The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Emanuel: 00:06

Hello, and welcome to the four four Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. Four four media is journalist founded company and need your support. To subscribe, go to 44media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Subscribers also get early access to our interview series.

Emanuel: 00:32

Gain access to that content at 44media.co. This week, we're joined by Cecilia DiAnastasio. Cecilia reports about video games at Bloomberg, and has written many important articles about the business and controversies of one of the biggest games in the world, Roblox. A few weeks ago, we had Patrick Klepik on to discuss Roblox from a parent's perspective, but today, we're going to hear about it from the perspective of a great investigative reporter, and for my money, the most knowledgeable journalist about Roblox. Cecilia, thank you so much for being here.

Cecilia: 01:08

Thank you for having me. Wow. Such nice words. Thank you.

Emanuel: 01:12

Well earned. So I'm going to start with the same question I gave Patrick because I think unless you are deeply into Roblox, it's very hard to understand what it is. Mhmm. Cecilia, what is Roblox?

Cecilia: 01:27

So Roblox is not a video game. Imagine a mall of video games and you go to the mall and you can walk into any of these stores and it's a completely different experience. There's bee swarm simulator. There's a game in which you dress up and try and get the highest score from an audience. There's games about, role playing living in a city.

Cecilia: 01:51

There are games, you know, the very popular to steal a brain rot, which I won't explain, but you should definitely look up if you have kids because your kids are probably playing it. But Roblox's great innovation is is that it publishes games that are created by third parties, primarily children, and those games are popular with children. So instead of a forty or fifty year old in LA trying to guess, you know, what are children excited about, children know that and are making those games themselves.

Emanuel: 02:20

Is there anything comparable on the market? Like, let's take two other big games, Fortnite and Minecraft. It's like, can you triangulate what Roblox is in comparison to those two things, or is it like an entirely different category of game in terms of like what kids do in it?

Cecilia: 02:43

I would say it's a different category, but there's a lot in common with Fortnite and Minecraft. In common with Minecraft is this idea that you can build something yourself. So in addition to being a platform or like a mall where you can just play all of these different games, Roblox has something called Roblox Studio where you can make Roblox games yourself. And much like Minecraft, this is something that allows you to manifest, you know, any vision you have, all of your dreams, very like playground like role playing games into reality where it's accessible to millions of people online. The similarity with Fortnite is interesting too because much like Fortnite, Roblox is very trend driven.

Cecilia: 03:20

So you see all these news headlines like Ariana Grande's skin in Fortnite. I was playing Fortnite the other day and I was playing as Jinx from League of Legends, which is another game I love. Roblox creators will make games very quickly riding on trends in pop culture and gameplay mechanics. So it has these things in common. But the reason why I'd say it's different is because Roblox is very social media like.

Cecilia: 03:40

Roblox is social media for the Gen Z and Gen Alpha gamer base. You know, you create this avatar and your avatar, which you're wearing on any given day, is not unlike the way people view their Instagram accounts or the way we might have viewed Myspace, you know, a long time ago. You meet friends, you express yourself, you communicate, you have all of these different online experiences together. You're fighting cops in Washington DC. You're a pirate.

Cecilia: 04:07

You're role playing being in like a high school for fairies. And it's definitely going to, I think, trickle down to how social media tries to appeal to younger generations going forward.

Emanuel: 04:19

I was going to ask this later, but since you brought up the fact that you were playing Fortnite, We have played, I think, Warzone together. I know that you're into shooters. I know you really like video games. You play video games. Do you play Roblox?

Emanuel: 04:34

And even if you don't play it, do you get it on a, like, game critic level? Like, do you understand the appeal? Like, is it fun for you to play?

Cecilia: 04:46

That's a really good question. One thing I will say, an addendum to to your, I think, two complimentary introduction is that I'm not a great game critic. So just take what I say with a grain of salt. I just play a lot of games and I do play Roblox so I can report on it. The fun of Roblox for, people who play it most often and, you know, it has something like a 144 daily active users is the fact that your community is there.

Cecilia: 05:14

I'm 34. We I started fact checking for you when I was 22 and I was still too old to play Roblox at that time. Although it's been around for for decades. My my people don't play Roblox. So for me, recreationally, it doesn't have a strong pool.

