Our ninth annual Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) kicked off today at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Every year, this event brings the most innovative creators from across our global community together to connect with one another and learn about our newest features and products. This year, we shared how we plan to achieve our vision of reimagining how people come together.

As of the quarter ending June 2023, 65.5 million users spend an average of 2.3 hours every day on Roblox. As the platform has grown, the community is more excited than ever about connecting, building, and communicating. RDCで共有したイノベーションの内容は、当社のビジョンを実現するために定めた4つの原則に当てはまります。以下では、それぞれの原則について説明していきます。 We’ll talk through each of these principles below:  

1: Evolving our Platform for 3D Immersive Communication and Connection 

Roblox is a global immersive platform for connection and communication. We are making it easier to create personalized and expressive avatars as we evolve and introduce new ways to communicate on Roblox. These unique avatars help people fully connect with others in our immersive 3D experiences. Avatars represent a user’s identity, so an avatar’s look can change as often as the user likes—more than 10 million of our daily active users updated their avatars every day in 2022. 

At RDC we unveiled new tools we’ll be rolling out throughout the year to make it as seamless as possible to create and publish avatars from anywhere: 

• New mesh and texture APIs will give creators control over changing items inside an experience, so they can morph the shape and dimensions, or change textures. 数ヶ月以内に開発者はこのAPIを有効にすることでバーチャル空間から出なくてもアバターをカスタマイズできるようになります。 This will start with the customization of avatars themselves—adding freckles or changing the shape of the jaw—then expand into in-experience creation of avatar items, clothing, and emotes. 
• Our avatar creation tool now supports importing standard gLTF files in addition to OBJ and FBX files. さまざまな表情、リアクション、アクセサリ、重ね着した衣装を装着すると、作成したアバターがどう見えるかを確認できるプレビュー機能もリリースしました。 And coming later this year, we’ll release ML-powered tools that will automate the process of rigging, skinning, caging, and segmenting the model for the creator.  
• We plan to enable a way to easily create an avatar from an image and a text prompt, then customize it and add it to the user inventory to start using it. Today, avatar creation takes an experienced creator days, or up to a week. But in his keynote, Dave showed how easy it will be to create an avatar in just minutes with these new tools. 

We’ll also continue expanding on the ability to express emotion through avatars, going beyond facial expressions to hand gestures and upper body movements, and new machine learning (ML) techniques that enable more realistic avatar movement. 近い将来、アバターはその人の表情を瞬きの速度まで正確に反映するようになっていきます。 All of this is important to enable people to have emotional connections in these immersive experiences in the same way we do outside of them. We’re so excited to see what our creators build with these new capabilities. 

Sharing New Ways to Communicate

大勢のみなさんがすでにRobloxを利用してテキストチャットや音声チャット（米国では13歳以上対象）で友達とつながり、コミュニケーションをとっています。 Last month, we also shared the ability for those over age 13 to animate their avatar with facial animation, using the camera on their device. At RDC, we announced Roblox Connect, a new way for friends to call each other as their avatars—together in a shared experience. 

Launching later this year, Connect will enable people to call a friend from their Roblox friends list using their real name and facial expressions—conveying nuance with their own body language—and be transported to a shared immersive space on Roblox for their conversation, sitting together by a campfire or standing beside a waterfall. 開発の舞台裏の観点から言うと、機材や動作追跡用の点がいらないスマホやノートパソコンで動作するハリウッドスタイルのモーションキャプチャスタジオ機能を搭載していることになります。 The device’s camera is all that’s needed to capture motion and translate it in real time.

We will open source Roblox Connect and have built it only using public platform APIs. By providing Roblox Connect directly to our millions of creators, we unleash their collective genius to develop new communications experiences. While we cannot possibly imagine all the ways our creators will use this technology, here are two examples of the potential power of this new functionality:

1. Today, someone who lives in San Francisco could meet up with a friend who lives in London at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out the latest exhibit via The Met experience on Roblox. But with Connect, these friends could make a call on Roblox and teleport there together, hear their friend’s commentary about the art, and see their friend’s reactions, all in real time.
2. A father and his grown son, who’s moved across the country, could be together on a dock by a lake and reminisce about their last fishing trip. The son could see the expression on his dad’s avatar and hear his real laugh as they joke with each other.  

