People love to build stuff. That is the story of Minecraft, but Roblox proves that people don’t just want to design dwellings. They also crave to create games all on their own.
Roblox is the block-building title that provides a platform for users to make their own games. Racers, first-person shooters, and more are all possible with Roblox’s creation tools, and players are responding.
In 2012, players (including builders) spent over 176.3 million hours in the game. That’s a 50 percent increase from 2011.
Of the dozens and dozens of user-generated titles, players played 149 games over 1 million times. That is a 70 percent increase from 2011.
The Roblox web-based platform’s total page-views rose 37 percent to 13.3 billion.
“Roblox gives builders the tools and freedom to put their imaginations into action,” Roblox chief executive officer David Baszucki said in a statement. “Our community’s commitment to building, sharing, and playing on Roblox is evolving in spectacular ways, and these 2012 numbers show how exciting and engaging user-created content can be for desktop and now mobile experiences.”
For a kids-focused website, Roblox blows its competitors out of the water in terms of engagement. The Lego-like game is number one in average daily users, total minutes visited, total page-views, total visits, and average visits per visitor, according to online analysis firm ComScore.
Most of this growth comes from fans talking about the game. The company says that 86 percent of its new users in 2012 came from word-of-mouth buzz.
Obviously, the developer hopes to maintain this momentum through 2013. It’s off to a good start. As of this month, Roblox has 35.8 million registered user accounts.