Cecilia: 05:30

One thing that has been a big frustration for me is that as the AAA games industry is experiencing so many changes, layoffs, studio closures, game cancellations, the majority of growth in the games industry is coming from China and coming from Roblox. And what what that's not what's frustrating to me. What's frustrating to me is that I really wish people understood how powerful a platform it is and how powerful it is as a culture generator. And just like logged on and gave it a spin. It's it's fun.

Cecilia: 05:59

Like, I've had fun playing Grow a Garden. I've had fun playing Steel of Brain Rot. And I just think that to be a knowledgeable, like, Internet citizen today, you should just check it out.

Emanuel: 06:10

I I think that's absolutely correct. And that's why I really wanted to have you on, and I really wanted to have Patrick on because he experiences it because his kids are in there. I find it very challenging for two reasons. One is, I think the way that I came up as a reporter on video games is the same way that a lot of people did, which is it's something that I did as a kid. Mhmm.

Emanuel: 06:32

And then I grew up and I was like, can I make money like from playing video games in some fashion? And I did like reviewing them and then reporting on them. And a lot of the best reporting came naturally from my interest. So it's like, I'm playing World of Warcraft, something interesting is happening in World of Warcraft. I'm writing a story about it.

Emanuel: 06:53

And I think I get Fortnite. Like, I can play Fortnite and understand the appeal. It's not something that I play regularly, but it's very much within the tradition of video games that I understand. And Roblox is really where I am completely boomerfied, and I don't understand what is happening, which is why I need to, like, talk to other people. And then the other thing is that when you're reporting on stuff, you get like this feedback from publishing articles, you see what people are interested in.

Emanuel: 07:21

And I found actually, at least back in Vice when we were doing more of this, that the Roblox community is like entirely self sufficient in terms of getting the news they want about Roblox. Like, they get it from Roblox YouTube channels and Roblox influencers, it's like, they're not coming to, like, motherboard at the time for Roblox news. They're going to their own people. So it's like, we were writing it for a different audience that wasn't interested in it. And I don't know.

Emanuel: 07:51

That's just like one reason that I kind of fell off. But it is gigantic. I think you said it's a what is it? 144,000,000 daily, monthly active users?

Cecilia: 08:03

Not to advertise the Bloomberg terminal, but I have all of these stats in front of me if you want me to read that.

Emanuel: 08:08

Oh, please. Please.

Cecilia: 08:10

We have a 144,000,000 daily active users, and each of those on average is spending $15 per quarter, and it's making 1,400,000,000.0 it made 1,400,000,000.0 in revenue in the fourth quarter of two thousand twenty five. So it is a giant giant giant giant platform.

Emanuel: 08:29

It's it's a beast. The thing that always rocked my world is something that people love to track and like, I don't know, the traditional game express, the enthusiast press of whatever you wanna call it is like Steam charts, like what is the number one game on Steam? And there's been a couple of times where the most popular game on Roblox, like a a Roblox game that some kid made is more popular than any game on Steam, and then you're like, woah, what is happening? Like, the the industry is changing.

Cecilia: 08:58

Yeah. I'm looking at what are the top ones right now. There's this platform called RoMonitor. There's one called Fish It, which is a fishing game, steal a brain rot, escaped tsunami for brain rot, adopt me, which is a pet adoption game.

Emanuel: 09:10

That one's a big one. That's a that's like an established one. Right. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to ask actually is, like, do you think there is, like, cultural staying power?

Emanuel: 09:20

Like, we just we just went over some numbers, revenue, numbers of users. Obviously, like gamer culture such as it is has infiltrated the rest of the culture. Do you think Roblox has that as well?

Cecilia: 09:36

Definitely. I have seen Reddit posts from upset parents because their children would get in fights on the playground over another kid doing like stealing their brain rot on Roblox. There was news that a film production company was going to make a film for Grow a Garden. I think that's pretty interesting when mainstream media creation processes get involved in Roblox because like everything happening on the Internet today, trend cycles move so quickly. I'm curious to see whether the development cycle for a movie will mesh with how popular, you know, a Roblox game will continue to be.

