Reesemcblox attended our very first BLOX Faire this past weekend in Greenbelt, Maryland to hang out with ROBLOX users manning our booth. She asked all the right questions and emerged from Greenbelt with a story that makes the Communications Team proud (go Reese!). So we decided to let her tell it.

A bunch of inspirational stories came out of the Greenbelt Mini Maker Faire, which makes sense when you think about it. Maker Faires are a celebration for people who build and create, after all. I’ll let you do your own research to see all the amazing ideas and ingenuity that were on display. Me? I was out looking for real-life ROBLOX stories, and I got a really great one.

A few years ago, developer Havemeat (of Wordfall fame) decided to branch out from ROBLOX and pursue other endeavors in the gaming world. He was away for a while, but recently rediscovered ROBLOX, immediately noticing powerful new development features (dynamic lighting, multi-place games, HTTP Service, etc.) and other developer opportunities (DevEx and Developer Products, to name a couple). Upon returning to ROBLOX, Havemeat (real name Dennis) began chatting with random developers online, and hit it off with another former ROBLOX developer by the name of Dade. Like Havemeat, Dade had retired from ROBLOX game development — but was lured back by the aforementioned new tools and features.

Developers Dade, Dennis and Greg form Havemeat Studios! Defaultio sits opposite. iSurprising far left.

Upon returning to ROBLOX, Dade brought along a high school friend by the name of Greg who was intrigued by the possibilities and flexibility of the ROBLOX API. The three developers formed their own game studio known as Team Havemeat — and they met in person for the first time ever last weekend at the Greenbelt Maker Faire!

They knew this meeting had to revolve around game building in one way or another, so they set a challenge for themselves: in addition to running our booth with other local community members and showing off ROBLOX to people fascinated by building, they would take every fleeting moment of spare time to work on creating a game, right there at the Maker Faire. What better way to show what’s possible with ROBLOX?

They also took a moment to talk about their various efforts in development — a big one being a website and Android app they’re working on that uses ROBLOX’s HTTP Service to monitor games for traffic, abuse reports, and chats.

The bizarre and strangely entertaining game they built (in a few short hours) revolves around the iconic Raig Table ROBLOX gear, and they garnered help from Defaultio (the guy who made Lumber Tycoon), another developer who came out to participate at the event. He ended up designing the skybox used in the game. Ideas, coding, scripting, game creation — all things I was proud to see happening during our very first BLOX Faire. This is not just the story of some developers meeting and collaborating — it’s the story of developers who left ROBLOX, then came back when they noticed how much more powerful our platform has become. There’s a reason we have veteran users who have been with us for five+ years. ROBLOX is always changing — evolving not just in terms of the games, but the tools that empower our builders to build anything they can imagine. This too, is a point of immeasurable pride.

It excites me that these events will be happening all over the place — and if it excites you as well, volunteer to run a ROBLOX booth at the Maker Faire nearest you! I can’t wait to see what happens at the next BLOX Faire — what collaborations developers and gamers can create and build from shared ideas. I imagine similar things will happen; a strong indication that bringing ROBLOX to Maker Faires everywhere is a great thing. ‘Till next time (which is this weekend in Burlington, North Carolina!).