WEBVTT - The Story: Roblox and the ‘Prehistoric Era’ of Gaming w/ David Baszucki 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:16.639 Welcome to tech stuff. This is the story. And I 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.799 want to start today's episode with a story that my 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.640 friend told me about a big family drama over the holidays. 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.280 You see, his daughter got locked out of her Roadblocks 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:31.000 account and it threatened to derail the whole family's Christmas. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.279 This level of emotional attachment to a tech platform, it 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.800 got me pretty fascinated. Why does Roadblocks mean so much 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:43.199 to my friend's daughter and many many others like her. 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.440 Roadblocks has become one of the most popular gaming platforms 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.640 in the world. It has over ninety five million users, 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.840 and players can also create their own games. The majority 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.600 of users are under sixteen, and if you have kids 0:00:57.600 --> 0:00:59.640 in your life, there's a very good chance that they 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:04.640 use Roblocks and that they're fanatical about it. Today we're 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.920 talking to the man behind it all, David Bozuki, the 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.440 co founder and CEO of Roadblocks, who recently said that 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:16.360 gaming is still in its quote prehistoric era. If you 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.800 care about how technology is driving culture and how culture 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:23.880 is driving technology, you simply have to understand Roadblocks because 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.680 it's this space where kids can play make believe but 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:32.399 also explore real world situations. Virtually, just this month, users 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:37.080 engaged in political activism on the platform by staging protests 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:41.640 when some players created avatars of ice agents, others took 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.080 to the suburban streets of one Roadblocks universe to protest. 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:48.600 And then there are scenarios playing out on the platform 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.840 that are all too real. As Bloomberg put it, quote, 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.800 the Internet's biggest recreation zone for kids is fighting to 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.720 keep predators away. So we'll also talk about what Roadblocks 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.120 is doing to keep its huge user base of children 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.200 safe and to address some criticisms that it should be 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.720 doing more. David BAZOOKI, welcome to take stuff. 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.400 Hey, thank you so much. It's great to be on 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:12.040 the show with you. 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:14.560 Thank you for being here. If you had to explain 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.919 Roadblocks to someone who's never used it before, where do 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:18.360 you begin. 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.919 We've used so many terminologies of how we've talked about 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.280 Roadblocks in the past, all the way from in the 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.640 early days it was you make the game. We talked 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.520 about an imagination platform. We've talked about a human co 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:38.679 experience platform. But in reality it's an amazingly large, mostly 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:43.760 gaming platform. Today almost one hundred million daily active users 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:48.040 are on the site. Roadblocks doesn't make any of the 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.680 games on our platform, and over time, the developers on 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:57.160 the platform have gone from hobbyists to really entrepreneurs, some 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.720 of whom are running studios making over fifty million dollars 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:05.120 a year. So it is a user generated gaming platform 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.160 or a human co experience platform. 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:09.520 One of the things that's very interesting is we've seen 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.360 this kind of phenomenon of the gamification of everything, right, 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:15.520 I mean, do you have an operating definition of what 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:16.200 a game is? 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.920 When you say the gamification of everything? It's fun to 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:25.480 think that we've actually gamified the creation of the games 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:30.240 on Roadblocks, and in a sense, being a Roadblocks creator 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.480 is an amazingly interesting game. A lot of our creators 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.040 grew up on Roadblocks. They played Roadblocks, and when they 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:42.120 were young they got interested in computer science or production 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:48.120 or art or graphics or writing, and before you know it, 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:52.120 many of the top one hundred creators on Roadblocks grew 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.280 up on the platform and are now CEOs of amazingly 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.240 large companies. There's also a lot of gamification and then 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.560 a lot of other things we see in our pop culture. So, 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:08.160 for example, when something gets interesting in pop culture, like 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:12.440 whether it's squid game or something else, a lot of 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.360 people want to interact with that content, not just by 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.200 consuming it, but by doing it and jumping into it. 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:23.760 And so gamification could be thought of as taking a 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:28.239 topic or subject that's interesting and allowing people to jump 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:32.240 in and experience the adrenaline rush or the boredom or 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.640 whatever other part of that content, whether it's you know, 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.719 Stranger Things or the NFL universe or being part of 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.080 a SpongeBob universe, you know, experience that rather than consume 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:43.760 it linearly. 