Cecilia: 10:13

But, yeah, there's there's definitely staying power. It's just not stuff that we might necessarily be exposed to considering how fragmented media channels have become.

Emanuel: 10:24

Yeah. I'm trying to think what is like the singular most popular piece of Roblox culture. And it's like the oof sound. Is that is that what it is? I'm I'm trying to can you think of something better than

Cecilia: 10:39

That's a good one.

Emanuel: 10:40

The oof sound? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, I hear it in my head a lot a lot of the times when when I I fuck up or something like that. Now that we've established huge thing, millions of flares, Let's talk about some of the problems that have come up many times, sometimes in your reporting.

Emanuel: 11:01

In 2024, you published a story that covers a lot of these issues. You focused on one example. It is a game called Sonic Eclipse online. It was made with this by this person who goes by Doc. And can you tell me what is Sonic Eclipse online?

Emanuel: 11:24

And not not to to spoil it, but how did this Doc person come to be wanted by the FBI?

Cecilia: 11:32

Sure. I'm happy to explain. So I reported this story with an incredible journalist, Olivia Carbull, and what we did was we dove deep into a case we saw from, documents we had requested from law enforcement. And that case described doctor Rifotnik. Imagine this Roblox avatar.

Cecilia: 11:52

He has this tall white hat, this, very colonel Sanders esque beard, this, like, white suit. And he has this game Sonic Eclipse online. And if you know anything about the Sonic fandom, which I know you do because you've been writing on the Internet for a very long time, and it was it was quite popular. And, you know, people wanted to play Sonic, play Sonic characters, but not spend the money on a Sonic game for PlayStation. They could play it for free on Roblox.

Cecilia: 12:17

And because so many people wanted to do that, doctor Rifotnik became very popular and he developed this game very much in public on a Discord server where lots of people could join who are fans of the game on Roblox and come directly into contact with him. And doctor Rifatnik said he was Jaden Schladevsky who is allegedly like the brother of, like, one of the Roblox founders or something like that. No one knew what he looked like, but sometimes he would post pictures of himself with, like, cartoon pictures of himself with, like, blonde hair and, like, blue eyes looking really buff. And he cultivated this, like, cult of personality in the server where he would make these, like, very edgy jokes. And part of what he did with that cult of personality was groom miners who he met through the Roblox platform.

Cecilia: 13:08

And one of those minors was 15 years old.

Emanuel: 13:12

So how did this doc person end up in a police report?

Cecilia: 13:15

He ended up in a police report because he had groomed this 15 year old over the Internet. He had paid her for drawings she had made. He had told her that he was someone who really understood her. And over time, eventually convinced her to leave from her home in the Midwest and go and see him in New Jersey. And he was not the brother of this Roblox developer.

Cecilia: 13:40

He was this guy named Arnold Castillo. He was 22. He was not blonde with blue eyes and buff. He was very pale. He was dumpy.

Cecilia: 13:48

And he basically paid an Uber $1,000 to bring her to him. And when police found this girl in the house, you know, she was sleeping on the floor. She had been abused. It was disgusting and and it was horrible.

Emanuel: 14:06

Yeah. I highly recommend people read the whole tale. The title of the article is Roblox's pedophile problem. Really great reporting. I think the I don't want to trivialize it, but like the novelty or like the thing that is hard to look away from for me from this story is it just like the virtual aspect of it.

Emanuel: 14:30

It's like, there's this character in the game with a white hat. He has power over this virtual domain and he's talking to all these people and eventually it ends up in this terrible situation. But we didn't always use the words grooming. Mhmm. But we've always had issues with adults preying on minors for as long as we've been using the Internet.

Emanuel: 14:54

I am wondering if there's anything about the dynamics of Roblox as a platform that makes that different, not better or worse, but like, is the fact that there is an economy, the fact that like people have avatars, is the fact that like people can be, like, masters of these domains. Do you think that that that changes the dynamics for these situations at all?

Cecilia: 15:19

I love this question. I think it's really important to ask, you know, what is it about this specific platform that has created the conditions for this to happen? Because as you point out correctly, children have been groomed over the Internet for as long as the Internet has existed. Children have been groomed over video games for as long as video games have existed. What is it particularly about Roblox that has created all of this controversy?

