Roblox and the Dispersal of Creativity | No Mercy / No Malice

Some rare companies innovate on all three sides of the creator triad, crossing creation tools, distribution and monetization: Roblox, for example, provides accessible tools in Roblox Studio; allows developers to have their experiences discovered by the community; and shares earnings with developers via the virtual currency Robux, which underpins a ... See more

This is incredibly attractive in an industry historically beleaguered by an overreliance on hit games. Roblox’s platform approach means that it’s insulated from fad risk.

 In the abundance driven world of the Internet, the dynamics for multiplayer retail change. Instead of increasing the retail distribution of a fungible brand, brand platforms must provide the tooling to adjust the geometry of a brand for specific pockets of demand. Web3 tools can enable more composability via the creation digital franchisees.

With information effortlessly transferable at zero marginal cost and social platforms that blast content to the top of everyone’s feed, it’s difficult to for an ethics based on scarcity to sustain itself.

Consider today’s most popular Metaverse-like experiences, such as Fortnite or Roblox. While these platforms succeed through incredible creative achievements, it’s important to recognize that their underlying ideas are far from new — they’re just newly possible. 

Roblox, and games/worlds like Minecraft are a huge step forward. Instead of just paying money to game developers, users can actually make money by developing for the ecosystem. It does, however, fall just short of the Bill Gates Line for a platform -- something is a platform if everything built on top of the platform makes more than the platform it... See more