I don’t really understand why Roblox is so successful - you can invent all sorts of reasons in retrospect but it’s hard to validate them, and if you came to anybody back in 2012 and asked for an investment to build a platform where all games are user generated and run on a custom engine with a custom toolset and all users participate in a giant virtual economy and …, I think you’d have gotten a blank stare.
Interesting that he writes this. I don't believe you'd have got a blank stare at all. Minecraft servers with custom games had already sprung up, Second Life had existed and people were playing around with these concepts. The idea is sound, just needed execution and luck.
I'd founded a startup in 07-08 that did basically the same thing as Roblox - it was a web-based game creation engine where teenagers could make their own games (with custom assets, physics, behavior, etc.) and then share them with their friends. Gave it up in '09 when the bottom fell out of the economy and my cofounder and I got scared. This year I was being heavily recruited by Roblox and on the "meet the executives" part of the process, ended up reminiscing with David about all the competition back then - companies like Sploder, Game Closure, etc. It was a crowded market even back in '06-07.
What Roblox had that we didn't was persistence. David Baszucki has been working on this problem since before I had a computer - he started his first company in 1989 with a recognizable predecessor of an idea, and sold it in 1998. It's that willingness to spend 30 years working on a problem that builds a multi-billion dollar company.
> It's that willingness to spend 30 years working on a problem that builds a multi-billion dollar company.
Yup. This is the investor mindset. I'm guilty of selling out too early in various things, stocks, companies, etc. Sticking things out with your "investments" can have a significant return.
Knowing when to bow out early is also a valuable skill. Skill, experience and luck; sometimes in any order and quantity.
Also very interesting because I used to play roblox in 2012 and it was very alive back then. Probably not as much as it is now but definitely enough to get investments
I never played it, but as a kid in 2009 I would go to the computer lab in the children’s section of the local library, and Roblox was absolutely huge there. I’d be sitting there doing my own thing, surrounded by 20 kids noisily playing Roblox.
It’s impressive how they’ve managed to make a game with such staying power. Especially among young children, new things tend to flare up and then die really quickly. Persisting through generations of kids is a huge accomplishment.
Have you ever noticed, certain memes are enduring in kid culture? e.g. the floor is lava, Opposite Day. As I understand Roblox it’s perfect for slotting into part of kid culture as the virtual playground and neighborhood.
New things flare up and die but the basic thing or idea endures and Roblox is the base upon which things flare up and die.
I never expected this sudden resurgence in users and I hope they continue to do well. I owe Garry’s Mod and Roblox a debt for getting me excited about Lua scripting, which is some of the earliest programming I did.
I hope these games or similar games stick around and continue to get kids excited about slinging bits and the miracle of being able to create something using just your computer.
> The idea is sound, just needed execution and luck.
Honestly, I think sandbox games take way more "luck" than other means. There is a serious chicken/egg problem with them - meaning you need hardcore early adopters that will create content on your behalf...or simply fake it.
Yes, I think the success is pretty clear. It's kind of what I thought Minecraft might have (should have) developed into but it never really had the sort of accessible development tools that Roblox has. To the best of my knowledge there's still no official visual development toolset of that sort. A real missed opportunity. Seeing what modders had been doing with it for years should have lit a fire under Microsoft on that front. Heck I thought that was the whole reason they bought Minecraft.
From a a tech standpoint, Roblox definitely has a dramatic lead over vanilla Minecraft's tools for creating arbitrary added content.
That said, if you factor in the tools the Minecraft community have built (namely the Force modloader, and the Bukkit multiplayer plugin system), it becomes a lot harder to say. On one hand, the barrier to entry in Roblox is practically non-existent (I remember screwing around with lua scripts while I was still in elementary school), while on the other hand I've seen far more technically impressive content come out of the Minecraft modding world.
Interesting that he writes this. I don't believe you'd have got a blank stare at all. Minecraft servers with custom games had already sprung up, Second Life had existed and people were playing around with these concepts. The idea is sound, just needed execution and luck.