Cecilia: 15:45

One thing I will say is that Roblox officials have come out and said, like, this isn't just a Roblox problem. This is also a problem with Discord, with Snapchat, with Instagram. People might meet on our platform, but then they move those conversations elsewhere. Right? And this creates an interesting data problem for us as journalists because what gets reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is going to be that end point.

Cecilia: 16:08

Right? Where is the last point of abuse before before something is caught? And that's not roadblocks. Like, roadblocks from experts I talked to is pretty upstream. So what we did for this report was we looked for commonalities in cases that were sent to the police that mentioned Roblox.

Cecilia: 16:27

We found that police had arrested at least two dozen people who were accused of abducting or abusing victims they had met on the platform. And when we went through these documents over and over and over again, what we found were a couple of things. One was that Robux, the platform's currency, is hugely enticing to children. Children view Robux as dollars. They view the clothes their avatar wears as their real clothes, and these status symbols are incredibly important.

Cecilia: 16:55

The second thing we found is that predators have learned this about Roblox. They know that most of the people on the platform are minors, and I found some messages on darknet fora where, predators were specifically saying that they would go into Roblox and and look for young people to groom. The third thing I would say about Roblox specifically is that, we spoke with people who have worked at Roblox about their moderation norms, and there was a lot of advocacy around more stringent guardrails around who communicates with whom on the platform. What I will say is that since our article came out and since there's been a lot of scrutiny, Roblox has done a lot to be safer for young people. But I would say this is what makes Roblox potentially different from other platforms.

Emanuel: 17:46

Yeah. The the next thing I wanted to mention is you talked to, I think it was 20 people at the company, either current or former, which is really an impressive feat of reporting. What would you say is your takeaway from how they feel about this problem? Like, what what would you say is like the main lesson you got from talking to like 20 people at the company?

Cecilia: 18:11

First of all, this article is pretty old at this point. It it was published in 2024 and a lot has changed since 2024. So although, of course, we stand by our reporting and what people said at the time was their true experience, a lot has changed at Roblox. Like, Roblox has done so much. They dozens of updates a year, to prevent predators from coming in contact with children.

Cecilia: 18:35

But at the time when we talked to people, what they said was that they had, you know, people had said that they had attempted many times to make moderation more stringent, but they felt that their concerns weren't being listened to by higher ups at the company. Of course, you know, in these investor calls that we listen to every quarter, moderation always comes up. And the chief executive officer and cofounder of the company, Dave Bazooki, always addresses it. So it's definitely top of mind for Roblox.

Emanuel: 19:02

Do you know what that moderation looks like?

Cecilia: 19:05

Yes. Moderating Roblox is very difficult. You're not just moderating every item that is posted onto Roblox's marketplace. You're not just moderating every asset that goes into every game or every avatar body to make sure that none of them have, like, genitalia or anything inappropriate exposed. But you have you have to also, in some instances, moderate the way people are engaging with each other.

Cecilia: 19:29

Can you imagine how challenging that is? You know, at the time we were reporting the story, there were very public posts from content creators around Roblox about, like, bathroom simulator, a very popular game where people would pretend to be in the bathroom and you can imagine children playing this game. Lots of inappropriate, dynamics emerged. But at the base of that game, it's it's a it's a bathroom. Everyone goes to the bathroom.

Cecilia: 19:54

Right? This is what makes it very challenging to moderate the platform. Recently, Roblox has been saying that they are investing more in AI moderation. I've been very interested in this because I did a story last year interviewing career moderators who are concerned that they are being replaced by AI, is something that a lot of big tech companies have been doing. And, many of them said that AI at that time was not yet equipped to actually ascertain the subtleties of child grooming specifically in some of these other very very dangerous types of interactions that can occur online.

Cecilia: 20:29

And I don't have anything to say about Roblox's AI moderation specifically. I have not interviewed people about Roblox's AI moderation specifically, but broadly speaking, that's been a trend in the tech industry and I'm curious to see how how Roblox grapples with that.

