This feature is now live on ROBLOX.com and comes packaged as part of a cosmetic overhaul for each game’s individual page. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve re-organized the standard elements – description, play buttons, etc. – updated the icons, and made the game thumbnails slightly larger. The most significant change, though, is the addition of a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” rating option, and an overall measure of public sentiment toward a game.

As a ROBLOX member, you can rate any given place once (and you can change your rating at any time) by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down icon. In order to vote, you must first play the game and you must have a verified email address on file. This is not an optional feature for game creators — it is standard across the board — and we will be moderating ratings. For example, if we notice a mass down-vote on a particular place, we’ll investigate the activity to make sure it’s not malicious in nature.

At the outset, we will not factor the rating of a place in our games sort, but we plan to integrate it in the near future. Eventually, games that are overwhelmingly given the “thumbs down” will get pushed down the Games page, even if they are being visited frequently. For now, we recommend you take a look at the public sentiment toward a game before you decide to spend time visiting it. If it seems as though ROBLOXians don’t like it, it might be the kind of place that, for instance, uses a misleading thumbnail image or title to attract your attention.

This is a simple feature with big-time potential. While we haven’t taken it full-circle quite yet – that’ll happen when we integrate game ratings into the Games page sorts and extend the feature to all assets on the site (models, comments, gear and the like) – it does already establish a very visible barometer of quality for games and places.

It’s been a little while since we revealed any details about our fast-approaching BLOXcons – so today, we’re going to reveal the projected program for our Main Stage Presentation. This is a roughly two-hour show with exclusive news and announcements, two fantastic awards shows, a “State of ROBLOXia” from CEO David Baszucki, Q&A sessions and more.

Even those of you who can’t attend BLOXcon in person will be able to experience much of this content by attending Virtual BLOXcon, scheduled for September 21st, 2013. We’ll be re-broadcasting footage from each BLOXcon, streaming totally fresh content from ROBLOX HQ and interacting with you via ROBLOX games and social media. Save the date!

BLOXcon Main Stage Presentation Schedule

• Intro and “State of ROBLOXia” with CEO David Baszucki
• Cool Stuff Happening Now (a spotlight on a brand-new product feature)
• User Showcase Interview (tentative)
• Film Festival and BLOXY Awards
• Q&A: Ask Us Anything
• Hall of Fame 2013 Awards
• Cool Stuff Happening Soon (a spotlight on an upcoming product feature)
• Wrap-up

RGC 2012 attendees shared great ideas and feedback.

Other things to do

Every BLOXcon ticket-holder is entitled to one Main Stage Presentation slot. Here are some of the things you can do with the rest of your time:

• Visit the ROBLOX lab, where you can play and build with friends
• Participate in the hackathon, an event loaded with building and scripting challenges (and prizes!)
• Meet up with and make new ROBLOX friends
• Get your hands on ROBLOX schwag, including real-world fedoras, World Tour t-shirts, hoodies, discounted ROBLOX cards and more

There might also be some celebrity ROBLOX veterans and big-name groups in attendance. Don’t miss your opportunity to get to know them!

Seven-day blog recap

How to add a store to your place

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been talking regularly about our in-game purchasing API and trying to make it easy for you to implement an in-game store. To that end, we put together a tutorial video that walks you through the steps of building out an in-game store using our recent ROBLOX Studio plugin. If you’re interested in turning a profit off your ROBLOX creation, this is certainly a worthwhile venture. Especially when you consider we just launched…

A new “top earning” game sort

Last week, we launched a new, totally optional method of sorting the Games page: the Top Grossing sort. This sort brings to the front page games that are earning significant money based on Game Pass and affiliate gear sales. It’s still an experiment, but the overarching goal is to offer an alternative to sheer volume of place visits for ROBLOX builders to get their creation to the coveted top of the Games page.

We’re also working on integrating clothing sales into the algorithm — once this is complete, successful clothing stores, such as FighterAce’s Kestrel Home Store, should naturally rise to the top. Speaking of Kestrel…

A spotlight on the Kestrel Home Store and clothing group

It was only fitting that our latest Spotlight article feature someone who’s crushing in-game purchasing. FighterAce, the owner of the Kestrel clothing group and Kestrel Home Store, not only runs a highly successful clothing-creation group, but owns one of the most elegant and well maintained department stores. Alan talked with him about his many accomplishments and his plans for the future of his emerging brand.

Five answers to the million dollar question, “how do I get a job at ROBLOX?”

