At Roblox, we’re constructing an immersive platform for communication and connection, with security and civility at its basis, that simulates the actual world. In actual life, individuals go to locations designed for all ages every single day, from theme parks to metropolis parks. Older age teams enter environments that require some type of age verification, from nightclubs to some live shows or films. On Roblox, we need to recreate these dynamics of actual life in digital house. Similar to in actual life, the secret is establishing applicable expectations for individuals on Roblox based mostly on the totally different experiences. Whereas we’re used to how this occurs in the actual world, it takes a complete new spherical of intention and energy to create these processes digitally. We’re excited to pave the way in which for this new digital world that’s each protected and civil.
Our objective is one platform, the place age-appropriate experiences for each life stage could be discovered. This might embrace experiences you’ll have seen on Roblox like live shows, digital trend, immersive video games, and training. However, in a distant future, Roblox may envision several types of experiences, like digital courting for older age teams, indie film screenings and new types of content material corresponding to information and scorching subjects.
The Evolution of our Group
In Roblox’s early days, Erik Cassel and I spent elements of every single day on Roblox not simply constructing and taking part in, however reviewing content material and taking note of how individuals interacted. This gave us an preliminary however revealing sense of the platform’s energy for connection – and on the similar time – demonstrated how important a sense of security is to human connection.
Nineteen years later, our Roblox neighborhood continues to evolve because the platform expands and our customers develop up alongside us. Greater than 55%¹ of our customers are actually over 13 years outdated and our fastest-growing demographic phase is 17-24-year-old customers, with 35%² DAU YOY progress in Q1 2023. 17-24 customers now characterize 22%³ of our neighborhood.
With the rising variety of individuals on our platform, our builders need to develop their attain via extra sorts of content material that focus on all elements of our more and more broad neighborhood. With builders over 17 creating nearly all of our prime 1000 experiences, many search to create experiences for older audiences to allow them to work together solely with these their age. We need to empower our builders to ship the very best and most secure consumer expertise for each age group.
Expertise Pointers and Age-Particular Insurance policies
Considered one of our age-specific insurance policies is Expertise Pointers. Roblox content material at the moment aligns with a number of Expertise Pointers teams: from All Ages, to age minimums corresponding to 9+ and 13+. These tips assist drive content material variety by giving builders course and parameters for creating applicable content material for particular age ranges. Consequently, we’re starting to see extra experiences which might be custom-made and related for particular age teams like Fight Warriors for 13+ customers or Piggy for 9+ customers. Whereas our age-specific choices are rising, most experiences nonetheless cater to “All Ages,” guaranteeing our youthful viewers stays engaged, from All Ages academic simulations like Mission Mars, created by the Museum of Science, to aggressive racing video games like Jailbreak for 9+ customers. To be able to construct extra immersive and interesting experiences for all ages, we’ve invested in expertise corresponding to higher-fidelity graphics and Layered Clothes.
Most significantly, Expertise Pointers assist customers and fogeys proceed to make knowledgeable choices in regards to the content material they work together with on the platform. Mother and father can use parental controls to limit content material entry based mostly on these Expertise Pointers, permitting them to determine what is acceptable for his or her kids. As our platform has scaled, so have our instruments and these developments now allow a fair richer, safer, and extra participating consumer expertise for everybody.
Roblox is an interesting place for individuals to hang around with pals, socialize, and join, and we are going to proceed to design our platform to stay a protected and respectful surroundings for everybody. Dynamic and age-differentiated insurance policies are the important thing to delivering the very best expertise for everybody on a single platform. Along with the sturdy security protocols we have already got in place, we’ve carried out a wide range of new age-specific options, which we imagine are important to fostering age-differentiated experiences. We carried out an age-verification system that may be employed for future options like age-specific experiences. For instance, customers can confirm their age utilizing ID and a live-selfie view for specific options and experiences. Moreover, we have now communication security options that enable customers to mute and block customers, privacy-safe voice recordings to overview abuse studies and neighborhood alerts to droop voice entry to those that violate our Group Requirements. These options enable us to securely allow immersive connection higher than ever earlier than.
An Thrilling 12 months Forward
As we glance to the long run, we’re centered on working with our neighborhood to deliver our imaginative and prescient of Roblox as a platform for all ages to life. We’ll be working to permit older age-verified creators safely publish extra participating and age-specific content material, whereas remaining dedicated to offering the very best expertise in civility, content material, and connection for everybody on Roblox.
[¹],[²] Determine as of Q1 2023
[³] Determine as of This autumn 2022