Emanuel: 20:44

Yeah. For sure. We're we're definitely seeing more AI moderation wherever we look. I think Roblox is a very challenging platform to moderate. We cover this thing a lot, and usually it's text, images, sound, and here you have like this very rich extra element of like people interacting with each other in a three d space and be able to make innuendo and double meaning and a nightmare, frankly.

Emanuel: 21:16

Definitely sympathize with with the challenge regardless of how they're handling it at the moment. Something that Patrick has brought up, and I saw in your stories as well, which I'm hoping you can clarify a little bit. There is some controversy about parental controls and what is set by default. Do you know do you know what I'm referring to?

Cecilia: 21:36

I do. Yeah. It's about the sensitive games or the quote unquote sensitive games, where sensitive means like issues like marriage equality and pay equity in sports.

Emanuel: 21:46

Right. Yeah. So how does that work? Can you talk about that?

Cecilia: 21:50

Yeah. There was an advocacy group that criticized there are a couple of advocacy groups that criticized Roblox for identifying certain games as sensitive because they dealt with these issues that, the advocacy groups considered were very important to the development of young people's social awareness. I think it's really interesting that that was occurring alongside a lot of fans of the game in The Middle East where, you know, there are there are a half dozen countries in The Middle East that have removed access to Roblox. And while many of those countries have specifically said that child safety was a major factor in that decision, there were also expressed concerns around kids having access to LGBTQ content. So I don't have anything concrete sort of linking these things together.

Cecilia: 22:37

I just think that it's a really interesting kind of regulatory atmosphere that that Roblox is is working to navigate.

Emanuel: 22:45

So a few weeks ago, I wrote a story about this mass shooter in Canada. They had apparently made a mass shooting simulator in a mall of some kind. This is something that appears to happen a lot on Roblox. I want to be clear that it is not a completely new thing. Several mass shooters have made some type of mass shooting simulators in in in many types of games over the years.

Emanuel: 23:16

I think going as far back as Doom and Columbine, but it it it is a thing that has happened a few times with Roblox. You wrote a story about a group that does this, I don't wanna say professionally, but consistently, or, like, that is their that is their their goal. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Cecilia: 23:39

Yeah. Loved your story, by the way. Huge fan of your games coverage in general. The story you're referencing that we published on Bloomberg was about this group called ASS, was Active Shooter Studios. It was a Discord server that had about 800 members where they would discuss games that went on Roblox, including, ones that simulated the shooting at Columbine, the one at the Robb Elementary School in Texas.

Cecilia: 24:08

There was one, that was inspired by the two thousand seven Virginia Tech shooting. And what these individuals did was they would sort of allow users to go into Roblox and embody either the shooter or the people who are being shot.

Emanuel: 24:24

What is your understanding or, like, what is their stated reason for doing this?

Cecilia: 24:30

There was no stated reason for doing this. But can I share a little bit of my thoughts on, like, you know, how extremism operates in games generally?

Emanuel: 24:42

Please.

Cecilia: 24:43

When I was at Wired, I did a story about a fascist role playing group inside of Roblox. Interestingly, the backdrop for it was ancient Rome, which was very offensive to me as a big ancient Rome nerd. But essentially, it was this group dynamic where the people would role play being in a fascist government. There were people who were in the slave category. There were people who were like the, you know, one emperor.

Cecilia: 25:18

And it kind of raised this question that I spoke to a lot of psychologists about which is, can somebody be radicalized through one of these role playing groups? And of course, wanna add like you did that Roblox is not the only game where this has happened, and Roblox moderated a lot of the games that we discussed before. But I think it's an interesting question. It's a question a lot of people are asking even, you know, in the US government, the UN, what role do video games have in this sort of behavior? And it's not an answered question.

Cecilia: 25:49

There's a lot of correlation between people who have extremist views and act out extremism inside of these video games. But right now, it's unknown whether someone who doesn't have any of these inclinations joins one of these games, participates in it, and then their views change. And I think that's something that a lot of people are going to be looking into over the next dozen years or so.

Emanuel: 26:11

Yeah. I read that story today. I believe the the simulated Roman I don't know you wanna call it. Camp what? Parthia was the Mhmm.

Emanuel: 26:20

The name of it. Yeah. Very interesting story. I love you got a tour of it. Correct?

