Roblox CEO Predicted Metaverse 17 Years Ago

The name Meta was too attractive not to be invented before Facebook rebranding. Along with various online services named Meta, the very idea of it has also crossed various great minds, like that of David Baszucki (Roblox). The founder of the creator-friendliest gaming platform says his business plan had been similar to Meta in the early 2000s.

How do they explain the term now? Meta, they say, is unifying various experiences and making various virtual worlds interactive and immersive, making a human user feel they live a full-fledged life within them. But Roblox has had a similar premise long before that. Since its foundation in 2004, Roblox has allowed access to various games (and other activities, like communication and game development) under the same account.

It’s this practice that distinguishes Roblox from others today as well. One username and picture, one billing, one notification center, and finally one life you spend in the gaming universe, instead of shattered lives distributed across standalone projects.

According to Baszuski, the idea of Metaverse is not cemented by virtual reality technologies. It’s about driving people together and providing a platform for communication and self-expression. Human co-experience, as Baszuski names it, is the key for all social platforms now, but Meta now intends to take it to a completely new level. Like Roblox already has been doing. 

Of course, a game-centered community (even despite being valued at around $38B) is only interested in certain types of users, not being fully universal. But the mechanics that make people’s lives richer by enabling various sorts of interaction (including in-game types) will still apply. So, if you want to take a closer look at the future of Metaverse, enter Roblox, spend some hours playing, and picture this from a game character’s perspective. And leave us a comment about how it feels.