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.080 I mean, it's funny how games have evolved, right, Like 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.520 first games for kids, I mean computer games for kids, 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.200 and then computer games were considered to be like drivers 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.000 of violence, and then just for geeks. And now if 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.680 you you know, exist in our culture. You see, you 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.200 know Minecraft, the biggest movie of the year. Well you 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.039 see that Muga, Robbie's follow up project to Bobby is 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.400 going to be a movie based on the sims, Like, 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:12.240 can you talk about it? Kind of your role as 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:16.800 a participant observer in how games have come to dominate 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:18.840 entertainment culture and beyond. 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:25.320 I believe early on games were highly limited by the technology, 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.400 and even the very first game that I might have played, 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.240 which was Pong, in a sense was a reality simulation. 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.480 It was a very crude, crude simulation. I didn't have 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.240 an avatar, it wasn't in two D. I had a 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.400 white you know, line on the screen. But I still 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.479 playing Ping pong right in a way, and a lot 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:50.240 of I believe what's interesting in games is literally a 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:56.000 fantasy reality simulation that can be very connected with other people, 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.800 can be very entertaining. You know, one of the top 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.120 experiences on our platform right now is grow a Garden. 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:08.480 This exploded on our platform last summer. Dressed to Impress 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.800 exploded on the platform. What's really been fun for me 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.839 is there not Neither one of those is a traditional game. 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:22.440 They're definitely reality simulators. Several members of my family are 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.320 very interested in farming, and me as a dad, gets 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.960 to say the top experience right now in Roadblocks is 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:30.520 about growing stuff in a garden. 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.480 Talk a bit about that game, you know, how did 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.520 it go viral and what does it say about the 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:37.599 platform you've built? 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:44.320 Yeah, so a couple things about how that thing went viral. 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:49.599 Which is really kind of interesting. Really is we've worked 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.120 really hard over the last I'd say year and a 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:58.000 half to make our discovery system very fair, very organic 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.839 and a just discovery system that if someone creates something 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:09.720 that is retaining well causing viral growth, people are spending 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.440 a lot of time in it, that experience will get 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:16.560 more exposure and grow. Garden is a great example that 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:22.000 creator created this idea of something that was new and interesting. 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.440 It's asynchronous. Things happen when you're not playing. You can 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:29.760 come back, which is really cool. They launched it with 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.240 in the same way we launched Roadblocks with a little 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:37.080 bit of paid traffic to get some initial users playing, 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.160 but it got picked up by our discovery algorithms and 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:43.840 over time went viral to the point where a couple 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.960 weeks ago, I believe it hit eleven million concurrent players, 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:51.840 which is close to the all time concurrent records for 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:56.080 games anywhere around the world. So great idea, new idea. 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:00.400 There's a lot of social media pick up influencers are 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.320 playing and sharing on shorts or reels or TikTok, so 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.480 you know, it's what we're hoping the environment could support. 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:09.640 I've heard so many parents talking about how that kids 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.520 are just obsessed with Roadblocks. What do you think it 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.320 is about the platform that makes it so engaging for kids? 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:23.600 I feel what makes roadblocks interesting is what universally, when 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:28.080 I was young and we were running around outside fantasizing 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.880 about being King Arthur and the Knights, that same level 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:38.239 of collaborative being with your friends playing in some fantasy 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.920 that may be somewhat real, maybe somewhat fantasy, but behind 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:47.360 the scenes it's not solo. A lot of people are 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.360 arguably just hanging out and chatting while they're playing the 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:54.360 game in the background. So I do feel what really 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:57.360 pulls in is being with friends and doing things together. 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:00.800 In that respect, that what distinguishes it from social media. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:06.440 When I think of social media, social media has become 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:12.760 a arguably a pretty broad term for various product features. 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:17.760 There is definitely a class of products shorts, reels, TikTok, spotlight, 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:22.920 other's short form video which is more solo. I'm interested 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.760 in all of those products, and both has some of 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:32.280 the questions, is it to addictive, some concern over people 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.280 scrolling in the middle of the night, but also has 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.760 some benefits in that I do think it is a 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.400 way we get a lot of new information. And I 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.440 obviously read the newspaper and go on x and other 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.520 social media platforms, but I do get new information from 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.000 there as well. There's a second what I would call 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.520 class of social media, starting with Facebook or even friends there, 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:59.160 which is sharing about my life, sharing pictures, celebrities sharing pictures. 