Many ROBLOX gamers, builders and developers have asked us what they can do to prepare for a job in the gaming and technology industries. (In most cases, the question is specific to ROBLOX.) Being that there are many possible paths to success in many disparate fields, we decided to interview several ROBLOX admins to find out how they arrived at their ROBLOX position. From art to community to rendering to physics, these five perspectives might give you direction as you plot out your own path.

A brief BLOXY Awards preview

BLOXcon is quickly approaching and that means we’re gearing up to start announcing winners of the 2013 ROBLOX International Film Festival. Now that the submission and voting periods have ended, we collected submissions from a couple popular categories for this preview of the awards show, which kicks off next month at BLOXcon Chicago.

The latest edition of Feedback Loop

Community feedback is one of the driving forces behind the development of ROBLOX. We take that spirit to heart here on the ROBLOX blog, and occasionally survey our following to find out what’s important to you. In this edition of Feedback Loop, John Shedletsky responds to a wide variety of ideas and questions. The topics span quality game discovery and recommendations, additional materials for parts, cylinder physics, video tutorials, slots for additional games and places, community guidelines, user-created video advertisements and more. To see what’s on the horizon, read through the entire post!

You should see this ROBLOX place

With Dungeon Delver, the name says it all. It’s a dungeon crawler — not unlike any entry in the Diablo or Torchlight series — where your goal is to explore and survive randomly generated dungeons while amassing an ever-expanding inventory of increasingly epic loot. (Say that five times fast.) While the concept isn’t exactly mind-bending, Gl0in and Gl0in2‘s collective execution is top notch. Character movement is precise and responsive, and feels good from the isometric angle. The loot collection and inventory management is intuitive. The character creation interface is easy to use, and you can cycle between multiple characters (with a shared item stash, to boot). Plus, smaller touches like group boss battles, dynamic lighting and procedural generation add significant depth. Give yourself some time to sit down with Dungeon Delver today — it can be addicting. Play now!

Veteran ROBLOX game developer crazyman32 recently launched a new project, in which he’s creating and tuning an Formula 1 race car and track (embedded in the terrain of his Freeflight map). There’s work to be done — the cars have a frustrating knack for getting stuck in trees and other level geometry — but one can’t deny the fun of racing a few friends through the green hills. Zoom into first-person view for the best sense of speed (and to see the steering wheel move with your keyboard input). Play now!

Bits

• ROBLOX CEO David Baszucki penned a column for GigaOM, which surveys the online gaming market’s different approaches to leveraging “the cloud.” Read it (and gain some insight as to where ROBLOX fits in the industry) on GigaOM now.
  
• This week’s gear release is something of a mixed bag. Highlights include the latest entry in the popular “coil” series and, in recognition of Father’s Day, Trolladad. We’ve also got a Cool Story AC Unit and dynamically lit skateboard — perfect for summer.
• Our latest game review pays tribute to Choices, a unique hybrid of 2D platforming and 3D cave exploration by GollyGreg. We’ve actually Spotlighted GollyGreg in the past; check out the article here.

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We don’t want to kill the suspense and anticipation of the actual announcements, so we’re not going to show the nominees for every category. However, we do have a bundle of potential winners for the popular machinima/short film and trailer categories to share. All nominees are listed in a random order. Grab a snack and settle in for some great works of ROBLOX cinema!

Machinima/short film

In this category, entrants had a maximum of three minutes to tell an entertaining ROBLOX story using primarily in-engine footage.

Trailer

Capped at 90 seconds, this category gave entrants a chance to create a trailer for just about anything — as long as it came with a ROBLOX theme.

Stay tuned to the blog and ROBLOX on Twitter for extensive BLOXcon coverage — including award winners — when the events take place in July and August. For those of you who are lucky enough to be attending, expect details about your city’s BLOXcon in the coming weeks!

Only a few months ago, FighterAce noticed an increasing flow of requests from other users. They weren’t requests to party or join other games, nor were they requests to trade items. They were requests for clothing. Word had started to spread that if you were a builder who wanted a store full of clothing, FighterAce was the guy to do it. Before founding his very own brand, his work could be seen in several popular places—the super realistic ROBLOX recreations of Rome, Paris and Italy all feature clothing stores created by him. He became the go-to builder for in-game stores—though without the in-game purchasing API, they didn’t actually do anything.

Fast forward a few months, and FighterAce decided he’d strike out on his own, creating his very own clothing brand, Kestrel. The name stemmed from an American Eagle shirt FighterAce was wearing when he was searching for brand inspiration.

