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Business Daily meets: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki
00:17:25
The international gaming giant has more than 80 million daily users
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- [00:00]
BBC Announcer
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SAP Concur Representative
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Yes.
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Zoe Kleinman
Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Zoe Kleinman, the BBC's technology editor. And today we're entering the online world of a gaming giant, Roblox. We'll hear how it all started as Business Daily meets the platform's co founder and chief executive, Dave Baszucki.
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Dave Baszucki
Really, our mission is to connect a billion people every day with optimism and civility.
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Zoe Kleinman
Currently, with more than 80 million daily users, Roblox is one of the biggest gaming platforms on the planet.
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Dave Baszucki
What we've announced, and we're really excited about, is the notion that any experience on Roblox can have unlimited generative AI.
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Zoe Kleinman
But there's been criticism from parents who say Roblox isn't safe for children. We set up our own experiment to test this and showed evidence of the platform's safety measures being broken to its boss.
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Dave Baszucki
We don't condone or support any type of image sharing on our own platform. You'll see us get more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is of this type of behavior.
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Zoe Kleinman
Building a virtual empire, keeping children safe, and the future of online gaming. That's all coming up on today's Business Daily. If you've never seen Roblox, imagine a brightly colored animated world. But the difference between this and a conventional video game is that you are the designer. Users can create their own games within the Roblox world and share them with others. There's also an in game currency, Robux, which can be used to buy and sell Players creations within the virtual world and convert it to real money.
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BBC Announcer
Roblox, be anything, build anything.
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Zoe Kleinman
But where did Roblox come from?
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Dave Baszucki
It goes back almost right when I got out of college and I became interested in computers and using them for learning. And before Roblox, if you can believe it, I started a different company. It was called Knowledge Revolution. Less catchy, which, yeah, it was a longer name. We essentially built like a physics experimentation kit on a computer where you could model all of your physics experiments. You could shoot a projectile and see vectors or build a pendulum and see how it would work. But we saw something really interesting with this educational software. We saw kids trying to build stuff. They wanted to not just do their homework on it, they wanted to play and build stuff and they also, they wanted to jump into their creations. They were making houses or ships or scenery and they wanted to jump in. So all of the learning of that was the germination of Roblox.
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Zoe Kleinman
Dave Baszucki set up Roblox in 2004 with Erik Castle, a former vice president at Knowledge Revolution. Eric died from cancer in 2013 at the age of 45.
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Dave Baszucki
I was less of a gamer and more of an engineer. Both of me and then Eric, our co founders, we were, we were really into the idea of using computers to create a simulated environment.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
I'm guessing along the way you've had your ups and downs. What have you learned along the way?
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Dave Baszucki
You're right. There have been times along the way and we can really remember them when it's been really difficult. We had one experience where more and more people were playing on Roblox. But from an economic standpoint, we were very early in the company's history and we had, I'd call a very primitive economic model. We had a club membership model that wasn't really working. And so we could see our users are growing and lots of people are having a great time and connecting on the platform, but we're not making any more money and it's like getting harder to pay the bills.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
That must be so frustrating because on the one hand you've got this massive success, but you're not monetizing it in this scenario.
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Dave Baszucki
Take the long view. We had known in the back of our heads that we felt the future of Roblox was a digital economy. And we had been having discussions with our board of directors. Would it be okay if people made a living on Roblox? We were having discussions, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
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Zoe Kleinman
And what did your board say?
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Dave Baszucki
There was actually a lot of concern that this is a bad thing. This should just be a hobby. I believed that if people could make a living, we might see even better and better creations, and so it might actually accelerate the quality. And so we had this idea in the back of our mind that the ultimate thing is let's have a digital economy. Let's have creators be able to make a living. Let's have a virtual currency. We had been putting it off, and in the midst of rolling the story back to this difficult economic time, we did what a lot of companies do, a lot of small little steps like, let's try this. Something's broken. What can we do? What can we do in the back of our mind? We need the big strategic step, the long view step, the let's build a digital economy. Let's have Robux. Let's have a small percent of our users be able to spend Robux. Let's have creators make a living.
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Zoe Kleinman
That in game currency. Robux has allowed some people to make some of their income on the platform, but also made Roblox itself a lot of money. Its revenue last year was US$3.6 billion. Now in his early 60s, Dave Baszucki, according to Forbes, is worth $2.6 billion.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Roblox has more monthly active users than Nintendo Switch and PlayStation combined.
