For the past four years, Weber has been making games within the world of Roblox. Those games have been played more than 10 million times on the Roblox site, making Weber (pictured left) into a celebrity within the Roblox community of virtual tinkerers.

With Roblox, kids are architects of their own games and they learn software coding abilities that can help them later in life. Roblox uses physics to simulate a virtual world, allowing kids to construct things in building-block style. While the games aren’t graphically outstanding, they do remind everyone that a game doesn’t have to have high-end graphics to be fun. And Weber has proven to be a master at this art.

“Roblox is like a building game,” Weber said in an interview. “I started playing because I was always playing with Legos when I was younger.”

Weber, who took the “Stickmaster Luke” nickname from his early start making stick-characters animations in Roblox, hasn’t made any money from the free games. But he has picked up some skills on how to make games that could serve him well in the years ahead. And earlier this month, Weber attended the first-ever Roblox community gathering, the Roblox Rally, which was attended by more than 1,000 people at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Lots of kids came up to meet Weber, who just graduated from high school in Pleasant Hill, Calif.

The success of Weber’s simple do-it-yourself games is one reason that Roblox is thriving. The company has 6.8 million unique visitors a month, with a total of 942 million page views a month.That has made Roblox into the second-most popular kids entertainment site, and it has enabled Roblox to raise $4 million in funding from Altos Ventures and First Round Capital. Roblox makes money from premium subscriptions, sales of in-game virtual currency, advertising and prepaid cards sold at retail outlets such as Best Buy, GameStop and Wal-Mart. Revenue at the company is up 75 percent from a year ago.

Roblox users build games by resizing virtual bricks to build scenes and characters in the Lua programming language. Then they add scripts other coding for games. The process is relatively simple and it’s a good way to learn programming. Rival game worlds include Second Life and Minecraft. All of these worlds are part of what futurist Paul Saffo calls the “creator economy,” where users aren’t satisfied with passive entertainment and want to create their own.

“I was a complete beginner when I started,” Weber said. “I made quite a few games and most of them were bad. My first hit was one that allowed players to build in real-time with each other and then fight.”

Four years ago, it was a big deal if 60 players played a game at once, but now the audience is measured in thousands. Weber copied some other games to see if he could do them better. Then he got more experimental, making games where trucks fall down a hill and you have to dodge them in order to climb to the top. Weber is pouring increasing amounts of time into each game, though only gets half-way through many games. Each full game takes about 24 hours of work to complete.

Now Weber’s “The Underground War,” (pictured above) where players dig under the ground, has crossed 4.1 million plays. A handful of other Stickermaster Luke titles have also crossed a million plays. One of his newest games is Laser Tag, pictured right. Weber has started work on around 97 different places in Roblox, but about 30 have turned into finished games.

While Weber isn’t making money from his games, he does earn in-game currency every time someone plays a game. And Weber sells virtual T-shirts for 30 “Robucks.” Making money would be nice, but Weber says, “Making games is fun. There’s some hype and notoriety in it, and it’s fun meeting new people.”

As for the future, Weber plans on going to community college.

“I feel like I can do anything now,” he said.

Hundreds of Kids Learn Video Game Coding at ROBLOX Rally at SF Exploratorium

SAN FRANCISCO – ROBLOX, one of the top ranked sites on the Internet for kids, today announced the availability of b-roll from its first ever ROBLOX Rally at the Exploratorium in San Francisco yesterday, August 1. The event that originally expected only 250 attendees, reached its maximum of 1,000 within the first two weeks of ticket sales. Kids ages 6-16 from all over the world, traveled from as far away as England and Hong Kong to talk with ROBLOX developers, hear about the latest advancements within the game, learn how to create their own virtual worlds with LUA coding language, and share ideas about donating in-game currency, called Robux, to their favorite charity. With over 6.8 million unique visitors and 942 million page views per month and growing, ROBLOX has quickly become the second most popular kids entertainment site, behind Nickelodeon (as ranked by comScore, May 2011).

Included in the attached b-roll:

Scenes

• Outside Exploratorium, line of kids waiting to sign in
• Introduction with Dave Baszucki, CEO and Founder, on main stage welcoming fans
• Shots of audience
• Creative art wall montage
• ROBLOX kids, age 6-16, in front of computer learning how to write video game code
• John Shedletsky (A.K.A as in-game celebrity “Telamon”), Creative Director, signing autographs
• Kids waving as they walk out

Interviews with kids and parents

• Kids interviewing kids on why they came
• Twin brother and sister, age 11, talking about making their own games
• Parent talking about how her son is not only enjoying himself, but learning something
• Family that traveled from Virginia. The son came to Rally to learn specifically about scripting.

Interviews with ROBLOX executives

• David Baszucki, Founder & CEO
• Clint Schmidt, VP of Marketing

ROBLOX is unique among gaming sites in that kids are the architects of the game and can learn software coding abilities that can propel future careers. Using physics to simulate the real world, ROBLOX brings the ever popular building-blocks style of play into a massively multi-player 3D game environment. Parents of ROBLOX players will also attend the event with their kids to show support for their choice to move beyond basic games and build their own 3D games. In addition to software development, ROBLOX also fosters entrepreneurism by allowing kids to become merchants of virtual goods, advertise their creations, and work collaboratively with their friends.

ROBLOX is Hiring

ROBLOX is hiring now. For more information, visit ROBLOX Jobs.

About ROBLOX

ROBLOX is the 2^nd ranked kids sites on the Internet. With over 6.8 million unique visitors each month, ROBLOX is unique among gaming sites because users are the architects of their own worlds. ROBLOX is a massively multi-player 3D game environment with tens of thousands of games that use physics to simulate the real world, and a virtual economy with millions of highly customized characters. Players on ROBLOX demonstrate incredible creativity limited only by their imagination, using core building components to create their own elaborate online games, social hangouts, and custom virtual items.

For more information, visit www.roblox.com

Media note: Talking Points for ROBLOX RALLY

• ROBLOX, a massive multi-player online video game, hosted over 1,000 fans from around the world at the first ever ROBLOX Rally at the Exploratorium in San Francisco yesterday.
• But these kids didn’t just come here to play video games; they came to learn how to create the games themselves.
• Players took classes called “scripting 101” and “meet the developers” designed to spark an interest in future tech careers, perhaps as a software engineer or even a video game developer.
• The Rally brought an opportunity for players on opposite sides of the country that may have been playing together in a social environment for years and are just now meeting in-person.
• ROBLOX currently boasts over 6.8 million members worldwide and over 942 million page views per month, making it the second most popular kids entertainment site (according to comScore).
• ROBLOX CEO, Dave Baszucki, started the company in 2006 with the intention of developing a virtual environment that encouraged creativity and entrepreneurism in children, by allowing them to create their own games, collaborate with other players and even become online merchants.
• While ROBLOX originally only expected about 200-300 attendees, the event sold out in the first two weeks reaching a max of over 1,000 tickets sold.
• There were over 10 million games created on ROBLOX last year

Contacts

Vator News, Ronny Kerr

ROBLOX, a gaming site for kids, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $4 million second round of venture financing from existing investors, including ALTOS Ventures and First Round Capital…