“I looked down and thought, ‘oh hey, a bird,’” he recalls. “It had taken me three days to get to that point.”

FighterAce goes on to tell me that once he had a name, the next couple steps were easy by comparison.

Kestrel store in Rome, Italia

“Once I had a name, I could make a group, which I did. So I made the first set of Kestrel clothing, put up a few ads, and it really took off.”

This made sharing his work intuitive. Group members receive updated every time FighterAce creates a new set of clothing. Though this might sound like a simple practice, it’s actually a somewhat tedious task. The process involves creating the clothes, getting their links, compiling them into a forum post in Clothing and Gear, then posting the post’s URL into Kestrel’s group description. FighterAce found himself with two out of three puzzle pieces: he had the scripting and building knowledge to create in-game stores, and the marketing chops and social networking skills needed to sell virtual clothing. Then came along our in-game purchasing API , which is when FighterAce realized he could complete the picture.

Using the new API, FighterAce, in conjunction with fellow builder Thatcoolguy14, built a store that not only showcases all the clothing FighterAce has made, but allows users to buy it in-game. Kestrel Home Store has since become the most intuitive in-game store we’ve seen on ROBLOX, allowing you to shop and buy to your heart’s content without ever having to leave the place. The entire process is so refreshingly streamlined. If you’re a part of the group, you’ve got options. When you see that FighterAce has updated his clothing lines, you can browse the items in the catalog, or visit the store and browse through new clothing the traditional way.

Once the store was built and functioning properly, FighterAce began looking for actual employees to populate it and assist customers in finding what they’re seeking. To find his candidates, he notified his group members that the Kestrel store was hiring. Applications flooded his inbox immediately.

“To start, you’ve got to ask to become an intern, and you’re trained internally by our supervisors in order to become a sales associate,” says FighterAce.

There were sales associates present almost every time I entered his store, and each of them was courteous, helpful and professional. The store itself is quite large, so it’s really helpful to have someone show you where specific clothing resides.

FighterAce also began talking with other ROBLOX clothing designers to see if they’d be interested in participating. Other designers have their own businesses to worry about, so FighterAce offered them a sweet chance for exposure:

“I was basically saying, you can either sell all your clothes yourself, or sell the templates to me for a price,” he explains. “And if you don’t want to sell me the templates, you can sell your finished clothes to me on your own private account, and I’ll feature designs I like in the store.”

This business model has provided FighterAce with a virtually unlimited supply of clothing designs. His store is the vessel that houses a constant influx of new clothing.

“I’m always focused on making more clothing, and trying to fulfill everything that customers ask of us. We need more space! If you want, I can give a sneak peak of the new store we’re building.”

I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but am allowed to tell you that it’s much bigger than the current store. FighterAce is working with builder sunwars2 on the new store, which should be available soon; but for now, if you’re looking to spruce up your look, talk fashion with other users, or just hang out in a fun and beautiful environment, we highly recommend checking out the Kestrel Home Store.

Advice: 1. Nothing looks better on a resume than personal projects that apply to your desired position (Hint: Build.) 2. You can never learn enough math.

Technical Director of Physics Kevin He (Gongfu Tiger)

Influence: When I was in 4th grade my dad (who was a college Physics professor) was part of a summer camp initiative called “Programming by BASIC”. Essentially, the course was one week long and covered 17 basic statements of the BASIC programming language. I remember one BASIC game called “Dodge the Donkey”, and I was just totally hooked. When that week ended I found a book called “100 Computer Games Written in BASIC”. I started typing code from that book line by line into my computer to see what would happen. Years later, I’m Technical Director of Physics here at ROBLOX.

High School: Physics and a PASCAL programming course really reinforced that these were my passions.

College: I ended up majoring in computer science, which came as no surprise to my family or me. My favorite courses were Data Structure and Algorithm, Computer Networks, Operating Systems, Computer Architecture, Digit Circuit, Discrete Logic, and Artificial Intelligence.

I had been indulging in programming and video games since my childhood–I actually entered a bunch of programming contests as a kid and won a few. I remember touring the science department of the university where my dad worked. It was awe inspiring, seeing all those robots and mechanical creations moving around. These memories made me determined to major in Computer Science.

Community Manager Becky Herndon (ReeseMcBlox)

Influence: Since I like people, the Internet, and computer games, it made sense for me to combine those interests and see what happened. I got into the field of Online Community Management first as a hobby and later as a profession. It was a logical step at that point in my life–over 7 years ago–to try to grow my hobby into a vocation. Since I enjoy computer gaming communities and programming communities, ROBLOX was the perfect place to land this job.

