Roblox的产品历史和演变以及开发者孵化器功能

原作者：Alex Knapp 译者：Willow Wu

Alex Binello 13岁的时候，他开始在一个Roblox的网站上玩游戏。他喜欢玩Work at a Pizza Place、Down Hill Smash!这样的游戏，Binello后来的游戏也是受了它们的启发。现在，11年后，他成为了MeepCity，一款大型角色扮演游戏的主创。7月，MeepCity在Roblox平台的访客数量达到了1500万人。福布斯估计，自2016年游戏开发以来，Binello已经挣得了上百万美元的收入。这位23岁的游戏开发者从未上过一堂计算机编程课，现在他拥有一位专职的创意总监和六位自由职业人一起合作运营游戏，不断优化更新。“Roblox是我生命的一部分，” 他说。“我感觉有点像是被它养大的。”

总部位于加州圣马特奥的Roblox是一个游戏&社交平台。网站上有上百万个游戏可供玩家（大多是年轻人）以及其朋友探索，还能随时进行聊天、互动。但Roblox的独特之处在于它并不是靠开发游戏挣钱——他们只是向孩子们提供制作工具、平台，让他们创造出属于自己的游戏。最厉害的地方在于Roblox促使这些青少年用户转变成为一群年轻的企业家。开发者们可以要求玩家们用Robux付费解锁各种物品或者游戏体验——Robux是一种虚拟货币，开发者们可以转换成真钱，100 Robux可兑换成35美分。玩家花费1美元可购得100 Robux。

“Roblox上的很多开发者都是在这个平台的陪伴下长大的，”Roblox 55岁的联合创始人&CEO Dave Baszucki说。“而且很多人开始利用这个平台谋生。”

事实证明，孩子们很擅长做游戏，而且这些游戏也受到其他孩子的喜爱。在全球范围内，Roblox每月的独立访客数量超过7000万。据ComScore统计，6~12岁的孩子在Roblox网站上花的时间比其它任何网站都长。在青少年中则位列第二位，排在谷歌（包括YouTube）之后。所以我们可以得出这组惊人的数据：Roblox去年大约有1亿美元的收入(今年这个数字应该会超过2亿美元)，并筹集到了约1.85亿美元的风投资金，公司市值为25亿美元。Baszucki所持有的股本价值为3亿美元。（Roblox的另一位创始人Erik Cassel于2013年2月因癌症逝世。）

robloxship(from gamasutra)

出现增长的其中原因之一是庞大的新游戏数量。每个月就有近100万个新游戏上架，在这背后有400多万开发者。这些游戏覆盖了各种类型、各种题材，从传统的赛车、RPG游戏到流行的“警察抓小偷”游戏Jailbreak，还有比较单调的模拟游戏比如Snow Shoveling Simulator和Work at a Pizza Place。Roblox甚至衍生出自己的游戏类型，比如“obbys”——非常复杂、很难攻克挑战。

“我们就像是在做《美国偶像》节目一样，为这些游戏开发者提供展示平台，”Baszucki说。

Roblox的前身是Baszucki在1989年创立的一家名为Knowledge Revolution的教育科技初创公司。这家公司开发了一个2D实验室，学生和老师可以使用这个程序模拟杠杆、坡道、滑轮和抛射运动等物理问题。

这个软件在学生社区中流传开后，Baszucki发现孩子们不仅仅是用它来解决物理问题。他们还模拟了撞车、建筑倒塌和其它有意思的东西，只要这个软件的物理工具能做到的他们都会去尝试。

“与物理书上的内容相比，玩家自身的创造力更加有趣，”他说。

1998年，Knowledge Revolution被工程软件开发公司MSC Software以2000万美元的价格收购，Baszucki决定休息一段时间，想清楚他下一步要做什么。受那些孩子们的创造启发，他和Erik Cassel，也就是Knowledge Revolution的前任工程副总，在一个房间内埋头苦干了一年半多，最终诞生了最初版本的Roblox。

“刚开始的时候，我们想象了一个全新的平台类型，人们能在这里做很多事，”Baszucki说。“我们的计划会涉及到交友，比如搭建社交网络；涉及到沉浸式3D，比如让用户在线玩游戏。我们还会像媒体工作室一样，创造吸引眼球的内容。这里有无限的创造力，就像是一个建筑式玩具。”
2005年beta版本的Roblox刚上线的那几个月，用户社区规模还很小——高峰时段最多也只有50人左右同时在线（如今这个数字的平均值已经超过100万），但是小社区能够让Baszucki和Cassel与玩家充分交流，获得详细的反馈信息，然后进一步改进平台。

在Roblox Studio APP（能让Roblox用户自己创造游戏或者是模拟器）发行之后，大潮就开始涌来了。到2012年，Roblox的月独立访客数量已经超过了700万人，成为了最受欢迎的儿童网站之一。增长势头持续不断，但是Cassel的离世无疑给团队带来了巨大的打击。

