Creator-Driven Worlds are Taking over Games
There are 3.3 billion gamers in the world, and 11% of them are playing on Roblox each month: 354 million monthly active users (MAU). Minecraft has 172M MAU. Fortnite recently passed 100M MAU, with recent data suggesting they’re already up to 126M.
All of these products have a community of creators that has been core to their purpose. In Minecraft, it has been people modding and creating servers beyond the survival-mode and basic creative play. In Roblox, it is a fully-integrated platform in which you can create games for others. In Fortnite, the creator mode is newest, driven by a community of builders who are enthusiastic about using UEFN (Unreal Engine for Fortnite) to add new experiences around the original Battle Royale game.
Let’s look at some of the numbers first, and then return to what we might learn from the success of these products:
Minecraft
Under Microsoft’s stewardship, Minecraft has expanded platforms and continued to grow. The amount of creativity in Minecraft is astounding—for example, with redstone you can build computers and even neutral networks.
Roblox
The continued growth of Roblox over time is impressive…
…but an additional point worth making is that inside Roblox, the top games are comparable to some of the most popular games on almost any platform. Brookhaven RP has been played over 34 billion times!
Fortnite
Recently, Fortnite announced achieving a 100 million MAU milestone. It appears to be still growing; more recent usage data has Minecraft at 126M MAU.
Democratization of Game Development
Unity used to talk about democratizing game development on the homepage of their website. Although their messaging has evolved away from this, they do get a lot of credit for simplifying the workflow associated with the 3D graphics aspects of games, enabling far more people to get involved in game creation.
True democratization of game development is actually happening in platforms like Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite. These platforms are following how many creative technologies evolve—not only games, but media in general:
Modern 3D engines provide impressive graphics and unconstrained creativity.
What would it take to truly democratize game development for people who want to take their own 3D engine with them? Roblox has shown us the way, albeit in a highly centralized framework.
What if we could add the ability to build out virtual worlds with social systems, economies and multiplayer functionality right inside modern 3D engines?
It will take a virtual world platform that’s as open, extensible, composable and scriptable as the graphics layer has become. The result would be the power to craft immersive, multiplayer experiences in the same way you can in Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite—but with the artistic magic and expressiveness present with the most advanced graphics systems currently available. You’d also want the scale to create MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) and true “metaverse” experiences.
I’m passionate about this problem, and it’s what my company is working on at Beamable.
The future is one where whatever you can dream can appear on the screen.
Further Reading
I’ve written about creator economies and creator platforms before:
The Direct from Imagination Era Has Begun is about how new technologies will enable the Holodeck—new rendering pipelines, generative AI and virtual world servers.
Digital Identity and the Evolution of Creativity is from presentation I gave at MIT to about how technologies are enabling us all to become more creative and project our will into virtual space.
Composability is the Most Powerful Creative Force in the Universe talks about emergence, creativity and how markets of components building upon each other is the path to building great things.
Evolution of Creator Economies discusses how the creative technology stack tends to evolve across different markets.