High School: I went to a public Talented and Gifted magnet school–my high school life was like a junior version of the movie Real Genius. The experience was very humbling and inspiring. I particularly enjoyed English and History. I see reflections of that genius culture here at ROBLOX HQ among staff members–it’s great.

In this, the second issue, John Shedletsky and a guest commentator discuss the quality game discovery and recommendations, additional materials for parts, cylinder physics, video tutorials, slots for additional games and places, community guidelines, user-created video advertisements and more.

Games and game discovery

Admin-approved games

zinc707: Games that official ROBLOX administrators have played, enjoyed, and would recommend to others. They could be represented by a small tag on the thumbnail image for the game.

We’re in the process of examining better ways to surface great, but largely unknown, games on the ROBLOX.com Games page. One of the things we’re considering is exactly what you suggest: an area on the page for promoting games chosen by editorial consensus. On the other hand, we feel strongly that players should have the strongest voice in determining which games become popular, which is why we are working on several other crowd-sourced mechanisms for surfacing new, great content.

“Fake” game flags

KTGaGaFan: A way to flag fake games and a way to flag spam comments (and have that link removed from the site)! I’ve waited long enough, especially with these fake games on the front page 24/7!

We’re rapidly moving toward giving the community more control over which games appear on the front page. I expect to see some huge improvements here soon.

Game recommendations

ybmul1380: There should be a system that looks at the games you play, and suggest four games that people have played after visiting that place. For example, if I went to Sword Fight on the Heights, in my profile, I would have four games that others played after playing Sword Fight on the Heights.

Yes, we’ve wanted this functionality since day one. Building out the infrastructure to actually make these recommendations is a big project, which is why we haven’t tackled it yet. Once we’re happy with the state of the main Games page, where “blockbuster” games naturally float to the top, we’ll start work on promoting games that have “niche” audiences. One of our main mechanisms for doing this will be recommendations.

Content creation and manipulation

Materials for parts

McVisibility: ROBLOX only supports a few materials now. They are: plastic, slate, concrete, grass, wood, corroded metal, diamond metal plate, foil and ice. How about adding more? I already have ideas: how about leather, cardboard, and sand-like texture? Many more can be added.

There’s a giant excel spreadsheet I made that has 100-200 different materials that might be fun to add to the game. We don’t want to extend the current set of materials until we’re ready to really do materials right. This means different materials would have different physical properties. Wood would float and be flammable. Metals would sink and conduct electricity. Rubber would be non-conductive and bounce. We experimented a little with this when we added water to the game – each material has its own specific gravity – but at some point we want to spend the time and really do it right. We don’t want to just tack on more materials.

Cylinder physics

KRio99: This has bothered me for quite a while now, and I’m sure it would be very helpful to most builders on ROBLOX. I would like cylinders that don’t use the physics of the ball. It would be nice to be able to resize a cylinder to, say, 3 x 1 x 3. That could be used as a realistic wheel.

I was talking to Kevin He, one of our crack physics developers, today about cylinder collisions. We know that they’re going to be necessary in order to do vehicles right.

Video tutorials for building

tigerman14: I believe that ROBLOX should have a video on how to do each component of ROBLOX Studio. It might be really hard for people to understand what to do just by reading. Therefore I suggest that you upload a video for each of the items (or at least the top items) builders need help with.

We posted a video tutorial to the blog just this week! In general, though, we’d love to have more tutorial videos. Creating these videos takes a lot of time and we want to cover the most important stuff first. So my question to our readers is this: what kinds of things do you want a tutorial video to teach you? Post in the comments, we’ll take a look!

Purchasing individual game slots

b0bpwns: It’s a drag when a great builder can’t build more games because he or she doesn’t have Builders Club. Why not let us buy places, group space, etc., for Robux? For example, 1,000 Robux could open up another place slot (that would cost either 10 dollars from a ROBLOX card, or 10,000 place visits)! Think of it! It would make Non-Builders Club people a lot happier, and hey, why stop there? Why not let Builders Club members have a little discount so that they get a better benefit.

robloxrules224, in response: 1,000 Robux? Why not just buy a Builders Club membership to get the extra places?

M39a9am3R, in response: That’s the point, it’s to encourage people to purchase Builders Club or Robux. If your place has 10,000 (or more) visits then you’re set to expand.

