

To the uninitiated, 21st-century gaming resembles its 16-bit past in one respect, at least: Players still mash controllers and keyboards to make characters run around the screen. The following morning, when Dazzely logged into his YouTube account and saw that his video had already received 1,000 views, Roblox stopped being child’s play for him. He leaned into his computer’s microphone and began to provide humorous narration for his then-nascent YouTube channel.

He hit a button to start recording his screen. The text contained a hyperlink to a Roblox game called, simply, “The Condo.” Dazzely hesitated briefly, then clicked. As it turns out, there are plenty of shadows for him to explore.įor Dazzely, it was a push notification on a school night in 2017 that knocked him tumbling into Roblox’s red light district-a direct message via Discord, the online chat application that’s frequently used by gamers. Part tabloid reporter, part internet troll, he pokes around Roblox’s dark corners and uploads his exploits to the video platform, where he has more than 53,000 subscribers. dollar when developers cash out.ĭazzely, who is now 19 and whose real name is Dylan Lemus-Olson, holds a unique occupation in this booming super-metropolis: He’s a muckraking YouTube personality. The company, which is valued at $4 billion, takes roughly 65 cents of every U.S. Roblox projects that its user-developers-many of whom are Roblox veterans in their late teens and early twenties-will earn more than $250 million from selling access to their creations this year. And the dollars are real: Players poured more than $490 million into Roblox via mobile devices in the first half of 2020 alone, according to Sensor Tower data. What began as a sandbox now resembles a scrappy cybernation of teens and tweens whose population rivals that of Japan. Roblox today is the product of its over 150 million monthly active users. Older kids began working for one another and performing specialized roles, as artists, builders, and game scripters. A primitive economy-developers peddling virtual items like sunglasses or limited edition hats-evolved into a more complex one. In 2013, Roblox introduced a way to convert its virtual currency, Robux, back into real dollars. That was the idea: Roblox’s creators envisioned the platform as a vast and ever-changing digital playground where kids crafted whatever they desired-games, clothing, structures, landscapes.ĭazzely continued playing Roblox as he grew up, and the platform matured with him.
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Using free software called Roblox Studio, Dazzely could even construct his own games. Then, choosing from the list of over a million titles on, Dazzely placed the little man in one game after another: He jumped him through obstacle courses, buckled him into race cars, and built him forts. He created his first avatar for free, styled its cylindrical head and clothed its blocky body.

Back in 2012, Roblox, the massive online gaming platform, had plenty to offer him.