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Dave Baszucki
That's right.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Who is your competition? Who's your rival?
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Dave Baszucki
That's a good question, right? Because the gaming market space right now has a bunch of interesting components. There's hardware, devices to play on, and we have phones and tablets and computers and VR headsets and handhelds and all of that. We have game engines, we have places to buy advertising, we have people building games. But we're really somewhat unique in a way. We're unique in being a platform deeply connected to the cloud, including a 3D simulator, including communication, including technology to deploy anywhere where all of the current players, all of the people building games, they don't have to change, they still build games. But our platform has all of these technical benefits.
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Zoe Kleinman
We need to talk about AI, of.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Course, because the whole world is talking about AI. How is AI progressing in Roblox?
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Dave Baszucki
What we're starting to have and what we've announced and we're really excited about is the notion that any experience on Roblox can have unlimited generative AI as part of the experience. And so what that will mean is in a fashion experience, rather than maybe choosing clothing for my outfit, I'll be able to describe what I'd like to wear, and AI will generate 3D clothing for me. To put on or in a vehicle simulator rather than just picking the components or the shape literally describing, make the bulge on the hood a little sharper, do that. So we also are gonna make text generation possible to support. We were thinking it would really be cool to imagine a young person making a Roblox experience and saying, I'd like to have a virtual William Shakespeare in the experience and you know, have William Shakespeare be someone who can give an English lesson to someone. So I think we're going to see those types of things on the platform.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
There's a lot of discussion about the impact of AI on human creativity.
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Dave Baszucki
Yeah.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Are you concerned?
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Dave Baszucki
I'm an optimist and I'll share why I'm an optimist and I've been thinking about this a bit. You know, we've seen a lot of technical revolutions in creativity. One might be the migration from hand drawn or oil painted imagery to photography, digital image photography, Photoshop, all of those types of tools. And I feel now, you know, there's probably multiples of people building art than there used to be when that was the only way to do that. And what I think we see just as what I've talked about with fashion design on Roblox, this is going to make many, many more people creative. I think there's a lot of people who wouldn't see themselves as anyone who would ever build fashion, but if they could describe it or use a prompt to build, that might say, well, actually I'm pretty good at building fashion. I'm good at imagining it and talking about it. So I'm a bit of an optimist that we're going to see human acceleration rather than replacement.
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Zoe Kleinman
You're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
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SAP Concur Representative
Hey, let's talk about your expense report.
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SAP Concur Employee
I didn't submit an expense report.
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Zoe Kleinman
You will.
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SAP Concur Representative
Custom saddles and dog training services are not within policy.
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SAP Concur Employee
What are you talking about?
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SAP Concur Representative
SAP Concur uses advanced AI to audit and automatically detect out of policy expenses. It's the breakthrough I needed to focus more on our future.
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SAP Concur Employee
These are my future expenses.
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Zoe Kleinman
Yes.
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SAP Concur Representative
And self defense classes are out of policy.
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SAP Concur Employee
I'll need self defense classes.
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Zoe Kleinman
You will?
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Dave Baszucki
For what? It's a big dog.
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- [11:23]
BBC News Promo Voice
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- [11:34]
BBC Announcer
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- [11:56]
Zoe Kleinman
I'm Zoe Kleinman and today we're meeting the head of the Roblox gaming empire, Dave Buzzucki. The platform's stratospheric growth hasn't come without controversy. Around 40% of its users are under the age of 13, some as young as 8. From concerns about harmful content in the game's user's design to accusations the platform enables grooming, Roblox has sometimes made headlines for the wrong reasons.
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Dave Baszucki
This is a huge responsibility and we're optimistic that we're just getting better and better and better with our AI systems. We do in the company take the attitude that any bad, even one bad incident, is one too many. But at the same time, there are so many benefits on our platform. There's tens and tens of millions of people on our platform every day and they're connecting, they're learning civility. So it's really an amazing responsibility. It's hard to imagine what 80 or 90 million people looks like and the size of that responsibility.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
I want to talk to you a bit about private messaging because there's a lot of concern about what goes on in private chats between younger people and other people.
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Dave Baszucki
That's right.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
We set up two accounts, one in the name of a 15 year old and one in the name of a 27 year old. And they were able to message each other directly. Is that a good idea?
