Linden Lab's new chief marketing officer.

[Akane Nacht]

9 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I've never played Roblox, so forgive my ignorance on this, but looking at it (on Youtube, Twitch, etc.), I can't for the life of me see why players would even be interested in SL in the first place. They just don't seem anything alike to me.

I can understand the technical comparisons but one look at Roblox and it's plainly for kids, as in under 16s. Not at all SL's target market. Kid's preferences will change enormously before they hit adulthood, and are ready for a self-driven experience like SL.

[Drayke Newall]

10 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I've never played Roblox, so forgive my ignorance on this, but looking at it (on Youtube, Twitch, etc.), I can't for the life of me see why players would even be interested in SL in the first place. They just don't seem anything alike to me.

Does Roblox have land to purchase/rent? I assume you can build homes n things. Are there clubs and bars and lounges and DJs? I know you can run a shop, but does all that function the way it does here (where customers come in, buy, can get gifts, there are store hunts, sales, major shopping events and themed faires, etc. etc.). Are there groups to join? I won't even get into the more art/design-related SL hobbies like landscape/avatar photography, machinima, interior design, or building complex in-world art installations and galleries. Can you spend 4348123 hours tweaking your avatars like I do? Can you obsess over your avie's manicure and finding the perfect guyliner? 😆 Do you build inside the platform or do you use 3D software?

I've honestly only seen a few gaming sessions where people played multiplayer games built inside Roblox - like Squid Game type things, back when that was popular. So my experience there is very limited.

Btw, nobody has to really answer any of these questions or anything. I'm aware it's a bit off-topic anyway, plus I could always just Google. I'm just thinking out loud - don't mind me! I just always find myself wondering why the two platforms are compared so often. And why SL would market to Roblox players at all. Roblox always seemed more Minecrafty to me, which isn't at all a bad thing - I love Minecraft, too!

To answer your questions.

• Roblox does not have land to purchase or rent, you create a space (does not need to be a game) and that is free. That space can be land or void depending on what you want to do. You can charge people robux to play your game or enter the world that you create you can also charge people for other things.
• Yes you can build homes and things. You can build anything you like.
• Yes there are clubs, bars and lounges and yes you can play music/dj. Club DJ - Roblox
• You can sell things you make however need a membership to do that. You sell things through the roblox marketplace or charge people in your world you create for things.
• Yes there are groups in Roblox that you can join Groups - Roblox
• Yes you can do all the hobbies you describe in Roblox like building, interior design, machinima etc it is just different and not photorealistic like SL. For example here is a movie maker space someone has made Movie Maker 3 - Roblox
• Avatars are not tweakable to the extent in SL and are very basic select eye, hair colour etc. Avatars are also less customisable so no guyliner etc.
• Roblox has their own 'developer viewer' which you design your space in and then upload it to the Roblox servers. You can also create assets outside of the developer viewer in say blender and import those in.

Roblox is compared to SL so much because it does a lot of what SL allows, you can build, create, sell, join groups, RP, play games, make money, create an avatar etc.

The whole Roblox only has games is a myth, it has many more things to do. For example the top roblox world that is played is an RP experience Adopt me! which has you RPing a family with baby etc. It has a concurrency of 200,000 daily users and a total of over 28billion visits. Another world is called Brookhaven which in this world that someone made you can RP with others about living in that world, own a house, car etc (either free or not free with a gamepass and buy items individually I believe with robux) it has a total of over 17billion visits.

There are also thousands of other zones that are not game focused including clubs and hangouts etc. For example someone created a showcase of Paris (the RL city) where all you do is walk around and see what Paris looks like from that part of Paris. Its not a game but simply similar to many regions in SL. • Paris {SHOWCASE} - Roblox it is as realistic as most builds in SL. 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Akane Nacht]

1 hour ago, Drayke Newall said:

The whole Roblox only has games is a myth

Aren't Roblox "experiences" essentially games, from a commercial point of view, and the creators paid for traffic? I read somewhere they only called them experiences to fly under the radar of requirements to be listed on app stores.

disclaimer - I've never used Roblox myself and only heard stories of it secondhand.

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, Akane Nacht said:

Aren't Roblox "experiences" essentially games, from a commercial point of view, and the creators paid for traffic? I read somewhere they only called them experiences to fly under the radar of requirements to be listed on app stores.

disclaimer - I've never used Roblox myself and only heard stories of it secondhand.

