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 day-after-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 need to recreate these dynamics of actual life in digital house. Identical to in actual life, the hot button is establishing applicable expectations for individuals on Roblox primarily based on the completely 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 will be discovered. This might embrace experiences you could have seen on Roblox like live shows, digital style, immersive video games, and training. However, in a distant future, Roblox might envision various kinds of experiences, like digital courting for older age teams, indie film screenings and new types of content material reminiscent of information and scorching subjects.
The Evolution of our Neighborhood
In Roblox’s early days, Erik Cassel and I spent components of day-after-day on Roblox not simply constructing and taking part in, however reviewing content material and being attentive 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 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 Greater than 55%¹ of our customers are actually over 13 years outdated and our fastest-growing demographic section is 17-24-year-old customers, with 35%² DAU YOY progress in Q1 2023. 17-24 customers now characterize 22%³ of our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 range of individuals on our platform, our builders need to broaden their attain by extra varieties of content material that focus on all components of our more and more broad neighborhood. With builders over 17 creating nearly all of our high 1000 experiences, many search to create experiences for older audiences to allow them to work together completely with these their age. We need to empower our builders to ship one of the best and most secure consumer expertise for each age group.
Expertise Pointers and Age-Particular Insurance policies
Certainly 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 reminiscent of 9+ and 13+. These tips assist drive content material range by giving builders route and parameters for creating applicable content material for particular age ranges. Because of this, 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,” making certain 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 a purpose to construct extra immersive and interesting experiences for all ages, we’ve invested in know-how reminiscent of higher-fidelity graphics and Layered Clothes.
Most significantly, Expertise Pointers assist customers and oldsters 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 primarily based on these Expertise Pointers, permitting them to resolve what is acceptable for his or her kids. As our platform has scaled, so have our instruments and these developments now allow a good 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 secure and respectful setting for everybody. Dynamic and age-differentiated insurance policies are the important thing to delivering one of the best expertise for everybody on a single platform. Along with the sturdy security protocols we have already got in place, we’ve applied a wide range 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 have now communication security options that permit customers to mute and block customers, privacy-safe voice recordings to evaluate abuse studies and neighborhood indicators to droop voice entry to those that violate our Neighborhood Requirements. These options permit us to soundly allow immersive connection higher than ever earlier than.
An Thrilling 12 months Forward
As we glance to the longer term, we’re targeted on working with our neighborhood 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 participating and age-specific content material, whereas remaining dedicated to offering one of the 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