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, folks go to locations designed for all ages day by 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 motion pictures. On Roblox, we wish to recreate these dynamics of actual life in digital house. Similar to in actual life, the hot button is establishing applicable expectations for folks on Roblox based mostly on the completely different experiences. Whereas we’re used to how this occurs in the actual world, it takes an entire 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 embrace experiences you will have seen on Roblox like concert events, digital vogue, immersive video games, and schooling. However, sooner or later, Roblox might embrace various kinds of experiences, like digital relationship, indie film screenings and new types of content material equivalent to information and scorching subjects.
The Evolution of our Neighborhood
In Roblox’s early days, Erik Cassel and I spent components of day by day on Roblox not simply constructing and taking part in, however reviewing content material and listening to how folks 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 Greater than 55percent¹ of our customers are actually over 13 years outdated and our fastest-growing demographic phase is 17-24-year-old customers, with 35percent² DAU YOY progress in Q1 2023. 17-24 customers now characterize 22percent³ of our group.
With the rising range of individuals on our platform, our builders wish to increase their attain via extra sorts 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 completely with these their age. We wish to empower our builders to ship the perfect and most secure consumer expertise for each age group.
Expertise Tips and Age-Particular Insurance policies
Certainly one of our age-specific insurance policies is Expertise Tips. Roblox content material at the moment aligns with a number of Expertise Tips teams: from All Ages, to age minimums equivalent to 9+ and 13+. These pointers assist drive content material range by giving builders course and parameters for creating applicable content material for particular age ranges. Because of this, 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,” making certain 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. With a purpose to construct extra immersive and interesting experiences for all ages, we’ve invested in know-how equivalent to higher-fidelity graphics and Layered Clothes.
Most significantly, Expertise Tips assist customers and oldsters proceed to make knowledgeable selections concerning the content material they work together with on the platform. Dad and mom can use parental controls to limit content material entry based mostly on these Expertise Tips, permitting them to determine what is suitable for his or her youngsters. 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 folks to hang around with mates, 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 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, now we have communication security options that permit customers to mute and block customers, privacy-safe voice recordings to assessment abuse stories and group alerts 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 centered on working with our group 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 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