Roblox CEO on the Future of AI and Simulation
It's not every day you get to sit down with the founder of the platform that hundreds of millions of people use every day. For this episode of Beyond The Blox, Fedor, Anthony, and I had the privilege of interviewing Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki. As Roblox enters its 20th year, the vision — and the technology powering it — is evolving faster than ever.
One small detail that stood out to me was that Dave still refers to all Roblox employees as "Builders." It's a nod to the company's roots and the "Builder culture" that they never want to lose, even as they've scaled into a multi-billion dollar entity.
Here are my key takeaways from our conversation about where Roblox is heading.
Beyond the "Metaverse" Buzzword
A few years ago, the tech world was obsessed with the "Metaverse." While Roblox was arguably the closest thing to it, Dave noted that the terminology has shifted. The core vision, however, remains what it was on their very first business plan: a platform for "3D simulated co-experience."
Dave took us on a tour of Roblox's past taglines, from "You Make The Game" to "Powering Imagination." What's interesting is how "You Make The Game" is coming full circle. With the rise of generative AI, the barrier to creation is lowering again. We're moving towards a future where players might not just play a game but actively reshape it in real-time using AI tools, democratising creation in a way that wasn't possible before.
We sadly didn't have the time available to really dig into how this would shift the economic model of Roblox. I can imagine a future where the barrier to entry for creating a game is so low that previously valuable skilled work is no longer as valuable, as those talents are made accessible to everyone via AI. We'll have to wait and see how society as a whole addresses this but I imagine there will be some element of self-regulation.
The AI "Magic Wand" and Native NPCs
We spent a lot of time discussing Generative AI. Dave described a future where players could have a "magic wand" to generate assets or change the world around them instantly.
Roblox isn't just looking at AI for coding assistance in Studio (though that's a huge part of it). They are exploring real-time generative capabilities in multiplayer experiences. Imagine asking an AI to change your avatar's clothes instantly, or "folding the world" Inception-style. Dave admitted these are "ruthlessly technically difficult" challenges, especially in a multiplayer environment, but they are essential for the next evolution of the platform.
This aligns with recent announcements like Roblox Cube for 3D and 4D Generative AI. The goal isn't just to replace work but to enable new types of gameplay. We also touched on a fascinating application of Roblox's massive data scale: Dave emphasized that while Roblox will never sell user data, they are leveraging the 13 billion hours of monthly engagement on the platform to train increasingly intelligent, native NPCs.
These aren't just scripted bots; the vision is for NPCs that any developer can drop into their game, driven by prompts and capable of learning to play the game alongside users or interacting with them in complex ways.
Simulating Reality to Enable Emergence
One of the most technical but exciting parts of our chat was about simulating the real world. The Roblox Creator Roadmap is packed with realism updates: fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, and acoustic simulation.
Dave explained that this isn't just for graphics; it's for emergent gameplay. When you have a rigid body simulator interacting with a fluid simulator and a wind simulator, you get unpredictable, organic moments. He gave a great example of an AI-driven NPC deciding to chop down a tree, stack the wood, and light a fire — not because it was scripted to do specifically that, but because it understood the properties of the objects (wood, fire, destruction) in the world.
He also mentioned "SLIM" technology: the ability to composite a complex avatar (or any model in the world) with layers of clothing into a single, efficient mesh. This kind of tech is what will eventually allow for the "impossible spec" of 10,000 photorealistic players in a single instance.
The Art of Intuition
Finally, we touched on leadership. Leading a huge company requires balancing data with instinct. Dave shared that he actually stopped trusting his intuition for a while after selling his first company, Knowledge Revolution. But he eventually realized that "ruthless listening" to the community must be paired with the courage to take big risks.
He cited the move Roblox to mobile as a prime example. At the time, the industry consensus was that 3D gaming wouldn't work on phones. The team had to distract engineering resources to try it, testing it with a game called Natural Disaster Survival. It worked, and now mobile is a massive part of the ecosystem.
His advice to creators? Read less business books and more fiction or history. He mentioned reading about explorers like Magellan and Captain Cook; stories of people who faced dire circumstances and had to rely on tenacity and intuition to survive.
It was an inspiring conversation, and it made me more excited than ever to be building on Roblox.
Watch the full interview on YouTube now.
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