Roblox is rolling out voice chat, high-fidelity avatars, and age recommendations

Roblox said it is rolling out voice chat for those who are 13 and older on its user-generated content platform.

The company believes in creating meaningful connections for its players, and so it hopes that communication on Roblox will mirror all the ways we communicate in the real world. The company made the announcement at its Roblox Developer Conference (RDC) event.

Chat now allows users to communicate by speaking with others in experiences. Players will be able to communicate on Roblox with voice as naturally as they would in the physical world, the company said. That’s a pretty big technological achievement, considering Roblox has 52.2 million daily active users.

Roblox will keep its text chat for people under 13, and it will have filters in place for kids. The new voice chat allows 13+ users who are age verified to have reduced chat filters so they can communicate more freely with friends.

Users over 13 years old now make up over half of the Roblox community, and nearly half are female. The fastest growing demographic is 17- 24 year olds, across both male and female
users.

Finding friends

Coming later this year, Contact Import will help 13+ users find others by the name they have them saved as in their contacts.

And the company is announcing several innovative features at RDC that will elevate the expressiveness of avatars on Roblox.

On Roblox, your avatar is your identity. Avatars now have high-fidelity human simulation that allow people to express their individuality and connect more meaningfully with friends on Roblox. Avatar heads will expressive and emotive, allowing users to smile and wink.

Soon, Roblox will release chat with others using your avatar – allowing people to have real-time voice communications in experiences, with their camera animating their avatar in the experience, so the avatar expresses their facial expressions as they speak.

Roblox recently rolled out Animation Creator for Emotes and Animation Creator for Faces betas in Studio. The Animation Creator for Emotes is a new solution to make custom full-body animations in Studio. Animation Creator for Faces allows users to create and save unique expressions on the timeline to more easily animate an Avatar Head.

At RDC, the company is launching Facial Animation in the Marketplace. For Studio, Roblox said it has been making substantial improvements to the developer and creator experience, with a refresh to its free developer Studio.

Growing user communities

Roblox provides a platform that helps connect its creator’s content with a massive global audience. As that global audience continues to grow and diversify, it’s important to have more ways to find experiences and user-created items the audience will love.

The vision is to have a personalized discovery system that will distribute content that is most relevant to the audience it is served to.

As the audience grows, Roblox is introducing age recommendations called Experience Guidelines so all users can make informed decisions about the content they interact with.

Experience Guidelines gives creators the freedom to create amazing experiences that reach the right audience based on age appropriateness. These age recommendations are grounded in the mission to connect a billion people with optimism and civility.

The company said it wants the Experience Guidelines to be useful to users and parents. These age recommendations were informed by child development research and industry standards.

Based on these age recommendations, parents will be able to use new Parental Controls that restrict account access by age recommendations, ultimately deciding and managing what is appropriate (thus playable and recommended) for their children.

Monetization for devs, creators and brands

Roblox is also expanding monetization for all developers, creators, and brands too. Immersive ads are engaging native ads within Roblox experiences allowing brands and developers to reach their audiences in the metaverse at scale in a fun, relevant and safe way.

Roblox said these immersive ads will provide brands with another way to be relevant in the metaverse. Brands and developers will be able to reach and influence their audiences.

Roblox will give both brands and developers the tools to facilitate relationships and set the terms and pricing that work for their partnership. Developers will be in control of and earn from Immersive Ads

First, it will start with immersive image ads that are static 3D images in experiences and portal ads that help users discover and transport them to other experiences on Roblox. By end of year, Roblox will test with developers and a handful of advertisers.

Before the second half of 2023, Roblox will do a full launch and will be available for devs and advertisers. The Marketplace vision will be fully UGC with healthy market dynamics mirroring the real-world driven by scarcity, where any creator can earn and create a successful business and users will be able to discover, buy, sell and trade in a marketplace that’s personalized to them.

In addition to embracing a fully UGC marketplace, the vision for this marketplace is to have healthy market dynamics driven by scarcity where all items are limited and the secondary market is open.

The company said it is building on that momentum by adding new mechanics and opportunities for the community to create successful businesses. Creators will have the opportunity to earn a revenue share of the initial sale, plus all resales and trades.

Users will be able to discover items they love and can also buy, sell and trade in the marketplace that is personalized to them. About 2.7 million creators earned Robux in June, and the community earned $538.3 million in 2021.