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.000 And then I would put Roadblocks in a third category, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:07.359 which is the connection category, being together in a virtual environment, 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:14.120 initially pioneered by gaming and online gaming. And I think 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:19.720 this category is a natural extension of the telegraph system 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:25.600 and the phone system and the video system. The next 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.560 extension of it is the three D connection system. And 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.640 someday when we're doing another podcast, we maybe will be 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.720 doing it in Roadblocks, and we'll be going for a 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.679 walk in a city somewhere and having a chat and 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.280 looking at the scenery. And I think that's just part 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.640 of the inevitable march of how we communicate at a 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:51.280 distance with technology. So I think there's benefits from all 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.240 different types of social media. Roadblocks is very much in 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.240 the gaming connection zone. 0:10:56.240 --> 0:11:01.040 There, so the platform for interaction and the interaction drives communication. 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:07.520 Pulls people in and the notion of seeing the developer community, 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.760 seeing both very experienced game creators as well as sixteen 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.000 year olds, eighteen year olds, twenty two year old and 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:18.880 in a way it gives an optimism that maybe I 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:24.160 could do this as well. And also the way the 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:30.200 Roadblocks developer community has panned out, we have seen not 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.960 just the top developers, but the thousandth developer or the 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:40.800 ten thousandth developer start to make meaningful wages. Actually, so 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:46.640 it's something people feel that's accessible to them, and I 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.600 do believe because of this, there's a lot of excitement 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:55.680 around STEM learning. It's cool to learn computer science. We 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.920 see a lot of people get pulled into computer science 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:00.800 and production because they believe if they can do it. 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.199 These are real educational experiences on Roadblocks now. So it's 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.080 in that sense it's working out like we planned. There's 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.320 a lot of education in the experiences themselves. But even 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.160 more so, I think if we had gone on to 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:21.280 say we want to make a educational experience around either 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:26.920 art or design or computer science, arguably Roadblocks is very 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.120 good at that in that it pulls in millions of 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.280 people to learn computer science or art or design. 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:37.920 How did it become such a huge success. I mean, 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.920 you started in the two thousands and it's doing good, 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.320 and you raise the money, and then I think fifteen 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.040 years later you took it to an IPO, but there 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.800 was a moment when it went from a successful private 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:54.280 company to arguably one of the most influential tech companies 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.920 in the world. Like, what do you attribute that sort 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:58.320 of shift in penetration to. 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:04.439 We've been at it for over sixteen or seventeen years, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:10.280 and along the way, one thing is we started very small. 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.079 The very first few years of roadblocks, we were talking 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:18.400 one thousand concurrent users rather than twenty one million concurrent 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:23.560 So we are now at least twenty one thousand times larger. 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:28.640 I would say on many occasions along the way, whether 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.040 it's it's a board meeting or a staff meeting, what 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.760 has led to this acceleration of growth in the last 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:39.400 three months or what is the magic sauce we keep 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:44.439 coming back to. It's thousands of things done right. It 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:49.600 is a real well balanced mix of a lot of 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:54.080 complex things. It is how good our game engine works, 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.640 it's our infrastructure. How good is a tooling, How good 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.880 is search and discovery? How good is the economy? Do 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:04.200 we have enough servers? Are people connecting with their friends? 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:09.080 So a platform like this is pretty broad technically, and 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.439 whenever we've tried to do a statistical analysis or what 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.840 is the one magic thing. It's always been a thousand 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:16.600 small things. 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:21.280 But in terms of an innovation that drove the platform, 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.040 Roebucks were pretty important, right. I think I understand that 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.440 the key to Roebucks was that they gave developers and 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.600 creators are written incentive, but can you just take a 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.280 step back and kind of explain what they are and 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:36.680 how they impact your platform? 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.800 So we wanted we wanted to create a perpetual motion 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:46.600 machine or a closed loop system with feedback. And the 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.400 way a closed loop system with feedback would be. I'm 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.920 a developer, maybe I'm dude one I made work at 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:58.040 a pizza place, and I say, what could I do 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.840 where users could spend a currency we'll call it roebucks. 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.280 I don't remember if I work at a pizza place, 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:09.720 or someone had the ability to buy a scooter so 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:12.200 instead of walking from place to place in their game, 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:13.200 you could ride the scooter. 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:13.720 You know. 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.360 So okay, So that has to happen. Creators have to 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:22.960 have interesting things to sell. The creators need to have 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:27.600 a wallet where if a user spends roebucks on that scooter, 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.880 it goes into their wallet. A creator needs to be 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:35.600 able to translate those roebucks into money. You know, fill 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.280 out your ten ninety nine, you're going to get some cash. 