Page 68 - Forbes - Asia (September 2018)
P. 68
FORBES ASIA
ROBLOX
hen Alex Binello ing to comScore, 6- to 12-year-olds spend can Idol for up-and-coming game devel-
was 13, he start- more time on Roblox than any other opers,” Baszucki says.
ed playing games on site on the internet. Among teenagers, it Roblox has its origin in a company
a website called Ro- ranks second, just behind Google’s sites, Baszucki founded in 1989, an education
Wblox. He loved spend- including YouTube. hat translates into tech startup called Knowledge Revolu-
ing time with titles like Work at a Pizza some pretty impressive numbers: Ro- tion. hat company built a program that
Place and Down Hill Smash! so much that blox is cash- ow-positive on an estimat- served as a 2-D lab where students and
he was inspired to build his own. Now, 11 ed $100 million in revenue last year (this teachers could model physics problems
years later, he is the creator of MeepCity, year that igure should be north of $200 with virtual levers, ramps, pulleys and
a sprawling role-playing game that got million) and has raised some $185 million projectiles.
15 million visitors in July on the Roblox in venture funding, valuing the compa- What Baszucki discovered as his sot-
platform. Forbes estimates the cartoon- ny at around $2.5 billion. Baszucki’s stake ware made it out into the student com-
ish game has earned Binello millions is worth an estimated $300 million. (Ro- munity was that kids were using the pro-
since its inception in 2016. he gram to do things far beyond
23-year-old, who has never textbook physics problems. In-
taken a single computer pro- stead, students were modeling
gramming class, now employs cars crashing, buildings falling
a salaried creative director and over and other fun stuf that the
uses six other freelance work- program’s physics tools enabled
ers to keep his game updated. them to build.
“Roblox has just been part of “Creativity by the players
my life,” he says. “I feel raised themselves was so much more en-
by it a little bit.” gaging than the content from the
Roblox, based in San Mateo, physics books,” he says.
California, is a combination In 1998, Knowledge Revolu-
gaming and social media plat- tion was acquired for $20 mil-
form. here are millions of lion by an engineering sotware
games that players—most- IN 2017 UP-AND-COMING company called MSC Sotware,
ly young people—can explore GAME DEVELOPERS EARNED so Baszucki decided to take some
with their friends, chatting time of and igure out what he
and interacting all the way. NEARLY $40 MILLION wanted to do next. Inspired by
But what’s unique about Rob- the worlds kids had built in his
lox is that the gaming compa- ON ROBLOX. THIS YEAR THAT interactive physics program, he
ny isn’t in the business of mak- NUMBER SHOULD TOP and Erik Cassel, who had been
ing games—it just provides the vice president of engineering at
tools and the platform for kids $70 MILLION. Knowledge Revolution, “went
to make their own unique cre- into a room for over a year and a
ations. Most impressively, Ro- half” to build the irst version of
blox has turned its tween audience into an blox’s other founder, Erik Cassel, died of Roblox.
army of fresh-faced entrepreneurs. Devel- cancer in February 2013.) “Right when we started, we imagined
opers can charge Robux, a virtual curren- Part of the reason for this growth is a new category of people doing things to-
cy, for various items and game experienc- the sheer number of games being pro- gether,” Baszucki says. “A category that in-
es, and they can exchange the Robux they duced. Nearly one million games are cre- volved friends, like social networking; a
earn for real money: 100 Robux can be ated every month by more than 4 mil- category that involved immersive 3-D,
cashed out for 35 cents. (Players can buy lion developers on the platform. hese like gaming; a category that involved cool
100 Robux for $1.) games cover a wide variety of genres, content, like a media company; and inal-
“A lot of the developers on Roblox grew from traditional racing and role-play- ly a category that had unlimited creation,
up on the platform,” says Dave Baszucki, ing games to the popular “cops and rob- like a building toy.”
Roblox’s 55-year-old cofounder and CEO. bers” game Jailbreak to more mundane For the irst few months ater Roblox’s
“And many of them are now starting to simulations like Snow Shoveling Simulator 2005 beta deployment, the user commu-
earn their living on the platform.” and Work at a Pizza Place. he platform nity was tiny—during peak periods about
Kids, as it turns out, are pretty good has even spawned its own genres, such as 50 people were playing at the same time
at making games that attract other kids. “obbys,” complex, hard-to-navigate obsta- (today that number averages over a mil-
Globally, Roblox sees more than 70 mil- cle courses. lion), but the small size of the community
lion unique visitors a month. Accord- “It’s almost as if we’re running Ameri- enabled Baszucki and Cassel to hang out
66 | FORBES ASIA SEPTEMBER 2018
