“Some people refer to what we’re building as the Metaverse,” David Baszucki, CEO of gaming company the Roblox Corporation, told the crowd that had assembled virtually to hear the company’s pitch to investors in February of this year. “We’re shepherds of the Metaverse.” When Roblox went public a month later, it quickly found itself valued at $45 billion. That’s more than gaming giant EA, as well as the might of Ubisoft, Take Two and Square-Enix combined. Clearly, there’s a significant amount of faith in Roblox’s promises. But can Roblox actually build a Metaverse?
The term originated in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel