industry.
Not only has Roblox set up the infrastructure to become the world’s largest platform for user-generated video games, but it has also given way to a new form of education. I saw this behaviour first-hand a few days ago when my 12-year-old niece came to visit. She was sitting in my living room playing on her iPad, so I asked her what she was playing and she said “Roblox! It’s super cool, see!” I had been researching Roblox for a while and when she said that I immediately moved over to her to watch her play. What I saw impressed me, but what she said astonished me!
She was playing Adopt Me!, a game created by DreamCraft, where players adopt, care for, and trade digital pets. The entire user experience is centred around a player having an avatar that’s personalised to serve as an extension of themselves, they can own a home and decorate it, and act on the nominal premise of the game, which is adopting pets. Her gaming experience is much different than mine back in the days when I used to have the first Xbox and spent hours playing Halo. In this game she is interacting with players from around the world by talking, engaging in transactions, buying new digital assets, and creating a virtual life. Watching her play was a joy in and of itself and the takeaways from this experience really hit home with me, because they made me realise how gaming has evolved and what implications it has now in society.
These were the main takeaways from watching my niece play Roblox:
1. The gaming experience was on point. Accessing and making your way through the Roblox platform is simple and intuitive. A series of rows appear on your iPad’s screen with a category attributed to each row. The games compiled on each row contain a counter of players and a number of likes. All one must do is look through the category of close friends to see what they are playing, click on the one you like the most or that which has the highest like-to-player count ratio, and start playing. Network effects? Check!
2. Learning how to trade/negotiate. This was by far the greatest moment of watching my niece play. My sister, a dietetics influencer, was talking about a negotiation she had to do with a potential sponsor when out of nowhere my niece yells out “I know how to negotiate, too! You need to learn how to negotiate to make money!” I looked at her in awe and asked her to show me. She proceeded to go into her favourite game Adopt Me! and walked over to another avatar, clicked on “Comercio” (Spanish for “commerce”), and began trading some “ultra rare” pets for a coveted neon legendary cow. “See”, she says “its easy Tio Fer”… and that’s when I knew Roblox had a foot on the door with the education system.
3. Commerce! Tied to that story, Roblox offers a “license to trade”, which is a permit players get when they are trusted traders. The great part is that Roblox can remove the trader’s license from any player if they are reported for having dishonest behaviour. For example, my niece once “got played” by another player who promised to give her X pet in exchange of some potion and a few other pets she owned. She accepted the trade, but then he never completed the exchange, but took her pets and potion. Of course she was devastated, but as she said “I just reported him and now he can’t play”. As simple as that, a child can learn good practices and consequences of bad practices through a game. Business ethics has been democratised.
4. Roblox teaches you how easy it can be to make money. Similar to the story about trading, as I was in conversation with her I asked her what else she liked about Roblox and her answer was “I will make $2000 when I build my own game.” Roblox’s Studio allows anyone with a computer, internet, and an interest in creating a game to learn on their own and build their own game. It’s intuitive and formatted as part of the gaming experience. Similarly to how we used to learn cheat codes for GTA, they now learn Roblox’s coding language Lua as a way to build games. Talk about vertical integration and long-haul bets.
5. A new form of friendship and language. Roblox presents a new dynamic to language. If you want to be part of the hype as a kid, you know that in order to do so you must be where everyone else is. With over 160M unique monthly users, mainly children and teens, Roblox is the largest congregation place for kids in gaming. To interact you must speak the Roblox language (watch this) and through this you build friendships online. Your Roblox friends can be from anywhere in the world and once you plug in, so to speak, you can interact with them boundlessly and endlessly. Pen pals 10x.
6. It’s endless and they know it. Roblox presents endless opportunities for players. Imagination is your main tool and Roblox’s infrastructure your playing field. The more players join in, the better the platform gets. The more players turn into creators, the more valuable the platform gets. The vision is there and children and teens from all ages can see it. Imagination unchained.
There you have it! This was my first experience at being an adult taught by a child and I loved it because it was uninhibited and as true as it can get.
Anything that can be imagined can be created, because our brain conceives metaphysically only that which it can build.
And with that, I bid you adieu… but before I go, here you have your daily shot of fun featuring Elon Musk.
Alright, I’m out!
FM
