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eznews · 4 years

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When her middle school closed in March, Garvey Mortley stopped going to lacrosse practice and playing drums in the school band. With so much time at home, she leaned into another interest: Roblox, an online gaming site and app with Lego-like characters and millions of virtual worlds to explore.

Sprawled on the floor of her living room in Bethesda, Md., Garvey began logging more hours in the online universe, building virtual houses, adopting digital pets and racing other players in obstacle courses. She said she now plays Roblox on her laptop for up to five hours a day while chatting with friends on her phone, up from an hour or two before the pandemic.

“It’s like my main passion,” said Garvey, 12. “It’s pretty diverse, and you can meet people around the world.”

The coronavirus has created some pandemic winners as people shop in droves on Amazon, buy Peloton bikes to exercise at home and head to drive-in movies. For children, there are pandemic victors, too — and chief among them is 14-year-old Roblox, which was already popular but has become wildly so since people have been urged to stay at home.

Since February, the number of active players on Roblox has jumped about 35 percent to reach 164 million in July, according to RTrack, a site that tracks Roblox data. About three quarters of American children ages 9 to 12 are now on the platform, according to Roblox. And players spent 3 billion hours on the site and app in July, twice as much as they did in February, the company said.

Inside Roblox, which is free to play, gamers create an avatar. They can play the site’s millions of games, bringing their character into environments ranging from tropical islands to haunted castles and bustling towns. Their avatars can engage in first-person combat, decipher puzzles or participate in egg hunts while chatting and interacting with other players. Gamers pay real money — often $5 or $10 at a time — to become premium members and to purchase an in-game currency called Robux, which lets them buy clothing, weapons and even hot air balloons for their characters.

“At a time like this, where people are housebound, being able to escape into the digital world and have these kinds of fun, imaginative experiences with a friend, is very, very relevant,” said Craig Donato, Roblox’s chief business officer.

For players, Roblox has an element of never-ending discovery because independent developers create more than 20 million new games a year for the platform. And for those developers — who are mostly teenagers, college students and young adults operating solo or with a small team — the recent spike in Roblox’s popularity means boom times for them, too, since they get a cut of the money that users are spending on their games.

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Anne Shoemaker, who develops Roblox games, said she has made about $500,000 through Roblox, most of that since March.Credit…Gabriela Hasbun for The New York Times

One beneficiary is Anne Shoemaker, 20, who said she moved from Palm Coast, Fla., to Silicon Valley two years ago with $100 in her pocket to live near other developers as she coded games for Roblox. For a while, she said, she didn’t earn enough from the platform to justify turning it into a full-time job.

But after the pandemic hit, Ms. Shoemaker saw a surge of interest in her two Roblox games, Mermaid Life, a fashion-focused role-playing game, and My Droplets, a pet simulation game. Players have paid for extra content in those games, and for the hats she made for users’ avatars that she sells across the site.

Ms. Shoemaker said she has now made about $500,000 through Roblox, most of that since March. Before the pandemic, she could afford to pay just one or two people to help her. Now her game studio, Fullflower Studio, employs 14 contractors and she is plotting new games.

“It feels incredible,” Ms. Shoemaker said. “People used to tell my mom, ‘Stop letting her play this video game; it’s not going to get her anywhere.’ And it’s getting me somewhere.”

Roblox said it has more than 2 million developers, 345,000 of whom make money and who split their profits 50-50 with the company. Dozens of the top developers make millions of dollars, the company said, and top games in the past have generated an average of $2 million to $3 million a year.

Revenue from Roblox’s mobile app, which most players use, totaled $493 million in the first half of the year, up from $228 million in the same period a year ago, according to SensorTower, an analytics firm. Roblox declined to disclose its financials, except to say it was cash-flow positive.

Roblox, which is based in San Mateo, Calif., was founded in 2006 by Erik Cassel and David Baszucki, who were engineers and entrepreneurs. Mr. Baszucki is the chief executive; Mr. Cassel died of cancer in 2013. The start-up has raised $335 million from investors including Meritech Capital Partners and the Chinese internet giant Tencent. In February, when it raised fresh financing from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, it was valued at $4 billion.

In the Roblox game Jailbreak, people’s avatars are prisoners attempting to escape from jail or are police officers trying to keep them imprisoned. Credit…Roblox

In Roblox’s early years, its growth was slow. But activity began picking up in 2015 and 2016 as technological tweaks made it easier to play on phones and Microsoft’s Xbox. Roblox has now become at least as popular as Minecraft, one of its main competitors, said Craig Sherman, a venture capitalist at Meritech.