“他非常喜欢Roblox的工作，”Baszucki说。“Erik并没有什么变化。他依然在坚持他所做的事。让我惊讶的是，他已经达到了一种很好的平衡状态，这让我开始审视自己的生活。这对我们的人才雇佣策略也是一种启发——要寻找在文化理念上与公司契合的员工，也就是有激情、愿意朝着共同的目标努力、共创一个美好的发展环境。

在公司成长的同时，我们也尝试了不同的经营模式。一开始，我们的收入来源于广告和付费会员俱乐部Builders Club。若干年过后，公司开始采用现在的商业模式：销售Robux。

Roblox的盈利计划是允许年轻的开发者从他们的游戏中获得一部分收入。2017年，他们从平台上挣得了近4000万美元。今年预计会突破7000万美元。Roblox还开始制作玩具了——依照人气游戏中的角色所制作的可动人偶和塑料汽车。游戏开发者也能从中获得一定分成，2017年他们还获得了额外的100万美元版税。

“我们让开发者们自己探索、思考、决定策略，”Roblox的首席商务官Craig Donato说。“如果他们的盈利机制非常具有侵略性，不氪金就玩不下去，那么孩子们是不会去玩的。如果他们有好点子，那就会得到效仿。”

Roblox乐于扶持那些开始崭露头角的程序员。在年度开发者大会上，来自世界各地的Roblox开发者相聚于此互相交流经验与技巧。今年的RDC于7月在旧金山举办，共有400多人参加。

公司还有一个带薪实习项目作为年轻开发者的孵化器或加速器，帮助他们创造、优化游戏。这个项目位于Roblox硅谷总部，教授开发者们项目管理技巧并让他们为自己所设定的项目截止日期负责。

既然Roblox不用担心怎么做游戏，甚至是怎么盈利这些问题，他们就可以将重点放在网站的基础设施建设上。公司正计划将平台从第三方云服务器移到自己的云上。为此，他们雇了Dan Williams——他之前帮助过Dropbox撤离亚马逊。

下一阶段呢？实现国际化。尽管Roblox的用户遍布30多个不同的国家，但是平台在几个月之前之前还只能使用英语，付款只能用美元。后来多了一个西班牙语。从那以后，Roblox每月平均都有约500万名来自西班牙语国家的访客。

后续又添加了巴西葡萄牙语、法语和德语。他们在前不久举办了第二届欧洲开发者大会，进一步扩大团队，希望在未来的几年打入更多地区的市场。

Roblox International总裁Chris Misner表示:“想到雅加达的一个孩子能创造出一款加州门洛帕克的孩子根本想象不到的游戏，这是一件非常令人兴奋的事。这种联系真的很有意思，而且与东南亚的其他孩子(或许也包括门洛帕克的孩子)息息相关。

“我们的希望是能够真正地把世界各地的人聚集起起来，” Baszucki补充道。

尽管这个平台发展势头惊人，Baszucki仍然和他们的超级用户保持着联系，虽说可能很多人都不知道他的名字。在某次周五早上的公司参观活动上，一名导游问孩子们有没听过Dave Baszucki这个人，他们都摇头。接着她又问那Builderman（Baszucki在Roblox网站用的名字）呢？

孩子们齐声大喊出“Yes！”。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

When Alex Binello was 13, he started playing games on a website called Roblox. He loved spending time with titles like Work at a Pizza Place and Down Hill Smash! so much that he was inspired to build his own. Now, 11 years later, he is the creator of MeepCity, a sprawling role-playing game that got 15 million visitors in July on the Roblox platform. Forbes estimates the cartoonish game has earned Binello millions since its inception in 2016. The 23-year-old, who has never taken a single computer programming class, now employs a salaried creative director and uses six other freelance workers to keep his game updated. “Roblox has just been part of my life,” he says. “I feel raised by it a little bit.”

Roblox, based in San Mateo, California, is a combination gaming and social media platform. There are millions of games that players—mostly young people—can explore with their friends, chatting and interacting all the way. But what’s unique about Roblox is that the gaming company isn’t in the business of making games—it just provides the tools and the platform for kids to make their own unique creations. Most impressively, Roblox has turned its tween audience into an army of fresh-faced entrepreneurs. Developers can charge Robux, a virtual currency, for various items and game experiences, and they can exchange the Robux they earn for real money: 100 Robux can be cashed out for 35 cents. (Players can buy 100 Robux for $1.)

“A lot of the developers on Roblox grew up on the platform,” says Dave Baszucki, Roblox’s 55-year-old cofounder and CEO. “And many of them are now starting to earn their living on the platform.”

Kids, as it turns out, are pretty good at making games that attract other kids. Globally, Roblox sees more than 70 million unique visitors a month. According to comScore, 6-to-12-year-olds spend more time on Roblox than any other site on the internet. Among teenagers, it ranks second, just behind Google’s sites, including YouTube. That translates into some pretty impressive numbers: Roblox is cash-flow-positive on an estimated $100 million in revenue last year (this year that figure should be north of $200 million) and has raised some $185 million in venture funding, valuing the company at around $2.5 billion. Baszucki’s stake is worth an estimated $300 million. (Roblox’s other founder, Erik Cassel, died of cancer in February 2013.)

