The User-Generated Content Landscape (and What Drives It)

By Andrew Haak - September 13, 2012

Successful user-generated content platforms have long tails.

Not literally. Statistically.

Take a look at the concept illustration to the right. There are a few big-budget content creators, and many more content creators with relatively low budgets. User-generated content platforms empower the lower-budget producers, spanning a huge variety of passions.

There’s YouTube for video, Machinima.com for video-game cinema, WattPad for literature, Quora for Q&A, Epinions for consumer product reviews, Instagram for photos, DeviantArt for amateur art and many more. Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention ROBLOX for video games.

ROBLOX Users and Indie Devs: More in Common than You Think

By Andrew Haak - August 9, 2012

Indie gaming. It might make you think of small teams – even teams of one – holed up in home offices; focused experiences that put more stake in creative game-play mechanics – your Braids and Fezs – than next-generation, video-card-frying graphics; unique aesthetics and memorable styles.

But 10 years ago, you might not have thought… Well, anything. It’s only been in the last six or seven years that the indie gaming scene has exploded. And in the future, we believe user-generated gaming platforms, including ROBLOX, will not only sustain the explosion, but grow it, as more and more people pick up on what it takes to independently develop games well before going pro.

ROBLOX Users: Content-Creating, Game-Playing Machines in 2012

By Matthew Finick - July 11, 2012

We just passed the halfway mark of 2012, making it high time to look back and evaluate how much content ROBLOX users have generated and played so far this year. The graphic in this blog post shows the growth in games created, assets created (all user-generated, non-place content), game plays and game-play hours logged for the first halves of the past three years.

The Games That Paved the Way for User-Generated Gaming

By Alan Fackler - July 7, 2012

Here at ROBLOX, one of our goals is to make your world-building experience easy, flexible and fun. We’ve got teams of developers working tirelessly to ensure that creating and sharing games is a seamless experience, and that the tools you need are both user-friendly and deep.

And though ROBLOX users now create millions of games per year, we can’t take credit for inventing user-generated gaming. User-generated content has existed in the realm of video games for decades, though only a small fraction of gamers had the technical know-how to truly embrace the idea.

Still, we think the games that encouraged user-generated content instilled key values that inspired us to become who we are today. So we thought we’d take a fond look back at some of those ground-breaking games, and share them with you. Enjoy.