What You Need to Know About Roblox—and Why Kids Are Obsessed

She’s not alone. Roblox is the most popular game with 5- to 12-year-olds in the US, according to Rooster Money, and it topped the pocket money spending charts in the UK in 2020 ahead of Fortnite. The company recently began trading on the New York Stock Exchange and was valued at a staggering $45 billion. You can play it virtually anywhere, from an Xbox to a phone, laptop, or PC, and it boasts more than 32.6 million daily active users as well as 8 million active creators and developers spanning 180 countries. It’s completely free to make a Roblox account. My 11-year-old son plays other games and says he’s not that into Roblox, but the fact that he’s often playing it when I look  over his shoulder tells a different story. He says it’s one of the few games he can play with all his friends. Virtual Worlds Let's get one thing straight. Roblox isn’t really a game. It's a free platform where players can dip in and out of different virtual worlds and play any game in them. It’s packed with user-created content spanning a dizzying variety of genres and titles. The graphics are basic, there are glitches and bugs galore, and even many of the most popular games lack polish. I didn’t get the appeal after watching my kids play, but then I joined in. “I created the game I've been wanting to play but couldn't find anywhere,” Call me Bob (also known as @Nightbarbie) says in an email. “Turns out, a lot of people were looking for the same type of game too, and it exploded completely unexpectedly.” Call me Bob started playing Roblox in 2007—yes, it's been around that long—but it wasn’t until 2017, at the age of 22, that she decided to start developing a game for the platform. Despite no prior experience, she turned her hobby into a full-time gig: Royale High has been played more than 5 billion times. She says the key to success is replay-ability, including ways to earn money in the game, and making a game that you yourself would want to play.“There are so many players on Roblox, you will find your special, perfect audience,” Call me Bob says. “I'm still shocked to see how many players have my same mindset and like the same things as me.” In Royale High, I attend English class in a school that resembles a castle. There’s an interactive spelling test (10/10 for me), then I rush to get the right book from my locker before chemistry. Later, I get ready for a dance by bathing and choosing a new outfit. After dancing around and drinking punch, I’m touched when I get voted king of the ball, a prize that comes with a bouquet of flowers and 500 diamonds. “Developing Royale High has been a constant balancing act between making fun games to earn currency and creating fun shop items to spend that currency on (giving players a goal to work towards),” Call me Bob says. There’s a delightful sweetness to Royale High, and it includes a wider magical world to explore beyond the school. At one point, my daughter and I discover a forest clearing with a campfire and all the ingredients we need to make mores. There are various mini-games and ways to find or earn currency you can spend on fabulous outfits and accessories. “I think we helped contribute to bringing a whole new wave of people, by making a more feminine game, a style/genre I frequently search for and want to play but is somewhat difficult to find,” she says, talking about the growth in Roblox players. “Shout-out to the other female-oriented games before me that paved the way!” This kind of gameplay is underrepresented in the wider games industry, which is still male-dominated, even though half of all gamers are female. There are countless violent or competitive games, but many people prefer a gentler pace or a different kind of gameplay. Another of my daughter’s favorites is Dance Off, which is a mix of dance and fashion that challenges you to pick an outfit and hairstyle before taking to the stage for a performance. Each player rates the others to decide the winner. It’s repetitive, but perhaps that’s part of the appeal. My daughter has played it enough to have a Popular status. (“Popular” floats above her head, while “Novice” floats above mine.) “I have very fun childhood memories replaying games over and over again,” Call me Bob says. “Knowing what to expect can be very comforting, especially in a young person’s life, where they might be going through uncertain, rocky waters.”