Part of the reason for this growth is the sheer number of games being produced. Nearly one million games are created every month by more than 4 million developers on the platform. These games cover a wide variety of genres, from traditional racing and role-playing games to the popular “cops and robbers” game Jailbreak to more mundane simulations like Snow Shoveling Simulator and Work at a Pizza Place. The platform has even spawned its own genres, such as “obbys,” complex, hard-to-navigate obstacle courses.

“It’s almost as if we’re running American Idol for up-and-coming game developers,” Baszucki says.

Roblox has its origin in a company Baszucki founded in 1989, an education tech startup called Knowledge Revolution. That company built a program that served as a 2-D lab where students and teachers could model physics problems with virtual levers, ramps, pulleys and projectiles.

What Baszucki discovered as his software made it out into the student community was that kids were using the program to do things far beyond textbook physics problems. Instead, students were modeling cars crashing, buildings falling over and other fun stuff that the program’s physics tools enabled them to build.

“Creativity by the players themselves was so much more engaging than the content from the physics books,” he says.

In 1998, Knowledge Revolution was acquired for $20 million by an engineering software company called MSC Software, so Baszucki decided to take some time off and figure out what he wanted to do next. Inspired by the worlds kids had built in his interactive physics program, he and Erik Cassel, who had been vice president of engineering at Knowledge Revolution, “went into a room for over a year and a half” to build the first version of Roblox.

“Right when we started, we imagined a new category of people doing things together,” Baszucki says. “A category that involved friends, like social networking; a category that involved immersive 3-D, like gaming; a category that involved cool content, like a media company; and finally a category that had unlimited creation, like a building toy.”

For the first few months after Roblox’s 2005 beta deployment, the user community was tiny—during peak periods about 50 people were playing at the same time (today that number averages over a million), but the small size of the community enabled Baszucki and Cassel to hang out with the players and get feedback as they refined the platform.

Once the pair published Roblox Studio—the app that enables Roblox users to create games and simulations—the floodgates began to open. By the year 2012, Roblox had more than 7 million unique visitors per month, making it one of the most popular entertainment sites for kids. The site continued to grow, but tragedy struck its founding team when Cassel was diagnosed with cancer.

“He loved what he was doing at Roblox,” Baszucki says. “And I saw Erik not change. He kept doing what he was doing. What for me was so amazing to see was that he was already in a good state of balance, and it kind of made me look at my own life. It was an inspiration for the people we hire—finding the type of cultural fit where people have a passion and share our dream and make this an amazing environment.”

As the company grew, it also experimented with different business models. Initially, revenue came from advertising and a premium membership model called Builders Club. But after a few years the company had moved to its current model: selling Robux.

Roblox’s monetization scheme allows young developers to obtain a cut of the money spent on their games. In 2017, developers earned nearly $40 million on the platform. That number is expected to surpass $70 million in 2018. Roblox has also started to make toys—think action figures and plastic cars—based on popular games. It shares the money it makes from those toys with its developers, earning them an additional $1 million in royalties in 2017.

“We just empower developers to figure it out,” said Craig Donato, Roblox’s chief business officer. “If a dev is too aggressive with monetization, kids won’t play. If they have a great idea, it’ll get copied.”

The company also helps budding coders up their game. Its annual developer’s conference draws Roblox developers from all over the world to meet one another and exchange tips and tricks. More than 400 people came to this year’s RDC, which was held in San Francisco in July.

The company also has a paid internship program that works as an incubator or accelerator for young devs to create games and improve them. This program at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters teaches them project-management skills and holds them accountable for the deadlines they set for their projects.

Since Roblox doesn’t need to worry about making games—or even how to make money from them—it can focus almost exclusively on infrastructure. The company is in the process of moving its platform from third-party cloud services to its own cloud. It’s hired Dan Williams, who helped Dropbox move off Amazon’s Web service.

The next phase? Going international. Although Roblox’s users come from more than three dozen countries, the platform was English-only and dollars-only until just a few months ago, when Roblox launched a Spanish version. Since then, the company has averaged 5 million visitors a month from Spanish-speaking countries.

The company has also produced Brazilian Portuguese, French and German versions. It just hosted its second European developer’s conference and is building up teams to expand into more regions over the next few years.

“It’s super-exciting to think that a kid in Jakarta can make a game that a kid in Menlo Park would never even imagine but is really fun and relevant to other kids in Southeast Asia—and maybe the kid in Menlo Park, too,” says Chris Misner, the president of Roblox International.

“Our hope is that we will actually bring people together around the world,” Baszucki adds.

Despite the enormous growth of the platform, Baszucki still keeps in touch with his power users—even if many don’t know his name. On a Friday-morning company tour for players, a guide asked the kids if they’ve ever heard of Dave Baszucki—they all shook their heads. Then she asked if they knew Builderman (Baszucki’s name within Roblox).

A loud “Yes!” erupted from the group.（source：forbes ）