I saw a presentation from the CEO of Roblox the other day. He had a pretty strong long-term vision for the platform as a combination of Steam (game platform + social network), Unity (game engine + dev tools), and Second Life (customizable avatar, connected game worlds). Some interesting notes: • 65% of 9-12 y/o in the US play Roblox (as monthly active users). They have a comparable audience size to Minecraft. • 40% of players are female. It use to be 95/5 male/female 10 years ago. • They paid $100 million last year to creators on the platform. I hadn’t realized how staggeringly big the platform is, and influential with children. Just something worth thinking about if you’re trying to build for the next generation!

Games are all fun and games, but how this will translate into real world things is not clear. Will tomorrow's politics, business, and creators use Minecraft to build things in the real world? I would bet against that. The video gaming industry has unprecedented money in it, but it's peanuts compared to the business industry as a whole. $100m paid to creators is nothing compared to that of people warning on Salesforce or Shopify (for example).

Love to see the percentage of girls so close to balance.

My kids play games on Minecraft and Roblox. It seems to me that Minecraft is closest we have come to a realization of the online world as described in certain cyber punk novels. Where the places in the online world are realized or visualized in ways similar to the real world.