Emanuel: 26:25

Like, you you Yes.

Cecilia: 26:27

Yeah. But

Emanuel: 26:28

what was that like?

Cecilia: 26:31

Side note for listeners, you know, published a lot of my first games reporting. I don't know if you knew that where I used to do kind of Gonzo Virtual Worlds reporting for Vice Motherboard. And so I endlessly indebted to him for allowing me to do that. And I had the ability to do that for this wired article about, the fascist role play in in roadblocks. And it was interesting to get a tour of Parthia because it was empty nomes there and the person who took me through it is this guy named Ferguson.

Cecilia: 26:58

We role played all of the different tiers of power in this very strict hierarchy that they used to dominate people. And it kind of helped me understand very viscerally what some of the kids were saying who were exposed to radical abuse through this group, which is that many of them just wanted a place. They wanted a knowable position in life. They wanted a community where, you know, their relations to people were hammered out. And I can't say that's something that I'm not saying I empathize with that, but what I'm saying is that the mechanics of the game very much allowed people to live that experience.

Cecilia: 27:40

But, of course, the politics of that experience were fascist. And I I just thought that was a very interesting thing to explore.

Emanuel: 27:46

Yeah. There's so much there. I think two things that come to mind. One is we both have also done a lot of reporting on Steam as a platform and a lot of the extreme extremism that happens there. And when it was happening on Steam, it was like not a very rich experience.

Emanuel: 28:07

It's not a lot of games where people were express expressing fascist views, it was the the UI of the platform, like profile pictures and groups and comments and things like this. And I think the similarity there and the similarity we see in a lot of places online in general is you just have this place where mostly young men congregate and talk to each other, and it's sort of out of sight. It's like millions of people could be doing it, but it's sort of out of sight. And sometimes, I think when you just like things, like, bubble like that and no there's no outside view on them, things can get ugly. And then there's the other aspect of it, which I think people who are smarter than me have made the argument that there's some sort of like, the thing about knowing your place or, like, wanting structure is very much evident in video games.

Emanuel: 29:05

Like, video games is a lot about you do an action and there's a known predictable result and that is And part of the one could see how that parallels like a fascist mindset kind of ambiguously and then explicitly in in this game that you played. You don't have to comment on that. I'm just like, I'm gonna lay that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that you wanna share, but I'll just lay that out there. Yeah.

Emanuel: 29:27

Pass.

Cecilia: 29:28

Keep going. No. I love hearing your thoughts on this. Like, as I said, I love reading your reporting on it.

Emanuel: 29:33

Oh, thank you.

Cecilia: 29:33

I wish I could ask you questions to interview you, but here I am getting interviewed.

Emanuel: 29:36

One day. One day. So to go back to the business side of things, I want to talk a little bit about what you think Roblox means for the future of the video game business. A very turbulent time in the video game business, as I'm sure you know, you're you're reporting on it. Your colleague, Jason Schrier, I've talked to him about this a little bit.

Emanuel: 30:05

Things have only gotten more hectic since I talked to him a few months ago. Like one of the things that is is making the business so different is that you have this giant platform Mhmm. Like Roblox. There's a few of them, but like Roblox is one of them, which is like sucking up all this time and all this attention, not leaving much time for people to play anything else, and that's having an impact on business. Within this ecosystem of Roblox experiences, where do you think that is going?

Emanuel: 30:38

Like, do you think it's sustainable to, like, make a living off of games or experiences that live exclusively on on Roblox? Do you think we're gonna see not just like amateur developers, but like established publishers and developers saying to themselves, okay, everybody's on Roblox. We need to make something on Roblox in order to, like, stay in this business.

Cecilia: 31:03

I love this question. I don't even know where to start. I guess one thing I'll say is that several years ago, a YouTube channel called People Make Games, they're amazing. They did a video accusing Roblox of essentially exploiting children as part of its business model because Roblox's revenue split, there are a lot of arguments about what it actually is. I've heard up to 80% goes to the platform, is higher than the one that Steam takes from people who publish games there, 30% or, you know, Apple and Google, famously 30%.