No. Experiences can be whatever you want them to be. You can also create private or public experiences. Whilst some (the majority) make them games or have games in them as part of their world like MeepCity (which is a hangout/social place with games in it as well as other things), many are just places that people have built to hang out with people or build their own creations. The reason why games are more prevalent is due to them bringing in more people to earn creators more $$.

You also dont pay for traffic at all unless you want to. In Roblox a creator can pay for advertisements or a sponsored experience to be displayed on the Roblox website in certain areas. This is no different to LL providing a similar advert option displayed in inworld search to a sim/region if a person pays Lindens for it.

Creating an experience or place is free and usually is unless the access is made not so by the experience creator. A creator (of the experience) can then either charge Robux for entry to that place/game/hangout etc., or they can charge robux for buying certain things in their created experience like avatar clothing, Game Passes (roblox.com), extra content specific to their experience/place etc. They can also can make their own in game currency with robux as the buy in Earning Robux (roblox.com).

Basically Roblox and creators earn money the same way Linden Lab earn money from people buying Lindens (or premium) and creators earn money from people spending Lindens. There are more complicated earning mechanics in Roblox but the aforementioned is the gist.

What is different to Second Life is that in Roblox, for creators to cash out their robux earnt to RL money they need to meet a threshold and be approved prior to do so. Out of the 1million odd creators only 3-5000 of those are eligible to cash out their robux to real currencies. The others 99.7% earn under $1000 per year and are generally ineligible to cash out.

This is also why if Linden Lab did their homework on their competitors they have ample ways of marketing why Second Life is better than the competitors.

If they updated their systems slightly improving performance (getting more avies on the region with no lag) and providing more scripting options (LL haven't added new scripting features for creators for many years) LL could easily advertise not only better graphics, but also play on the whole everyone is eligible to cash out not just a select few who earn over a certain amount per year.

[Akane Nacht]

36 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

You also dont pay for traffic at all unless you want to.

Actually what I meant was creators getting paid for experiences that have good traffic numbers. I recall reading about some incentive of that sort, but I might have misunderstood how it worked.

40 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

LL could easily advertise not only better graphics, but also play on the whole everyone is eligible to cash out not just a select few who earn over a certain amount per year.

yep, agree. Even casual hobbyists can make real $ in SL.

[Drayke Newall]

12 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

Actually what I meant was creators getting paid for experiences that have good traffic numbers. I recall reading about some incentive of that sort, but I might have misunderstood how it worked.

You mean Roblox paying those creators directly to influence traffic number or paying them that have good traffic numbers? I have never heard of that happening.

Perhaps it was that those experiences that generate a lot of traffic are usually part of those 3-5000 creators that cash out robux to RL cash. That isn't a bad thing and would be no different to say, Catwa cashing out a lot of lindens due to that being popular.

[Akane Nacht]

1 hour ago, Drayke Newall said:

You mean Roblox paying those creators directly to influence traffic number or paying them that have good traffic numbers? I have never heard of that happening.

Perhaps it was that those experiences that generate a lot of traffic are usually part of those 3-5000 creators that cash out robux to RL cash. That isn't a bad thing and would be no different to say, Catwa cashing out a lot of lindens due to that being popular.

I think it was related to this: Robux From Place Visits? - Help and Feedback / Game Design Support - DevForum | Roblox

Roblox (for creators) seems to be about jostling for the top spot as a featured game. Seems fair therefore to assume it's (mostly) about games. That's certainly how they advertise themselves.

That seems to me to be narrower than the economy of SL, which can be land rental, sales of virtual goods, services of various sorts, and entertainment, including games.

[Drayke Newall]

25 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

I think it was related to this: Robux From Place Visits? - Help and Feedback / Game Design Support - DevForum | Roblox

That's the other more complicated earning method I mentioned in my post. Basically if a user who has premium visits your experience and you as the creator also have premium, then you get what is known as a premium payout. The user doesnt pay that it just comes as a perk for being premium. It happens whether you have a big experience or a small experience and is based on time spent. I suppose it is similar to camping chairs in SL's past but in reverse where the creator gets the cash instead of the user.

25 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

Roblox (for creators) seems to be about jostling for the top spot as a featured game. Seems fair therefore to assume it's (mostly) about games. That's certainly how they advertise themselves.

Not really unless you're a creator that wants the top spot. As I said 99.7% of creators dont even create in roblox with the intention of cashing out, making money, etc. They just make a game for fun without even thinking of creating money.

