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, folks 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 concert events or films. On Roblox, we need to recreate these dynamics of actual life in digital area. Identical to in actual life, the bottom line is establishing acceptable expectations for folks on Roblox based mostly 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 protected and civil.
Our objective is one platform, the place age-appropriate experiences for each life stage might be discovered. This might embrace experiences you might have seen on Roblox like concert events, digital trend, immersive video games, and training. However, in a distant future, Roblox might envision several types of experiences, like digital courting for older age teams, indie film screenings and new types of content material comparable to information and scorching matters.
The Evolution of our Group
In Roblox’s early days, Erik Cassel and I spent elements of each day on Roblox not simply constructing and taking part in, however reviewing content material and being attentive to how folks interacted. This gave us an preliminary however revealing sense of the platform’s energy for connection – and on the identical 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 Greater than 55%¹ of our customers at the moment are over 13 years outdated and our fastest-growing demographic section is 17-24-year-old customers, with 35%² DAU YOY development in Q1 2023. 17-24 customers now signify 22%³ of our neighborhood.
With the rising variety of individuals on our platform, our builders need to develop their attain by extra kinds 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 most effective and most secure person 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 presently aligns with a number of Expertise Pointers teams: from All Ages, to age minimums comparable to 9+ and 13+. These tips assist drive content material variety by giving builders route and parameters for creating acceptable content material for particular age ranges. Because of this, we’re starting to see extra experiences which are 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 instructional simulations like Mission Mars, created by the Museum of Science, to aggressive racing video games like Jailbreak for 9+ customers. As a way to construct extra immersive and fascinating experiences for all ages, we’ve invested in expertise comparable to higher-fidelity graphics and Layered Clothes.
Most significantly, Expertise Pointers assist customers and fogeys proceed to make knowledgeable choices concerning 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 person expertise for everybody.
Roblox is a fascinating place for folks to hang around with buddies, socialize, and join, and we’ll 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 most effective expertise for everybody on a single platform. Along with the sturdy security protocols we have already got in place, we’ve applied quite a lot of new age-specific options, which we imagine are important to fostering age-differentiated experiences. We applied 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 explicit options and experiences. Moreover, we’ve communication security options that permit customers to mute and block customers, privacy-safe voice recordings to evaluate abuse reviews and neighborhood indicators to droop voice entry to those that violate our Group Requirements. These options permit us to soundly allow immersive connection higher than ever earlier than.
An Thrilling Yr Forward
As we glance to the longer term, 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 most effective 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
