The Exchanges

Q Film, gaming, sci-fi has always kind of been The place to go to, to imagine the future. Like it's, it's all about imagination. So when you built out Roblox and as you build out the future of Roblox, what are your personal inspirations and where do you pull from that kind of stuff? Is it certain movies? Is it sci-fi? Where are you getting your inspiration?

A I love sci-fi movies. I like the ones that are the most realistic, actually. So, um, it's really hard, I think, to make a good realistic sci-fi movie. I was trying to get my kids to watch 2001, a space odyssey. Like it's so slow, it goes whatever, but it holds up so well today. Just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they made that in the sixties and seventies. So I do take a little inspiration from the realism of that. And it's, it's interesting that the HAL computer in that movie is actually, was viewed at the time of that movie as just like unbelievable, and now I think that's pretty much a solved problem. I think the, um, the example I think for sci-fi that I believe will happen is any kind of holodeck or simulated environment type thing. So Star Trek, they use the holodeck all the time. They go in there, Communicate with the holodecks, see other people in that feels completely realistic, and I think that's where we're going with our technology. We've said publicly, like, there's still a lot of work to do here to have 10,000 people, photorealistic, simulation of a rock concert, looks like film, you're with your friends, you can dance, or you can chat, so that's, that's where we see this going, and that, I think that really ends up being not just a gaming technology, uh, communication, entertainment, uh, co-working type technology.

AI assessment note: “I was trying to get my kids to watch 2001, a space odyssey.”

Q As you think about this as a CEO, what are the metrics that you use to measure and what are you trying to hit other than the 10% goal?

A Yeah, I would say it's, it's interesting because I would say our company, you know, there's various types of companies out there, and I'd say all the way on one end, there's almost pure imagination, vision companies like a Walt Disney, and on the other end, there's just pure metrics driven growth companies. We do like to be a bit in the middle on this, and I think drive the company both by vision, Like we're literally inventing partially the future of how games are made and how do people hang out? Do they use the phone or do they text or do they video or do they go, you know, play grow a garden together on Roblox? Like what is the future of, of communication? So there's invention aspect and a metrics aspect. I would say some of the metrics we look at are literally raw engagement time. So I think in Q four of last year, it was thirty five billion hours. So that's pushing twelve billion hours a month. That's a pretty interesting stat. Um, I think in Q four of last year, we were at just sub one fifty million daily actives, which is a lot of people as well. So I would say those are the two we, we kind of watch.

AI assessment note: “some of the metrics we look at are literally raw engagement time”

Q Because you're exposed to building economies, building games, building like pretty much like careers for people because they're making a tremendous amount of money off of this platform. What have you learned about human behavior?

A I'd say I'm pretty optimistic about human behavior. So what I, I would say one thing I've learned is, um, enormous responsibility of, um, you know, having all these people making a living, having a hundred and fifty million people play, like that's an enormous responsibility. Um, one of our values is respect the community and, and really early on we would, um, share with employees, like just imagine, One young person who lost their Robux, like how big of a thing that is. When we started the company, the four of the founders, we used to do like the customer service and the moderation queue, and I think one of the things we learned is, um, we have enormous impact on people's lives, and it's very dangerous to clump it, like, A hundred and fifty million, you know, that's very different than imagining a single person who lost their Robux. Like that's pretty big. So the other thing I've learned, we would say we've learned about human behavior is that very, I think simple economic principles, very well designed, very fair can create incredibly complicated Outcomes. Um, you know, Roblox is pretty simple. You come, come on board. You hear about it. You like it. Play with Roblox Studio. You're a hobbyist. You make something. You publish it. You start making 10 dollars a month. That's kind of motivating. Um, then you make 20. That's cool. Maybe you make a thousand and you say that's gonna…

AI assessment note: “I'd say I'm pretty optimistic about human behavior. So what I, I would say”

Q So as you build out the headquarters, how is that going to facilitate this new development of digital worlds? I know you want and you have a goal of reaching 10% of global gaming.

A That's right. The external goal is 10% of global gaming. Global gaming is about two hundred billion dollar market. So, you know, we did 6.8 billion in bookings last year. 10% would be like 20. So that'd be a reasonable first step. Uh, where we would like to go, but really the, I would say the global gaming market is emblematic of really a new way of people to communicate. In a lot of games people are in, sometimes it's the holodeck almost, you know, a three D place where they're playing hide and go seek, or they're playing a more traditional sports game or something like that. And so really when we think about this market, um, we think not just gaming, but ultimately what we might call the Human co-experience market or that sci-fi holodeck, you know, type space. Um, so we need real people, real engineers, real product people, real designers to build this, this platform out. There's a lot of interesting magnification in our products. So for all of the several thousand people we have here, there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people working on Roblox, making a living. On the platform, you know, our, I think there was a stat that came out last year, um, our developer creator earned about a billion and a half on the platform, and it goes pretty deep, like top thousand devs are averaging 1.3 million, like real people making a live on living. So it goes way beyond the wall…

AI assessment note: “we need real people, real engineers, real product people, real designers to build this”

Q And what's been your strategic positioning for AI with all this?

A I think our strategic positioning, we have several, and it, um, in addition to all of the models that are existing on our platform, I think there's two ways to think about the acceleration. One is what is the future of a game? And so if I was a user and I, an infinite AI was available to a user is almost as if we can't imagine what that game would look like, you know, in the movie inception, when they go down to level three or something, they're, Like a dream architect and they walk around and they say, fold the road over and do this kind of stuff. Or in Westworld sometime on TV, they've got like an AI console and they design things. I think that's all going to be possible. And so users are going to be more and more designing in game, designing clothing, designing their own worlds by talking about it, not by using three D tools. So I think there's this whole, we don't quite know where gaming can go. If users have infinite AI on the creator side, it's really interesting right now because we're just starting to see the very early edge of what's the future of coding and coding, you know, is a somewhat, um, mature environment when it comes to the operating system or the C compiler or the JavaScript system. And so because of that, you go through the whole stack of all these coding Tools that are coming on late right now. We're just starting to seem to get better and better agentic l…

AI assessment note: “I think there's two ways to think about the acceleration.”

Q Would you say that metabolic health is the most important thing that people should watch out for?

A I would say, um, if people want to move the needle, the food we eat has a lot more power than we would ever imagine. And then when we think about it, why wouldn't it, right? We, we walk around all day, we sleep, we get up, but what we eat is, can be very different. There's a little bit of an argument that what we eat now is very different than 10,000 years ago. You know, there, there were diets 10,000 years ago. There was a little bit of an agricultural revolution where we discovered agriculture and started upping some of the things we eat relative to that. I would also say in the last hundred years, there's been a little bit of a sugar and seed oil revolution as well. So the things I personally watch out for is sugar and seed oils.

AI assessment note: “So the things I personally watch out for is sugar and seed oils.”