Even with its recent surge in activity, Mr. Sherman said, Roblox is “on the cusp” of more growth. He said the platform has become a foundation for people to start businesses on, similar to YouTube.

“Roblox is becoming this generation’s version of going to the mall or downtown with your friends, and Covid probably helps accelerate that,” he said.

Some children who grew up on Roblox have never left. Alex Balfanz, 21, started coding games on Roblox when he was 9. In 2017, as a high school senior in Orlando, Fla., he released a Roblox game called Jailbreak, in which people’s avatars are prisoners attempting to escape from jail or police officers trying to keep them imprisoned.

Mr. Balfanz said he watched in astonishment as Jailbreak tallied more than 70,000 players at once on its first day. The game has now been played more than 4 billion times and makes several million dollars a year, which Mr. Balfanz said he splits with his business partner.

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In the pandemic, Jailbreak has reached even greater heights. Mr. Balfanz said that on the best days, the game has 80,000 to 90,000 people playing at once, compared with 40,000 to 60,000 before.

“It was a pleasant surprise, something I hadn’t really thought of happening in the midst of all the unfortunate circumstances brought by the pandemic,” he said.

With his earnings, Mr. Balfanz, now a senior at Duke University, said he has taken some vacations,paid his college tuition (Duke’s tuition is nearly $60,000 a year) and bought a Tesla. He has attained celebrity status on Roblox, and said he is swarmed by star-struck players whenever he logs on.

“It’s like my main passion,” Garvey said of Roblox. “It’s pretty diverse, and you can meet people around the world.”Credit…Andrew Mangum for The New York Times

But the dangers of the offline world have sometimes seeped into Roblox, including reports of extremist groups attempting to recruit children and the appearance of sexually explicit content in games.

Mr. Donato said that safety was Roblox’s top priority. The company reviews game content, has extensive parental controls and filters profanity and personally identifiable information out of chats, he said.

“We see all sorts of major real-life events, from Covid-19 to racial discrimination somehow impacting our platform,” he said.

Back in Bethesda, Garvey recently used Roblox to educate others on racism. When players participated in virtual Black Lives Matter protests in the game this summer, she noticed some were darkening their avatar’s skin color, ostensibly a statement of solidarity with Black people. But to Garvey, who is Black, it seemed more like “virtual blackface.”

Garvey urged Roblox players to dress their avatars in Black Lives Matter T-shirts instead of changing their skin color.Credit…Andrew Mangum for The New York Times

So Garvey made a YouTube video explaining the history of blackface in the United States and urged Roblox users to dress their avatars in Black Lives Matter T-shirts instead of changing their skin color.

“I took an educational route,” Garvey said. “I was trying to just seem a little helpful, not just angry at everyone.”

Garvey’s mother, Amber Coleman-Mortley, said she was proud of how Garvey reacted. She said she views Roblox as an ideal place for education, especially with in-person learning and socializing curtailed.

“Play is the way that the human mind learns best,” she said.

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seanmeverett · 7 years

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Diary of a Madman, Page 26

8,300 people peering inside. Don’t get trapped.

I. A Veritable Content Smörgåsbord

Breakthrough in Biologic Intelligence Software: our resident mad scientist, Timothy Busbice, describes why time is such an important factor to synaptic growth and pruning. We also show off some new article designs.

Nike’s Secret Space Tech Line: all the pieces are there today, sometimes you just have to put Humpty Dumpty together the first time before he even knows who, or what, he is.

This Thing Called BRAND: short, sweet and to the point from Maria Woike. No, a brand is not a logo and can’t be done in a day.

Introducing Humanizing Tech’s Think Tank: want to sponsor us and get your stuff in front of all these readers, or prefer a private analysis of your own? Have a look at our custom-designed rate card. Fun.

Insights from the Davos Founder: written by one of our Piksel colleagues, Philip Shaw, who had been paying ever-so-close attention to the mountainous village of billionaires.

Iconic Images from the Women’s March: almost 60,000 people showed up to the San Diego version, based on our count.

Unpacking Mobile Computing: CES 2017 Thoughts from our very good friend Antoine RJ Wright, who was on site to take a wild array of photos, thereby stoking your fear of missing out.