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:41.320 You're going to get taxed on it. That's like real earnings. 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:47.600 Users need to be able to buy roebucks, either through iOS, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.080 through the app store, through a credit card, now through 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:54.080 a gift card, and there's got to be maybe a 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:58.120 little feedback to reward those developers who are bootstrapping the system. 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:02.760 So we had to experiences that we're starting to bring 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.200 in the most roebucks, so there's a little bit of 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:09.160 a feedback loop, and developers said, whoa, if I'm earning roebucks, 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.880 I might get some discovery. So all of those things 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:16.000 have to launch at the same time. Users purchasing roebucks, 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:21.400 some discovery, closed loop feedback, developers cashing them out. That's 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.120 all that we did. But we launched with all of 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:28.320 those components, and on day one users were buying roebucks, 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.760 Users started spending roebucks in some of the games. At 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.040 the end of day one we had the top grossing 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:39.440 roebucks game right there on the Discovery charts. Creators could say, oh, 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:43.160 this is another interesting thing to do, and that launched 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.880 that whole virtual economy that has been a big part 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:47.040 of us ever since. 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:56.280 After the break. How Roadblocks is responding to what Bloomberg 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:11.159 is called it's pedophile problem. Stay with us. When I 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:13.520 was reading my introduction to the one point where you 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.720 were really nodding along was when I used that word prehistoric. 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:23.520 Oh now you're giving me two thumbs up. Tell me why. 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:28.040 In three D immersion, there's an amazing amount of technology 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.800 still to be built. If we wanted to host a 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:36.120 concert with a real time performer for one hundred thousand people, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.679 and we all wanted to be in that exact same stadium, 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:45.040 dancing together, hearing everyone participating on a phone or a 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.639 home theater or in VR, have it look photo realistic, 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:54.720 like just like video, and have it sound great. That's 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.640 a lot of technology. There's still some way to go, 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:03.560 so and that's sense. The whole gaming market, Roadblocks included, 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.160 is still in the Stone age. The spec is really 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:12.199 one hundred thousand people, photorealistic, real time, high quality, and 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:16.600 add AI on top of that, possibly regenerating the environment 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:19.800 based on your or my prompts like turn this from 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:24.640 a stadium into a medieval fortress. So we're ways away 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:28.119 from that technology. I would say even today where we 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.040 are with Roadblocks, what we're doing is somewhat innovative in 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.240 that a lot of the video game market is still 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:40.480 downloading things not being able to play immediately. So I 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.000 think what we're going to see and what we're really 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:45.920 pushing on is the notion of immediate play no matter 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.199 what we're looking at. Another thing that's very prevalent in 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:54.080 the video game industry is different games on mobile than 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:59.120 on PC or console mobile tending to be lighter, high performance, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.160 but I do think over time we're going to see 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.359 the same game run on both, which is going to 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:07.520 require a lot of cloud technology. And so having AI 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:11.359 available in any game, whether it's for NPCs or creation, 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.320 that's a whole area that we don't even know what 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:15.040 that's going to be. 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.520 One of the most popular terms right now is vibe coding, 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:22.439 basically describing to an AI what you want in natural 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.240 language and then having it write code for you to 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.800 make your wish come true. What role does vibe coding 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:29.680 play on Roadblocks? 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.800 We already have vibe coding in the extent that Roadblocks 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.000 Studio has an AI assistant. You can go talk to 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:43.720 studio and start building stuff. Our studio architecture will more 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.760 and more become MCP client and server, So if you 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:50.920 want to use your own AI command line and generate 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.760 in studio, you'll be able to do that, So stay 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:58.600 tuned on that. What I think we're going to ultimately see, though, 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:04.439 is vibe coding inside Roadblocks games themselves, and ultimately the 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:07.080 ability to vibe code not just the code in a 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.879 Roadblocks game, but the whole Roadblocks game. What will be 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.480 really a big day for Roadblocks is where one of 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.879 the top one hundred games, rather than been written with 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:24.399 luau and with three D graphics tools, is vibe coded. 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:26.240 Just like I don't know how to code, I'm not 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:28.639 an artist. I just talked about this game I wanted 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:32.679 to imagine. I uploaded some clips of some hand drawings 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.359 and a few ideas, and I got this game. But 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:37.520 the other thing I think we'll see on the social 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:43.280 side is collaborative vibe coding, people walking around together creating things. 