FUN & GAMERS

PLAYFUL TECHNOLOGY THAT"S PUSHING THE EDGE OF WHAT'S POSSIBLE

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Master of the Metaverse

DAVID BASZUCKI - CEO ROBLOX

IMAGINE A WORLD IN which you can be anyone you want—a superhero, a rock star, a science fiction monster or an angel. You can play games or meet up with friends. You can go anywhere in this world in an instant. You can live your fantasies. At least until your mother yells to turn off the computer and come to dinner.

That’s the metaverse—a virtual reality online world defined, in part, by a computer engineer named David Baszucki and the company he started, Roblox Corp. Baszucki didn’t invent the metaverse (the word was coined by novelist Neal Stephenson in 1992), but Roblox says it attracts 47 million active users each day from around the world—mostly children, who spent 11 billion hours there over three months last summer. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says the metaverse is the future; in October he renamed his company Meta Platforms. Microsoft is moving in as well.

Baszucki is years ahead of them.

“We’re creating a platform where people don’t just play, but they’re starting to learn together, work together, experience entertainment together,” says Baszucki via email. “Users provide the variety—millions and millions and millions of experiences. And it’s built on civility and safety.”