If you’re a member of our community, you’re on the cutting edge of the future of video games — and you might not even know it. The momentum of ROBLOX, Minecraft, and Little Big Planet, along with newcomers like Microsoft’s Project Spark and Nintendo’s Mario Maker, is making user-generated content (UGC) a gaming-industry trend. And while well implemented UGC can be a smart business decision, it is also a proven and potentially lucrative point of entry into the world of independent game development. We want to spread the word of this emerging concept — the idea of UGC enabling and empowering the next generation of game developers — at South by Southwest (SXSW) in March, 2015. We need your help.

While SXSW is often associated with its music and film festivals, we’re looking to make waves at SXSW Interactive, which is centered on emerging and creative technology. You can help our panel, You Make the Game: UGC and the next wave of play, get added to the lineup of content at the event by casting a thumbs up today! If accepted, our panel will feature our CEO, David Baszucki, along with a host of top developers who have launched into game development and made money using ROBLOX.

For this panel, ROBLOX CEO and co-founder David Baszucki is joined by three top developers from the ROBLOX community (each of whom has earned millions of plays and thousands of dollars from their creations) to discuss the process of creating games in a community environment, and how UGC has propelled their indie development efforts.

We’ll know this October whether our panel has been accepted in the SXSW Interactive program. In the meantime, let’s band together to get some buzz going about the future of gaming, game development, and UGC by voting for and talking about our panel. Your endorsement is an important part of our success. We appreciate all your help!