At Roblox, we’re constructing an immersive platform for communication and connection, with security and civility at its basis, that simulates the true world. In actual life, individuals go to locations designed for all ages each 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 motion pictures. On Roblox, we wish to recreate these dynamics of actual life in digital area. Identical to in actual life, the secret’s establishing applicable expectations for individuals on Roblox primarily based on the totally different experiences. Whereas we’re used to how this occurs in the true world, it takes a complete new spherical of intention and energy to create these processes digitally. We’re excited to pave the best way for this new digital world that’s each secure and civil.
Our purpose is one platform, the place age-appropriate experiences for each life stage may be discovered. This might embody experiences you will have seen on Roblox like live shows, digital vogue, immersive video games, and training. However, in a distant future, Roblox may envision various kinds of experiences, like digital courting for older age teams, indie film screenings and new types of content material corresponding to information and sizzling matters.
The Evolution of our Group
In Roblox’s early days, Erik Cassel and I spent components of each day on Roblox not simply constructing and taking part in, however reviewing content material and listening to 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 group continues to evolve because the platform expands and our customers develop up alongside us. Greater than 55%¹ of our customers at the moment are over 13 years previous and our fastest-growing demographic section is 17-24-year-old customers, with 35%² DAU YOY development in Q1 2023. 17-24 customers now signify 22%³ of our group.
With the rising variety of individuals on our platform, our builders wish to increase their attain via extra varieties of content material that focus on all components of our more and more broad group. 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 wish to empower our builders to ship the perfect and most secure person expertise for each age group.
Expertise Tips and Age-Particular Insurance policies
Considered one of our age-specific insurance policies is Expertise Tips. Roblox content material at present aligns with a number of Expertise Tips teams: from All Ages, to age minimums corresponding to 9+ and 13+. These tips assist drive content material variety by giving builders route and parameters for creating applicable content material for particular age ranges. Consequently, we’re starting to see extra experiences which might be personalized 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 instructional simulations like Mission Mars, created by the Museum of Science, to aggressive racing video games like Jailbreak for 9+ customers. With the intention to construct extra immersive and fascinating experiences for all ages, we’ve invested in expertise corresponding to higher-fidelity graphics and Layered Clothes.
Most significantly, Expertise Tips assist customers and fogeys proceed to make knowledgeable selections in regards to the content material they work together with on the platform. Dad and mom can use parental controls to limit content material entry primarily based on these Expertise Tips, permitting them to resolve what is acceptable for his or her youngsters. As our platform has scaled, so have our instruments and these developments now allow an excellent richer, safer, and extra partaking person expertise for everybody.
Roblox is an interesting place for individuals to hang around with associates, socialize, and join, and we are going to proceed to design our platform to stay a secure and respectful surroundings for everybody. Dynamic and age-differentiated insurance policies are the important thing to delivering the perfect expertise for everybody on a single platform. Along with the strong 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, now we have communication security options that enable customers to mute and block customers, privacy-safe voice recordings to overview abuse experiences and group indicators to droop voice entry to those that violate our Group Requirements. These options enable us to soundly allow immersive connection higher than ever earlier than.
An Thrilling Yr Forward
As we glance to the longer term, we’re targeted on working with our group to carry 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 partaking and age-specific content material, whereas remaining dedicated to offering the perfect expertise in civility, content material, and connection for everybody on Roblox.
[¹],[²] Determine as of Q1 2023
[³] Determine as of This fall 2022