2023-06-29 17:38:43
Kommersant FM columnist Alexander Levy tells how the audience of virtual projects is growing.
As Apple prepares to launch its first mixed reality headset, the Second Life metaverse is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The virtual world celebration will feature live music, DJs, dance performances, an avatar clothing fair and other digital creations. In past years, the holiday, which stretches for two weeks, was attended by up to 300 thousand people. This year the organizers expect even more participants.
Despite its honorable age, Second Life is far from the most popular virtual universe. Minecraft, VRChat, Rec Room, Animal Crossing and others skillfully pull users over to them. One of the best in this business is to recognize Roblox. In the latest report, the company boasted an average daily active user of 66 million. And here it’s not even the final number of people that matters, but a record growth of 22% compared to last year. The share of platform hours increased by about the same amount, also reaching a record high of 14.5 billion people. And although the group of users aged 17 to 24 had the most impressive growth of 35%, children in the 13+ category turned out to be the most engaged audience.
Perhaps that is why Roblox still decided to legalize adult content. It’s about watching and creating some forms of violence, so-called romantic themes, images of blood and alcohol, moderately crude humor, and unplayable gambling. Access to such things in Roblox will be possible only after age verification. To do this, you will need to upload a photo and an identity document to the platform. An additional regulatory tool will be the parental control function.
The decision should be recognized as useful, if only because Roblox is already known for forbidden worlds with adult content. They even got their own name – condo games. Moderators regularly look for and block them. But they only go deeper into the shadows, and tens and even hundreds of thousands of participants can gather on servers with such content.
But Roblox audiences and other attributes of adult life are no less interesting. For example, the Singapore police created their own world, which was visited by more than 105 thousand people in two months of existence. Curious how many of them serve in the police in the real world.
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