2: Coming Together in Exceptional Experiences From Anywhere Across More Devices

Roblox is one of the largest immersive platforms available anywhere. As devices evolve and new versions become available, we want to provide everyone on Roblox with the best experience possible for their device. Creators can publish experiences once and immediately get them into the hands of a global audience across all of the platforms we support. 

We’ve opened up access for developers to start creating experiences for Roblox on Meta Quest and have seen a tremendous response. In the first five days, we saw more than 1 million downloads of the open beta. At RDC, we shared that Roblox will be widely available to people on Meta Quest later this month. また、Roblox Xboxアプリをアップグレードし、新しい外観、頻繁なアップデート（最新機能へのアクセス）、コンテンツ推薦の改善、ユーザー体験の向上を実現する予定していることも発表されました。

And, at long last, we announced that next month, millions of Playstation console owners will be able to access the full catalog of Roblox experiences. Getting our developers' experiences onto these two amazing platforms is a significant step toward making Roblox available on all of the most popular devices. And we’re not stopping there! 

3: Growing a Vibrant Virtual Economy With More Ways to Earn 

Robloxでは、クリエーターのみなさんをサポートするための各種ツールやサービスに加え、クリエーターのみなさんがRobloxで収益を得るための新しい方法を提供しています。 As we shared in our vision for the Roblox economy, we support one of the world’s largest virtual economies. In the 12 months ended June 2023, Roblox developers have earned $680 million. In the span of a couple of years, we have also diversified and introduced new ways to allow more creators to earn. 

Leveraging Generative AI

At RDC, we announced Assistant, a conversational AI that makes creation on Roblox more accessible and empowers advanced creators to build richer, more engaging experiences faster. Assistant will be available in Roblox Studio and Creator Hub later this year, and within experiences sometime next year to help creators learn, code, and build more effectively. Working with Assistant will be collaborative and iterative, so creators can provide feedback and Assistant will work to provide the best solution. This new generation of AI-powered tools will amplify the ability of all creators to bring their ideas to life. 

「アシスタント」は、Robloxにおける既存の生成AIの活用を基盤としており、初心者や経験の浅いクリエーターが参入する障壁を下げると同時に、実績のあるクリエーターが面倒な反復作業を自動化し、迅速に作品の規模を拡大できるようにします。 In both cases, this unlocks new creative opportunities so we all benefit from a more diverse set of ideas, and bigger, more ambitious projects being shared on the platform. Earlier this year, we released Code Assist and Material Generator into beta and we’ve already seen great success with both tools. 「コードアシスト」 をリリースして以来、以前の自動補完ソリューションと比較して、生成されたコードの量が倍増しています。 テキストプロンプトで素材のバリエーションを生成できる素材生成のベータ版を使用したクリエーターは、ベータ版を使用していないクリエーターと比較して、物理ベースレンダリング（PBR）素材バリエーションの使用率が50%以上増加しました。

Economic Opportunities for Creators

At RDC, we shared with creators key enhancements that will improve their ability to earn on Roblox. まず、クリエーターが自作のバーチャル空間の中で定期購入を提供し、どの機能やサービスを定期購入モデルとして提供するかを自由に選択できるようにする方法を近々開始する予定であることをお伝えしました。 For instance, a creator could offer a subscription for a digital “trunk club” where subscribers regularly receive curated outfits, or a members-only fan club. 

As a step toward making it possible for anyone on Roblox to participate in our economy, later this month, we are inviting anyone that is ID-verified and has Premium to create 3D items for our Marketplace. 当社は、みなさんに愛される、創造性が保護されているマーケットプレイスを作りたいと考えています。 そのため、今年マーケットプレイスを解放するにあたり、本人確認書類の認証に加えて、クリエーターの責任を強化するための安全システムを導入しています。 We are also developing easier ways for creators to detect duplicates of their items and more easily report, manage, and track IP claims. These tools are in development now and we’ll share details as they become available.