Under 13 year olds (largest demographic) are part of this as they cannot cash-out so there is no incentive for them to jostle for the top spot to earn Robux. The reason why there are more games on Roblox is because that is primarily what their users want to make i.e. kids like games and kids are the majority demographic. The same way that clubs out represent Second Life users to the point that there is probably enough clubs in SL for each club to have 20 users 😆.

25 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

That seems to me to be narrower than the economy of SL, which can be land rental, sales of virtual goods, services of various sorts, and entertainment, including games.

Sure there aren't as many things to do in Roblox as SL however keep in mind that the limited robux cash outs to RL money  and limited customisability means less incentive and things to be part of the economy or to earn money, hence another reason SL can be advertised as better than competitors.

The 150million user/day to 1milion developer ratio shows that people dont play or create experiences in Roblox with the intention to make money. Second Life on the other hand is driven by that. The majority of users start to play SL under the assumption that you play SL to make money selling stuff.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Mollymews]

On 5/20/2022 at 1:32 PM, diamond Marchant said:

Any thoughts?

my first thought when I think about NFTs is about rugs.  So I go over here to see who has been pulling rugs lately

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

9 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

To answer your questions.

• Roblox does not have land to purchase or rent, you create a space (does not need to be a game) and that is free. That space can be land or void depending on what you want to do. You can charge people robux to play your game or enter the world that you create you can also charge people for other things.
• Yes you can build homes and things. You can build anything you like.
• Yes there are clubs, bars and lounges and yes you can play music/dj. Club DJ - Roblox
• You can sell things you make however need a membership to do that. You sell things through the roblox marketplace or charge people in your world you create for things.
• Yes there are groups in Roblox that you can join Groups - Roblox
• Yes you can do all the hobbies you describe in Roblox like building, interior design, machinima etc it is just different and not photorealistic like SL. For example here is a movie maker space someone has made Movie Maker 3 - Roblox
• Avatars are not tweakable to the extent in SL and are very basic select eye, hair colour etc. Avatars are also less customisable so no guyliner etc.
• Roblox has their own 'developer viewer' which you design your space in and then upload it to the Roblox servers. You can also create assets outside of the developer viewer in say blender and import those in.

Roblox is compared to SL so much because it does a lot of what SL allows, you can build, create, sell, join groups, RP, play games, make money, create an avatar etc.

The whole Roblox only has games is a myth, it has many more things to do. For example the top roblox world that is played is an RP experience Adopt me! which has you RPing a family with baby etc. It has a concurrency of 200,000 daily users and a total of over 28billion visits. Another world is called Brookhaven which in this world that someone made you can RP with others about living in that world, own a house, car etc (either free or not free with a gamepass and buy items individually I believe with robux) it has a total of over 17billion visits.

There are also thousands of other zones that are not game focused including clubs and hangouts etc. For example someone created a showcase of Paris (the RL city) where all you do is walk around and see what Paris looks like from that part of Paris. Its not a game but simply similar to many regions in SL. • Paris {SHOWCASE} - Roblox it is as realistic as most builds in SL. 

 

OMG you rock, Drayke!! Thank you so much for the detailed answers. You didn't have to do all that! I was just being lazy in not Googling properly! 😂 I really appreciate you taking the time to answer.

It sounds like Roblox is a looooooooot more involved than I initially thought. I'm more familiar with the multiplayer Minecraft experience and what people build/do in there, so seeing slightly similar things in Roblox, I thought it fit more in line with that. Now I see how it's more like a Second Life for kids experience. That's really awesome.

Also, I like that you can build in Blender and outside 3D programs and import to Roblox - that might get kids interested down the road in 3D modeling and animation. Neat!

And I agree - that Paris showcase looks really, really nice. I've absolutely seen builds like that in SL. I didn't realize that was possible in Roblox either!

[Akane Nacht]

4 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

The 150million user/day to 1milion developer ratio shows that people dont play or create experiences in Roblox with the intention to make money. Second Life on the other hand is driven by that. The majority of users start to play SL under the assumption that you play SL to make money selling stuff.

thanks for the info. It looks like Roblox has more similarities to SL than I supposed. As for the money making factor in joining SL, it wasn't the case for me, I just wanted to goof around. I didn't try my hand at selling stuff til much later. This the the same for almost everyone I have met in SL. I can't think of anyone I've met who joined SL expressly to run a shop and nothing else, though I'm sure such people exist.