The Fountainhead Movement: Members Only

Virtual Reality Versus 4K Displays: we made this one public and emailed it to all our subscribers, which may have surprised you, but wanted to give you a taste of what the Fountainheads get in their inboxes everyday. Also, frames per second matter when it comes to eye tracking.

Your Codex Vitae: what will you have that sticks around after you’re gone?

3 Macro Trends & 11 Methods For Future Growth: connect all three and you’ll have a profitable business for the next decade.

The Box Short Film: shhhh, it’s a secret (from a friend, who also shot one of Drake’s music videos).

Dealing With App Downtime: if you’ve build tech products, you’ve dealt with downtime. Here’s how we handle it.

Join The Fountainhead Movement today for $9/month (through web browsers only, not inside mobile apps) before the price goes up again.

II. 12 Tech Theses of the 2030s

Bookmark the 12 Tech Theses if you haven’t already.

Video as an App: genius music video editing that made its way into Vice Nightly News on HBO Now’s streaming app through Apple TV. So I saw it twice. It’s not crazy. It’s the power of video. Also, this matters.

Music as a Control Mechanism: cassette tapes are making a comeback, new Logic Pro X with TouchBar support (it’s how I learned doods).

Biologic Intelligence Disrupting AI: self-driving is taking an intelligence step backwards reverting to if-then rule-based statements because deep learning can’t cut it. Really want to say “told ya so” right now, but going to refrain because I decided to make this silly diary public. Anybody want to try the biologic approach? Anybody? Bueller?

Space as a SAAS Platform: 4D printing in zero Gs.

Automatic Health Optimization: or as we like to call it, bio-computation, but don’t forget about synthetic DNA.

Personal Hedge Fund: a sister publication that focuses on news, The Hustle, is raising capital through crowdfunding. Which means you can invest in a high-growth tech newsletter like this one.

Personal Power Stations: don’t forget that watches were the first self-powered power stations. Vacheron’s many complications will cost you a cool mil.

Self-Organizing Biorobotics: all of human knowledge buried in a salt mine. Let there be light. Wetware? Not there yet.

Autonomous Internet of Things: well it appears some news is leaking about Amazon’s secret self-driving car initiative that we wrote about calling it The Borg last week. Interestingly, the story started picking up more recommends over the weekend as well. Funny how quality takes time, but virality doesn’t. Are you seeing it, everyone?

Reality Retail: don’t underestimate the power of gamification.

Interstellar Sports Wearables: allow myself, to introduce…myself. Or what if we just gradually break apart the iPhone into a series of wearables (Watch, AirPods, Glasses, Gloves…)?

Superhuman Modifications: the CIA’s unclassified documents, code named Project StarGate.

III. Thoughts of the Week

Stats: we were notified as Top Writers on Medium for Virtual Reality, Health, Fashion, Technology, Science, Finance, Investing, Self-Driving, Psychology, and Social Media. So, pretty much everything Humanizing Tech is about. We also passed Swift Programming Language publication and Atlassian’s design publication for number of subscribers. Yay!

New Features: we’ve moved EVERAE, our Luxury Gift Store, to the main navigation bar. Tell us what you’re interested in, we’ll go find it.

M&A: Camel x Lucky Strike merger creates biggest tobacco. They’re gearing up for the cannabis revolution once it’s legal federally.

Throwback: our midsummer analysis predicting when Google & Facebook start building houses. Because the market is even larger than self-driving cars (and they’re already trying to reinvent cities). Heard it here first, folks.

Jobs: Angel List is hiring a Product Manager.

Paper: YouTube’s 10–year SuperBowl ad analysis.

News: Sw-rich-erland was full of well-heeled gentlechaps this week for the most luxurious horological show and billionaire palm-pressing. Meanwhile, trust is trending down, across the board while we skew towards more.

Design: check out some of our new ink-flavored branding throughout this newsletter and site. It seems our fountain pen has been busy.

Quote:

“What comes after deep learning?” is the real question you should be asking yourself about AI.

— Sean

Read The Rest

25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Join The Fountainhead Movement for exclusive access to bleeding edge think pieces and technological inventions.

Humanizing Tech is a premiere technological think tank for building humanity’s future. It covers autonomous robotics, self-learning AI, superhuman augmentation, personal hedge funds, editable DNA, SAAS space platforms, personal power stations, and video as an app. This newsletter is a peek inside the Editor’s mind.

Diary of a Madman, Page 26 was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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#Stories by Sean Everett on Medium

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