This is something we are considering. Are you running out of place slots? If we did decide to increase the limit on place slots, I think we’d sell extra ones for less than 1,000 Robux. At the end of the day, if you are a successful builder and you need more slots, ROBLOX wants to support you.

On the web

Community guidelines update

minimite: Do you think that there’ll ever be, in the near or late future, a major/minor change to the Community Rules and Guidelines/Terms of Service and what would it be? I ask this because the age-rate of players may be increasing or decreasing. For example, if young adolescents began to play more often than younger players, would the rules ease-up?

Many of ROBLOX’s community rules exist to keep our younger players safe. We’d like to ease up on some of our restrictions when it comes to older community members, but this has to be done gradually. It’s a huge project and we can only take baby steps towards the ultimate goal without throwing the community into chaos.

Brad Justus, our VP of Marketing and Brand Experience who you might know better as chiefjustus, had this to add:

We’re always evaluating and considering updates to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. In fact, you can expect some updates in the very near future as we introduce some exciting new features to ROBLOX. The Terms and Guidelines are not so much driven by the age of our players and builders, but by how our features and offerings affect what everyone is permitted — or not permitted — to do on ROBLOX to provide the best possible experience for everyone.

View sent messages

caveman6789: I wrote a whole paragraph for someone, but sent it to the wrong person, and I forgot what I wrote. There should be a sent bar in the messages to see what you sent. This may be helpful when you don’t remember sending someone a certain message, and need to know the exact time it happened.

Yes. I’ve wanted this too.

User-created video advertisements

evolvedpikachu: You know those video ads you run into when you load a game? Well, how about letting users make their own video ads to run while loading a game? Maximum 15 seconds long or so.

We’re examining our user ad system and what we can do to make it more useful to our builders. Video ads is one thing that we’ve thought of. 

iBrandyn, in response: That’s like saying “Ey, ROBLOX! Why don’t you hide advertisements from other sites that make you money and pay the workers at ROBLOX to develop new feature for us.”

It’s true that we make a fair amount of money from pre-roll video ads. However, it’s possible that the space might be more valuable to builders who want to advertise their games. At some point we might run an experiment to find out.

evolvedpikachu, in response: How about show them to Builders Club members only, or have the ad-makers pay three times the normal advertising cost to publish them?

I think video ads would be kept separate from still image ads. We wouldn’t want to display them across the site – it would probably be too annoying.

This selection of ideas and questions were selected from a call for feedback via ROBLOX’s Twitter presence and the Suggestions & Ideas forum. To contribute your thoughts in the future, follow @ROBLOX and keep posting your feedback on S&I! If you need somewhere to start, don’t forget to answer the question posed above: what kinds of tutorial videos would you like to see from us?

This type of sort might ring a bell if you’re a mobile app fiend. The iTunes App Store, for example, shows top 10 lists for not just highly downloaded apps, but apps that are grossing a lot of money via sales and in-app purchases. While there may be exceptions, top-grossing apps are often quality apps. People don’t spend significant money on things that are “bad,” especially not over a sustained period of time. ROBLOXians, by the same token, are smart enough not to spend their time or Robux on games that fail to deliver a good experience.

We’ve kicked off an experiment to test this theory. If you look at the Games page, you now have the option – it’s not shown by default at this time – of viewing games using the Top Grossing sort. Simply visit the Games page, then click “Top Grossing” in the left-hand menu where you see “Relevance,” “Popular,” and so on. Here’s how it looks today, as compared to the standard Relevance sort.

Left: Relevance sort. Right: Top Grossing sort. Use left and right arrows to compare.

Right now, the Top Grossing sort factors in Game Pass sales and affiliate gear sales (both in-game and on-site) over a rolling, seven-day period. We designed the algorithm to be flexible to future features that allow builders and developers to profit from their creations, so it will adapt with the times.

We believe this sort will enhance player discovery of great content and give builders and game developers another avenue to reach the top of the Games page. As opposed to sheer popularity, you can have success by creating a game that does a reasonable job of selling players on valuable goods. Popularity is still a factor – someone needs to be there to buy stuff – but it’s not the end-all be-all of making it big on ROBLOX. Longer term, the sort could encourage game developers to constantly expand their gameplay to stay on the top, which is good for everyone.

How can you make your game or place work for you? To start, consider selling Game Passes, adding gear to your game, and leveraging our recent in-game purchasing API.

This small feature sets the stage for significant Games page development in the coming months. We’re excited about what’s on the horizon, and the prospect of drastically improving your ability to search and discover the best ROBLOX’s community of builders has to offer.