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Dave Baszucki
I think. Well, I'll highlight a couple things. Some really, I think things that hopefully parents can take away from this because Roblox is primarily, you know, we use it for 3D communication. There's some very big differences between what we think of as social networking or social media. Unique thing about Roblox is it's not about sharing images, which is really cool. And sharing images is one area on other platforms where a lot of things we hear about that aren't too good start to happen. So that's really cool. Another thing Roblox isn't, is a platform where people just watch a lot of videos and by themselves watch it. So think of Roblox as a communication platform on, I would say almost every platform in the world right now. There's the belief that if you're 13 and up, you just do whatever you want and you can connect with people, you can chat with them, you can text with them freely. We're a bit different in that every piece of text on our Platform goes through a filter. We analyze all of that communication. We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter pii, all of those kind of things. So it's not quite the same communication. And I would say behind the scenes, the. The analysis of what's going on goes all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.
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Zoe Kleinman
Last year, Roblox announced new safety features, including stopping under thirteen's accounts from being able to send direct messages. But this doesn't mean that older children can't still message with adults. Roblox does have a chat moderation system which identifies and removes inappropriate messages. But we were able to get around this by making small grammar changes to words. We won't describe exactly what we sent, but we were able to ask the teenage account for their social media details. Outside of Roblox, when I offered my phone to Dave Baszucki to show him the evidence, he didn't take the phone and didn't look at the screenshots we'd taken.
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Dave Baszucki
What you're highlighting in this scenario is, in a way, people saying, look, Roblox is so safe, we have to go somewhere else to hang out. We have to go to one of these other platforms where maybe we could share images or do that. And we have no tolerance for that. I think you'll see over time, Roblox stepping up even in the 13 through 17 zone, which we agree is a very vulnerable time for people, even when people are trying to do things like you're mentioning, which is going off platform and being more and more the best in the world of those types of relationships. So we're very aware of this. We don't condone or support any type of image sharing on our own platform. You'll see us get more and more, I think, way beyond where the law is of this type of behavior.
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Zoe Kleinman
What would you say?
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
What's your message to parents who don't want their children on Roblox?
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Dave Baszucki
My message would be, if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox. That sounds a little counterintuitive, but I would always trust parents to make their own decision. I would say at the same time, there are literally tens and tens and tens and tens of millions of people having amazing experiences on our platform. There are tens and tens of parents who call me and say, look, my child was having a tough time. They were disconnected. They found connection on our platform and thank goodness they're here today. They might not be with us if they had not found a connection at that moment in time. So it's an amazing balance, really, our responsibility on safety and civility. But there is so much good that happens when people can connect on the platform as well.
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Zoe Kleinman
Roblox has been vocal in its ambition to attract more adults to the platform and continue to expand their overall user base. So I wanted to know what Dave saw in the company's future.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
You're one of the biggest gaming platforms in the world right now.
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Dave Baszucki
Yeah.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
Where do you want to be in 10 years time?
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Dave Baszucki
Well, we shared that we want to have 10% of the gaming ecosystem running on the platform. Beyond that, we've publicly said, really our mission is to connect a billion people every day with optimism and civility. And that starts to get into even the future, where we believe shopping will get more and more prevalent, concerts will get more prevalent.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
What would your advice be to a young person who wants to build a career in game development?
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Dave Baszucki
Now, when I meet young kids, I say do your homework and like work hard at school. But I would say above and beyond that, I would say there's a huge range of opportunities in the gaming ecospace. It's not just coding, it's art, it's production, it's fashion design. It's going to be experience design. So I think you don't have to be a coder to be a game creator. And I do think this digital economy is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. There are thousands and thousands of jobs being created on Roblox and other platforms where people are making a living and it's really interesting and creative living.
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Interviewer (BBC Business Daily Reporter)
I'm going to clip that bit where you said, do your homework and send it to my children after this.
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Dave Baszucki
Okay. Yeah.
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Zoe Kleinman
How would you describe Roblox in three words?
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Dave Baszucki
The future of communication.
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Zoe Kleinman
Thanks to Dave Buzzucki for sitting down with us and thank you for listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. Remember, you can always find our other episodes wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Today's edition was produced by Imran Rahman Jones and Georgina Hayes and presented by me, Zoe Kleinman.