Cecilia: 31:37

But another thing that is interesting about Roblox's economics is that Roblox hosts your games. They allow people to discover your games. They curate the games. You know, they facilitate brand deals in some instances. And there are children who are millionaires who are earning passive income off of something that they made when they were 18 or 19 and will for the foreseeable future.

Cecilia: 31:59

And that's a very rare that's like a small slice of people who are earning money on the platform. But I would love to know exactly how many people that I'm sure it's in the dozens from my research. You know, that is the new generation of game makers. These are people who are dominating kids' time playing video games. And at the same time, we are seeing people who have made beautiful polished shooters, motion capture, you know, eight k compatibility, everything, not really being able to land with the same splash that some Roblox creators have.

Cecilia: 32:39

Why is that? It's it's because games are about connecting with people and games are about humanity and about expressing yourself. And the dinky little thing images that people are publishing on Roblox with whatever graphics and like brain rot like, you know, images which in some instances are generated by AI, that's a different conversation, are reminding people of just like, okay, this is this is what gaming is. And I'm not saying that to in any way denigrate the games that I personally play way too much of, but this is what the younger audience is is looking for right now. And I'm interested in the conversations that more established game developers are having about Roblox and behind closed doors.

Emanuel: 33:26

Two questions about that. One is, I have not seen a serious attempt to come after Roblox. In every other business, also in the video game business, somebody makes a big popular thing. Mhmm. Everybody follows and tries to make their version of it.

Emanuel: 33:45

Like, Battle Royale is very big. Everybody makes Battle Royale. Extraction shooters are hitting. People are trying extraction shooters. MOBAs famously in, like, the the the twenty teens where everybody was trying to make a MOBA.

Emanuel: 34:01

Have you have have I missed the attempt? Are they so bad that they haven't even popped up on my radar? Like, why is nobody trying their hand at, like, let's do Roblox but better?

Cecilia: 34:14

Well, Epic Games does have Unreal Engine for Fortnite, which is competing with Roblox for user generated content. The first time I played Steel of Brain Rot actually was on Unreal Engine for it was like the UEFN version of of Steel of Brain Rot. It was really fun. So there's a lot of stuff like that happening there. It's it's not really poised to compete at the same level of Roblox right now because of the way that avatars work in Fortnite.

Cecilia: 34:39

One of the things that people love about Roblox is the marketplace and the economy and the ability to, like, sell and buy items that are generated by users. So I'm curious about what what Epic will do there. But do you remember the metaverse?

Emanuel: 34:52

I mean, very much yes. And I think, obviously, the connection to make there is, like, everybody was trying to make the metaverse and it all already existed in the form of Roblox or Fortnite, but I don't think the people who were talking about the metaverse even really understood what, like, how how what Roblox is and what a hold it has on a generation. I feel like they they went right over it. Like, they they they missed the whole the whole thing. But but but where where are you going with that?

Cecilia: 35:21

Oh, just the same thing you were saying. Like, I think the metaverse frenzy would have looked really different if a lot of people who were kind of leading that charge from boardrooms, like, spent some time in Roblox and really thought about what was sticking about it. Because there were attempts to compete with Roblox from a user generated content standpoint, like UGC gaming was supposed to be this really huge thing. What a lot of people don't think about is the engineering investment you have to make to let that function. Like, Roblox is so impressive in its ability to host a 144,000,000 daily active users, millions of concurrent people on a specific game, like, that requires so much forethought, and Roblox has existed for decades.

Cecilia: 36:09

So they have a real head up there.

Emanuel: 36:12

That really is, if you were to put a gun to my head, that is like the secret sauce is when I see Roblox and I think other people my age, I. E. Old people, when they see robots, they just see like the the the the blocky character with the the painted on face. And I'm like, this looks ugly. Like, this aesthetic is ugly.

Emanuel: 36:37

But it's like, it's the it's the way that it's all hosted and interconnected and the interoperability of everything. It's it's like that is like the in like you say, it's the engineering feat that I think makes makes all this possible. And I think as you alluded to, like, hard to hard to compete

Cecilia: 36:55

Yeah. Against. Yeah. It's hard to compete against also, I mean, and this is the duh thing that I probably should have just said upfront, like, Roblox is on every platform for free. Duh duh duh duh.