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:46.600 You'd say, make a castle, I might say, make it 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:51.080 more green, more overgrowth on it. So I can see 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.240 vibe coding collaboratively being something we'll see in Roadblocks. 0:20:55.800 --> 0:21:00.119 You have tens of millions of other people's children on 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.720 your platform. How do you think about that responsibility and 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:05.480 how do you deal with it? 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:10.520 It's an enormous responsibility. We sometimes try to imagine what 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:15.320 close to one hundred million peoples looks like. That's about 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:20.399 a thousand soccer stadiums with one hundred thousand people in it. 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.000 We had the early experience that even one bad situation 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:26.720 is one too many. 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:28.919 Obviously, you have to ask you about the Bloomberg story 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.159 as well, which had the headline Roadblocks's pedophile Problem and 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:34.479 mentioned that there were two dozen people who have been 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.919 arrested based on interacting with children in harmful ways, in 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.679 some cases even abducting them they met on roadblocks. 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:45.200 How do you address this on roadblocks? We build safety 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.159 in from day one. We don't allow the sharing of images, 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.080 we don't allow unfiltered texts. We have access to all 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:57.840 texts and all of those things. It creates a world 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.639 where we have to try to keep people on roadblocks. 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:06.840 We don't want them going to any other device or 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:11.440 any other platform where. Unfortunately, if a young person has 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.479 access to a phone, there's many other areas where they 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.240 can start sharing pictures of themselves, or start trying to 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:23.760 share their phone number or address. So over the years 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:28.439 we've accepted that challenge. I would say there's never an 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.720 excuse even for one bad incident. There are many things 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.879 that get reported that were unfortunately not able to comment 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.720 on where they were initially meeting. But I do feel 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:41.320 over time we're going to show the leadership that for 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:45.600 young people, they stay on roadblocks no matter what. For 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.320 thirteen through seventeen year olds, you're going to see some 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:53.520 very innovative things where, unlike on other platforms, most fourteen 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:56.240 year olds can talk to anyone else on the platform, 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.640 and that's a very vulnerable age. You're going to see 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:04.200 us start to be thoughtful about how they communicate with others. 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:09.160 Can you just describe how the actual social interaction works? 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.760 And I guess my second question would be, is it 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:16.320 an aspiration to make it all but impossible for adults 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:18.600 to speak to children ultimately on the platform? 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:23.480 Yeah? You know how Tesla weimo has to be twenty 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:25.960 to you know, ten times safer than the real world. 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:31.480 I'm optimistic that we will be multiples and multiples of 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:36.280 that relative to the real world. And it's not inconceivable 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.520 to build AI both for text or for voice that 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:43.960 no matter who I'm talking to. There's no way to 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:48.320 share personal information, and so I do feel we're going 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:51.520 to make this more and more just a solve problem. 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:54.960 Because a paradigm today is like two avatars might interact 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:57.800 and one maybe a grown up, one maybe a child, 0:23:57.800 --> 0:23:59.280 and a grown up maybe able to say to the 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:02.240 child avatar, hey meet me on discord or something. That's 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:02.600 why the. 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:06.679 Kere we would Actually it's very The good news is 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:09.800 it's very very hard to meet on discord today, So 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:14.879 we filter use their names, we filter addresses. What we 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:19.760 do find is in certain age range. Even though that's 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:21.960 very very hard to share a snap name or a 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:26.159 Discord handle, some kids who are in a vulnerable state 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:29.800 try to figure out how to share, some way to 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:33.119 get off of roadblocks. And I think over time, even 0:24:33.160 --> 0:24:37.080 when two people are trying to find out how to connect, 0:24:37.480 --> 0:24:40.880 you'll see us making that very difficult, if not impossible. 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:44.240 But the way the interaction paradigm is like two adveratars 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:45.720 or in a virtual world and they have like a 0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:47.879 chat box, or how do they actually practically talk to 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:48.360 each other? 0:24:49.080 --> 0:24:54.760 For younger people only text in a full three D space. 0:24:54.920 --> 0:24:58.639 We don't support one on one or private chat so 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:02.240 it's all out in the town square in a sense, 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:05.400 and other people can see that. And on top of that, 0:25:05.680 --> 0:25:09.080 all of that text is running through a very deep 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:12.520 set of filtering at the same time. And it's one 0:25:12.520 --> 0:25:16.680 of the biggest complaints really of our platform for younger people. 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:20.680 They see a lot of hashes, basically because it's us 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:22.840 being very conservative in how we filter. 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:26.000 As you look at what's going on more broadly in 0:25:26.040 --> 0:25:29.080 society and culture, you feel like parents are waking up 0:25:29.119 --> 0:25:33.359 to and getting very concerned about real world harms happening 0:25:33.359 --> 0:25:37.680 to their children based on virtual environments. Do you see 0:25:37.720 --> 0:25:43.560 that as as a longer term risk to Roadblocks. 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:47.200 Well, we see it in a way as an opportunity, 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.959