We are also evolving our Marketplace so that by next year, there will be two predominant types of items: those that are fixed in quantity (Limiteds) and those that have a flexible quantity, both with costs per unit to publish. Grounded in real-world economics, these systems are intended to help creators sustainably earn income. We launched Limiteds in April and through June 2023, we’ve seen strong traction, with 77 percent of Limiteds selling out and 80 percent of items reselling for more than the original price.

At last year’s RDC, we announced our plan to launch Immersive Ads, which we did this year. 今年は学びの年でしたが、すでにクリエーターの中では、特に中・ロングテールのクリエーターが没入型広告から最大20％の収益を上げている兆候が見られます。 Brands are also seeing the impact of these ads as a way to reach their communities more effectively. 例えば、H&Mのポータル広告は、バーチャル空間に参加した人数を11％増加させ、そのうちの97％が初めてバーチャル空間に参加しました。 More than 11,000 people organically joined a friend who had teleported into the H&M experience through an Immersive Ad. 

また、クリエーターマーケットプレイスの手数料について、コミュニティからのご意見・ご感想をしっかりと受け止めています。 Next year, we plan to update our Creator Marketplace fees to enable asset and tool creators to keep 100 percentof the net proceeds from the sale of their items in Studio or Creator Hub—excluding tax and payment processing fees. Also coming next year is the ability for developers to sell models in addition to plugins, and a change to buy and sell assets in U.S. dollars instead of Robux, thus eliminating any Roblox platform fees. 小規模なスタートですが、クリエーター同士の交換による活気ある経済を構築したいと考えています。 当社は、あらゆる規模のクリエーターが収益を得る方法を多様化する手助けをし、可能な限りコスト効率を節約や高い報酬という形で還元したいと考えています。

4: Working Together to Foster Civility, Built on a Foundation of Safety 

「安全性」は、当社の創立理念に組み込まれています。 It is the foundation upon which civility is built. We invest in technology and workflows to maintain a safe, civil, and welcoming platform for everyone in order to empower people to build communities that are fair, respectful, and helpful. 新しいコミュニケーション媒体を導入し、より多くの方々に創作活動に参加してもらうためには、内容審査ツールの拡張が不可欠です。

At RDC, we shared new tools that will help maintain a safe environment as we roll out new features. 当社は、不適切な音声コミュニケーションの内容を検出する機械学習（ML）アーキテクチャを構築しました。 This model is the first of its kind deployed at scale, where the AI is directly evaluating voice content and expression, rather than first translating voice to text and then classifying that text. The English-language moderation model will be released shortly, with four additional languages to follow.

ネット空間における民度の向上は、Robloxとクリエーターコミュニティの共同作業です。 We empower creators of experiences by providing the policies, tools, and insights to define what civility means for their community. クリエーターのみなさんに権限を与えることで、オーディエンスにとって何が適切かなどの文脈を取り入れられるようになります。 Today, developers can use the IsVerified API to better manage access to features within their experiences based on a person’s account verification level. This can be used to grant access to specific parts of the experience or help them better manage in-experience moderation. Later this year, developer-configured text filters will provide developers with tools to decide what type of text is appropriate for their community and experience. この取り組みは、すべての人にとって安全で民度の高い活気あるコミュニティを作るためのテクノロジーとワークフローへの継続的な投資の一部にすぎません。

But this is not the end…

All of the innovations we shared at RDC will enable people to connect and communicate in a more immersive way than ever before, on an ever expanding range of devices. クリエーターのみなさんにとっては、こういったツールによってどこからでも簡単に直感的な制作ができるようになります。また、クリエーターのみなさんが安全とマナーという土台の上にビジネスを構築することをサポートしてくれます。 These are the principles that will help us achieve our vision: Reimagining how people come together. We are grateful and excited to continue this journey with our creator community and cannot wait to see the amazing things they’ll build with this new technology.