Cecilia: 37:04

Like, you can just play it anywhere, anytime for free. Whereas, like, games cost 70 or $80 now if they're triple a right now, and that's because margins have are lower than they've been in a really long time for for traditional game makers. I am someone, you know this because we've talked about it at length. I am a PC gamer. Next to me right now is a pink, I'll use the term battle station with like, you know, like rainbow lights and everything in there.

Cecilia: 37:34

And at the same time, as much as I love being a PC gamer and I'm interested in PC gaming hardware, it has become incredibly expensive to keep up with advancements in game graphic technology. Buying a new GPU, maybe you've tried to do this recently, sure haven't. It's just like cost it's it's bananas.

Emanuel: 37:54

I'm due for RAM. That's how I'm

Cecilia: 37:56

Oh, god.

Emanuel: 37:57

I'm screwed. I'm sorry. I'm very due for RAM. Yeah.

Cecilia: 38:00

Yeah. Like to actually like making games that are eight k eight k compatible is very expensive. Playing them is expensive too. And, you know, the economy, I think you've heard, everyone's heard, not doing so great right now. So Mhmm.

Cecilia: 38:13

Yeah. Roblox is, you know, from an accessibility standpoint, definitely going to be something a lot of people will be looking towards going forward in the games industry.

Emanuel: 38:23

So I usually like to end with a lightning round. I'm going to ask you the questions. Feel free to no comment if you're if you're if you're unable to answer and Okay. And if you if you want, we can even just cut this. But my lightning round questions, I think they're all yes or no.

Emanuel: 38:41

But do you think Roblox is around in ten years?

Cecilia: 38:45

Yes.

Emanuel: 38:47

If you had kids, would you let them play Roblox?

Cecilia: 38:49

Yes.

Emanuel: 38:51

Is Roblox going to be acquired by Microsoft or one of the bigger tech companies? Do you see that happening?

Cecilia: 38:59

It's really hard to picture that.

Emanuel: 39:02

I guess one last thing is, because we've talked about you you've made the point that the hook is really social connection and people having those social connections on Roblox that is it's giving it lasting power. Mhmm. Do you see what we've come to call the friend swap genre, which are games where it's like the point of the game is for people usually working together to do something and, like, the fidelity of the graphics doesn't matter as much, like, the fine tuning of the mechanics doesn't matter as much. It's more of just like people getting together and doing a thing together. Do you think that is like a a response to Roblox or like a learning from Roblox?

Cecilia: 39:47

Yeah. That's definitely a learning from Roblox. Like, I think friend slop as a genre is in many ways appropriated by what's been working so well with Roblox.

Emanuel: 39:55

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, again, hard for me to connect with with Roblox, but I guess I am excited to see what happens with this talent once they maybe strike out on their own and like graduate from working on games for Roblox and and doing something else. Because it's like, it's a fascinating generation of of game players and game developers that's like cooking here. So very interested to see where that goes.

Cecilia: 40:28

Yeah. I would be interested in whether they do graduate onto other platforms. Roblox, you know, like I said, the Roblox Studio is very singular and so people might just keep developing games on Roblox forever and ever if they've been successful, especially if it goes on to, encompass 10% of the global gaming market, which is what the CEO and co founder is hoping for.

Emanuel: 40:49

Yeah. I I mean, that's that's a scary future for me, so I'm hoping it's it doesn't work out that way, but if not, then I guess I just gotta I gotta get into Roblox.

Cecilia: 40:59

Yeah. You gotta get into Roblox.

Emanuel: 41:00

Okay. Maybe we should maybe we should we should log in together and you should you should show me around.

Cecilia: 41:05

Yeah. I'd have a lot of fun doing that. Okay.

Emanuel: 41:08

Alright. Cecilia, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I hope to have you on again soon. Please please come by whenever there's a story you wanna talk about or anything like that.

Cecilia: 41:19

Yeah. I'd love to. Thank you for having me.

Emanuel: 41:23

As a reminder, four four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to four four Media and directly support our work, please go to 44media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to subscribers only sections where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope.

Emanuel: 41:51

Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been four four Media. We'll see you again next time.