[Coffee Pancake]

Roblox is eating our lunch and has a plan to mature the platform with the userbase whilst still being attractive to kids.

It's also functionally far more responsive and not tied to design decisions made 20 years ago for a 3D world to test out haptics technology.

Quote

Linden Lab was founded in 1999, and for a couple of years didn't really have a lot of direction. One of its most convincing forms by 2001 was as a hardware-research company, focusing on haptic technology, which would allow commercially viable full-body access to virtual environments and waldoes (the aggregate slang name for the category of real-time telepresence and teleoperation devices).

The haptic hardware prototype was dubbed "The Rig".

You can't laugh at Roblox for having blocky avatars when you're a waldo.

[animats]

Roblox, according to their S-1 filing when they went public last year, has more adult members than SL does. The typical user is 13, yes, but the scale is huge.

[Paulsian]

15 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

To answer your questions.

• Roblox does not have land to purchase or rent, you create a space (does not need to be a game) and that is free. That space can be land or void depending on what you want to do. You can charge people robux to play your game or enter the world that you create you can also charge people for other things.
• Yes you can build homes and things. You can build anything you like.
• Yes there are clubs, bars and lounges and yes you can play music/dj. Club DJ - Roblox
• You can sell things you make however need a membership to do that. You sell things through the roblox marketplace or charge people in your world you create for things.
• Yes there are groups in Roblox that you can join Groups - Roblox
• Yes you can do all the hobbies you describe in Roblox like building, interior design, machinima etc it is just different and not photorealistic like SL. For example here is a movie maker space someone has made Movie Maker 3 - Roblox
• Avatars are not tweakable to the extent in SL and are very basic select eye, hair colour etc. Avatars are also less customisable so no guyliner etc.
• Roblox has their own 'developer viewer' which you design your space in and then upload it to the Roblox servers. You can also create assets outside of the developer viewer in say blender and import those in.

Roblox is compared to SL so much because it does a lot of what SL allows, you can build, create, sell, join groups, RP, play games, make money, create an avatar etc.

The whole Roblox only has games is a myth, it has many more things to do. For example the top roblox world that is played is an RP experience Adopt me! which has you RPing a family with baby etc. It has a concurrency of 200,000 daily users and a total of over 28billion visits. Another world is called Brookhaven which in this world that someone made you can RP with others about living in that world, own a house, car etc (either free or not free with a gamepass and buy items individually I believe with robux) it has a total of over 17billion visits.

There are also thousands of other zones that are not game focused including clubs and hangouts etc. For example someone created a showcase of Paris (the RL city) where all you do is walk around and see what Paris looks like from that part of Paris. Its not a game but simply similar to many regions in SL. • Paris {SHOWCASE} - Roblox it is as realistic as most builds in SL. 

 

could not have said any better. 

i am a solo loner. I feel alone in roblox when learning the platform, and the children are really bad trolls. sandboxes are like battle areas. the build tools are not as good as sl they do have potential but the trolling was so bad and either that or isolation um not a place i would create content for or hang out. same w ylands fun on ipad but not daily driver when it comes to serious virtual experiences.

secondlife has a foundation of education/building/socialization/art/love

most others have foundations of violence, hate, & destruction.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Paulsian

[Paulsian]

roblox is something you give a toddle to keep amused in most cases. non robucks spending toddlers. when i babysit would give tablet w ylands personally over roblox and would pay ylands for terraforming on ipad pro (we need caves and dont remember seeing zombies in the monster section for spawning and reacting to times of day w agression levels and climbing abilities)

Edited May 21, 2022 by Paulsian

[Akane Nacht]

9 hours ago, animats said:

Roblox, according to their S-1 filing when they went public last year, has more adult members than SL does. The typical user is 13, yes, but the scale is huge.

Adult is a pretty big range.. was there a further breakdown?

[Love Zhaoying]

15 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You can't laugh at Roblox for having blocky avatars when you're a waldo.

Heinlein reference? "Waldoes" being the remote devices invented by the title character. *Edit* Oops, I finally read the quote in your post, and still assume the same thing. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(short_story)

Edited May 22, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Lindal Kidd]

Heinlein "invented" the robotic telemanipulator in his short story "Waldo", but his term for such devices, "waldoes", found its way into real world usage.

Heinlein also invented the waterbed.