Roblox, the Gaming Site, Wants to Grow Up Without Sacrificing Child Safety (Published 2021)

Roblox commands the attention of America’s kids to the tune of 2.6 hours per day. And it does so with games that largely avoid the violence and dystopia of those $100 million blockbusters. Some of the most popular games on the Roblox platform are about adopting digital pets, building virtual communities, and running a pizza restaurant.

What differentiates Roblox from Fortnite, however, is that Roblox is not a single game, but rather a paradigm shift in the form of “human co-experiences”, all created by its community of players. Think of Roblox as a Shopify versus Fortnite’s Amazon. Roblox is a vibrant and expanding universe of creator-built content, with over 18 million experienc... See more

Our fastest-growing age cohort is 17 to 24. That segment is growing the fastest. Roblox doesn’t really do traditional marketing. We grew entirely through organic network effects. One network effect is the UGC network effect. The more creators we have producing content, the more audience that attracts.

Roblox is not an overnight success. We’ve been around for about 15 years. The vision of our founder was something he called human co-experience: people doing things together in synchronous 3D spaces. I think people call that the metaverse now, but it’s always been what we focus on. A lot of people called us a game company, for years. We kind of bri... See more