Highlights from the U.S. Roblox Developers Conference 2017

July 25, 2017

by YoSoyTofu


Events

That’s a wrap, folks! The 2017 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) has come to a close in the United States, and it was EPIC. This year, more than 200 creators from all corners of the Roblox community convened at the San Jose Marriott, which was teeming with exciting panels and fun events all weekend long. We were also thrilled to see that our Twitch stream was viewed more than 223,000 times over the weekend, which helped generate a whopping 2,100+ tweets about #RDC2017. On behalf of the entire team at Roblox, we would like to give a very special thanks to everyone who attended or watched RDC 2017.

In case you missed it, check out some of the highlights from the three-day event below. You can also watch the panels and interviews from various developers in the community by browsing the archived videos on our official Twitch channel.

‘Twas the night before RDC…

We had an absolute blast welcoming everyone to RDC 2017. This year’s evening welcome event was JAM-PACKED with old school arcade games, prizes, music, and tons of other surprises, including a virtual reality station loaded with awesome Roblox experiences updated exclusively for RDC. We were just as stoked as everyone else to catch up with some familiar faces and meet so many new ones. And it was even more fun thanks to the great ice breaker activity found on the new RDC smartphone app, which was developed in-house by Vaelan and Rootie_Groot! Needless to say, the hype for Saturday’s big show was through the roof!

The conference kicks off!

At every RDC, we seek to empower creators and engage in an educational dialogue with the community. Here, developers have an opportunity to bond with other talented community members and also share their feedback about the platform with our internal teams. We love working with the developer community to create even more robust tools that strengthen their ability to create any kind of game or experience imaginable. This vision was a recurring thread between all three of our keynote speakers’ presentations on Saturday.

During his address to attendees, CEO and Founder David “Builderman” Baszucki touched on several of our biggest milestones this year – such as reaching 56 million monthly active players and claiming the top rankings across a variety of app stores. He also discussed the ways in which Roblox is enabling a new category of human co-experience by allowing people to create, play, and imagine all around the world. Adam Miller, Roblox’s VP of Engineering, then took the stage to preview some of the features we’ve already shipped for developers this year and many more that are soon to come. This includes the new CSG engine and a surprise prototype build of our incredible new lighting technology (download the prototype build here). And lastly, Grace Francisco, Roblox’s VP of Developer Relations, ended the keynote session with some exciting announcements about many of the new streamlined processes that will allow us to better engage with the developer community on new features, feature requests, bugs, and more. She also shared news about the development of a curriculum that would allow schools to use Roblox as a STEM education platform. We can’t wait to share more information about all of these announcements in the future.

Afterwards, attendees broke off into groups throughout the afternoon to learn more about specific development topics. These presentations included best practices in game design, cross-platform optimization, the future of the Roblox avatar, how to promote your game(s) via social media, licensing opportunities, and more. We encourage you to browse through the presentation slides below or watch the archived videos on our official Twitch channel to get more details about the subjects that are relevant to you.

Photo Credit: Daniel Kokin

A game jam to remember

Developers from around the world joined forces once again to compete in the 2017 Game Jam, which featured a new twist this year. This time, participants could choose to take part in either a building competition or the Game Jam itself. Either way, they only had four hours to create an entire game, experience, showcase, or model from the ground up based around the theme “machines.”

After four hours of intense scripting and building, our esteemed panel of judges selected the winners based on the following criteria: Execution, Originality, Design, and Fun. No matter who won, it was exciting to see the creativity and imagination being exhibited on Sunday. We especially loved seeing the cooperation between new and veteran developers. Wherever you looked, teams were sharing knowledge and skills that would surely inspire even more extraordinary projects on Roblox. We hope that all the participants enjoyed this year’s Game Jam and that they’ll continue to polish their creations even further beyond the competition.

Without further ado, let’s congratulate the following winners of Game Jam 2017!

Building Competition Winners

Game Jam Winners

Third Place: Lumber Tycoon 2, by Defaultio, Biostream, Quenty, Crykee, Badcc

Second Place: Mine Madness, by FearMeIAmLag, Zomebody, Woot3, MasterOfTheElements

First Place: FAXSTORY, by zKevin, Phenite, Mah_Bucket, PressurizedSphere, Iwishforpie1

…but wait, there’s more!

This year’s RDC might be over in the States, but it won’t be long ‘til we head to the United Kingdom for our first-ever overseas conference. Stay tuned to the Roblox Blog for photos and even more juicy details straight from YouTube Space London. Don’t forget – we’ll be livestreaming all the action on our official Twitch channel from August 5th to August 6th. Make sure to tune in so you won’t miss a thing!

We’ll see you soon!