Seven-day Blog Recap

Local STEM group field trips to Behind the BLOX

Many educators recognize the educational value of ROBLOX. It’s a vehicle for learning to manipulate digital objects in 3D, develop a programming foundation and learn some economics basics within the context of pure fun. We recently had a group of students from a local middle school’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Coalition) program stop in our office for a weekly Behind the BLOX session, where they had the opportunity to provide feedback and play test a project that’s currently in development. You can read about their visit and get some insight as to why this STEM group uses ROBLOX as a hybrid of fun and learning.

Six places that’ll make you say, “whoa”

Part of being part of the communications team is seeking out and surfacing the best content on ROBLOX. We occasionally publish articles that exist for that express purpose. In our latest edition, we showcase places with dynamic lighting, incredible levels of intricate detail, massive scale and, in some cases, all of the above. We recommend you take a look at our photos. Then visit each place and see the grandeur for yourself.

Want to look back at previous entries in our “six places” series? Have I got links for you:

• Six Must-See ROBLOX Places
• Six Awesome ROBLOX Places You’ve Never Seen Before
• Six Awesome ROBLOX Places You’ve Never Seen Before, Part 2

Weekend fun with in-game purchasing

A little over a month ago, we launched an API that lets creators sell Game Passes and gear from within their games and places. While we’ve noticed some cool implementations of this feature, we were left wanting to make it easier to leverage. So, this week, our Content Team developed a resource for that exact purpose: a GUI that lets you easily create a store for your place. If you’re interested in effectively earning a profit, it’s worth your while to read our brief tutorial and leverage this feature today.

Scaling thumbnail dependencies with a growing user base

There is a huge quantity of thumbnails being generated on ROBLOX.com and recorded in a database every day. In fact, every one of these thumbnails not only has a unique ID, but multiple associations with with any and all other assets that appear in that thumbnail. (For example, your character thumbnail has associations with the hat and shirt it’s wearing.) Our nimble operations team recently did some “future proofing” on the way we store and access these database records, which number in the billions, to make sure we continue to scale with the growth of our community. It’s technical. It’s available as some fine weekend reading right here.

BLOXcon Poster Contest winners have been announced!

On Friday, we announced the winners of our BLOXcon Poster Contest, which gave the entire community an opportunity to create a poster for any of our three upcoming BLOXcon events. With the help of your vote, we narrowed the selection down to three top posters for each city. See who took home the grand prize!

Prepare for summer with ROBLOX cards and shades

Every month, we release new virtual items you can only acquire by redeeming ROBLOX cards from particular stores. This month, we dove into the spirit of summer and debuted an entire set of shades. Find out what shades you can get and how you can get them by checking out this post.

You should see this ROBLOX place

The object? Lollipop. Mine was the red one. I was outclassed, but proud of the little hill I added as a backdrop.

Ready, Steady, Build! by peaspod is a great idea. It’s a social building game, where six players are provided an object (e.g., house, tree, etc.), tasked with building it privately in five minutes, then cast up to three votes for the best execution. (And no, you can’t vote for yourself.) It’s not the flashiest looking place, but it’s fun and a smart use of ROBLOX’s building tools and multiplayer gaming platform. Some player-builders are quite good, too; I was bested by most of my opponents, making me think I had better brush up on my building skills in the near future…

ROBLOX, elsewhere on the web

• ROBLOX was featured in Common Sense Media’s Digital Fun for Creative Kids guide. Find us in the “Coding” category (ages 7-12)!
• Gamesauce published an informative article, featuring interview commentary from our CEO, David Baszucki, about how ROBLOX has grown from mere idea to a virtual community with millions of builders.
• Our weekly Behind the BLOX sessions made it into the local news, thanks to a parenting-themed article about technology and video games in the San Jose Mercury News.

Bits

• Last week, I mentioned Nexx’s new ROBLOX game development competition, BLOXdev. The site’s countdown clock is ticking toward the official beginning of the event, in which ROBLOX developers have a week to create a game based around a theme. Currently, BLOXdev is accepting suggestions for the theme. If you’re a game developer looking to make a name for yourself, check it out!
• In celebration of World Oceans Day, our gear release for this week was ocean-themed. Check them out: Land Shark Shooter, Seahorse, Harpoon Gun, Squid Ink Bomb. Side note: seahorses FTW (especially when they drive like tanks).
• ROBLOX + cake = YES.
• Our latest video review covers Strobe, the flashy shooter by redditor and Team Rudimentality. Watch the video below and check out our previous feature about the game for more information.

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