The blue icon is Studio, Roblox’s game creation environment. It’s all about zero friction: you’ll see a game and be playing it with friends within seconds. The silver icon (which used to be a red R) is the player, which will load up when you visit a game’s web page in your browser and click the big green play button. When you install it on your PC, Roblox puts two icons on your desktop. If you want to understand Roblox’s fascinating culture - and you definitely should - there’s one important thing to understand about what makes Roblox Roblox. They appeal to a rare diversity in gender (Roblox’s players are 40% female) and geography.īut despite all this, Roblox is an island which the mainstream still overlooks. Its most popular, MeepCity, has had 4.3 billion visits since it was launched in February 2016. Among its 50 million games, 5000 have attracted over a million visits (Roblox’s term for individual play sessions). Roblox’s biggest games rival the popularity of those on Steam: overall, the platform has 100 million monthly players, with up to two million concurrently playing at peak times. They’ve been building up their ambitions, having become skilled game developers with keen awareness of their audiences, technical skills, managing teams, marketing, and running long-term live games. Over 40% of its users are now over 13, and its two million developers are set to earn $100 million in 2019, up from $70 million last year. It’s grown up alongside its first generation of players and makers, who are now in their twenties. It’s definitely true that Roblox has been a mainstay for kids, somewhere they can play with friends for free and exercise dreams of building worlds and becoming game developers. Roblox is also one of videogames’ most underestimated communities it’s a huge and vibrant place of play and creation where fortunes and talent are being forged. That’s 13 years of slapdash user-made trash populated by nine year-old trolls, right? Not quite. Roblox first launched just over 13 years ago. We’ll meet four of its leading makers, many of whom grew up playing Roblox, and one of its execs to understand what makes it special, and where it’s going next. This is the first of the Roblox Portraits, a series of three articles about Roblox, which is quietly one of the biggest game platforms in the world.
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