The Roblox Vision of the Metaverse

Another vision of the Metaverse is shared by David Baszucki, Founder and CEO and Roblox, a popular game creation site where users design and upload their own games as well as play other games in a multiplayer environment.

Speaking at the 2020 Roblox Developers Conference David gave this presentation. From 16m:20s David shares the ultimate vision of Roblox, to realize the concept of the Metaverse fantasized about for years by the sci-fi community and more recently by the tech industry.

The Roblox team envisage very fun, large-scale participation scenarios, like a medieval battle with 50,000 players attacking a destructible castle. They’re starting to pioneer the first building blocks of this through hosting their town hall meetings virtually on Roblox.

Key technology innovations to simulate the real world include great avatars and the ability to simulate how the real world sounds. For example being able to whisper to the person next to you while you can still hear the loud speaker announcements, what they call ‘spatial audio’.

Another example demonstrating the concept is their One World virtual concert, and given the global pandemic it’s likely to prove a hugely popular trend, another great opportunity for their developers.

Major players are beginning to emerge as the first foundations of the Metaverse, like Epic Games (Fortnite) and Facebook, and without doubt Roblox is among that pioneering group. Early in 2021 they went public, achieving a $38 billion market cap, with their prospectus describing how this funding will drive their investment into and building of the Metaverse.

On the Roblox blog Chief Product Officer Manuel Bronstein begins to explain their roadmap for realizing this vision, suggesting specific details such as how we will communicate in this new environment.

Wired explores the competitive landscape of the emerging Metaverse and what role Roblox is likely to play, and with them already rolling out commercialized services, such as instantiating a dedicated Metaverse environment for corporate clients like Vans shoes, it’s clear that Roblox will be at the forefront of this massive evolution of technology and how we use it.