What It's Like Reporting From Inside the Wild World of Roblox
Bloomberg's Cecilia D'Anastasio joins Crossplay to discuss covering one of the biggest gaming sensations among young kids.

When I decided to highlight the experience of Roblox for my first big story at Crossplay, the first expert who crossed my mind was Cecilia D'Anastasio, an excellent video game reporter currently at Bloomberg. I was fortunate to work alongside Cecilia during my time at Kotaku, a popular video game website, and have continued to admire her work, especially the deep dives into the underbellies of online games.
Cecilia has covered Roblox from a number of angles—how it continued to operate in Russia after war broke out in Ukraine, how it's been caught up over lawsuits and concerns over social media addiction, how its reliance on user generated content is influencing other games—but the piece that's really stuck with me was a 2021 story for Wired called "How Roblox Became a Playground for Virtual Fascists."
It’s a cautionary tale about the power of modern virtual worlds, but it's also about the responsibility platforms like Roblox have when they hand over these tools to people.
Roblox is played in our home with oversight and open conversations. We talk about the worlds she's playing in, and the interactions she's having. I will often play with my oldest, but she will also play with a friend. It’s been (mostly) harmless, all told. Naturally, when the friend is involved, I'm not usually asked to stick around, and my hope at that point is that the conversations we've already had will stick with her.
Onto my exchange with Cecilia. If you like this format, let me know! It's early days, and I'm still figuring out exactly what my (still growing!) audience is interested in.
Crossplay: You’ve done extensive reporting on Roblox over the years. What originally drew you to Roblox, and why did you want to continue unpacking it?
Cecilia D'Anastasio: Roblox is the purest example of the fact that online games can function as social media. Today’s younger generation of gamers has the tools to fluently express themselves through digital costumes, emotes and, in some instances, games or mods they themselves design and publish on platforms like Roblox. Nobody else is doing that at Roblox’s scale.
Older people are often surprised that these Lego-like avatars and blocky fashions hold that kind of power–and that’s because they’re missing the main thing about Roblox. When you drop into a lot of these games, you’re immediately immersed in the invisible social contract particular to that one digital experience. Do you remember what it was like being on the playground and witnessing the “wolf kids" or the kids role-playing as cops or Animorphs? Kids today are manifesting those dynamics in Roblox as fully-formed games they make themselves. Then, they’re pulling in kids from other schools and transferring those relationships into their Discord servers or elsewhere online.
I love reporting on and in Roblox because it’s one of the few online games that really understands itself as a place, not just a set of mechanics wrapped in a story or an aesthetic.
One of my favorite pieces of yours is “How Roblox Became a Playground for Virtual Fascists,” which detailed an especially disturbing community within Roblox. How did you find that story? What was it like reporting it? Did you spend a lot of time inside Roblox itself?
D'Anastasio: Thank you so much! It was a doozy to report that!
Ferguson contacted me in December of 2019 about a separate story I’d written that resonated with him. Then he was like, by the way, I was wondering whether you’d be interested in this “small sub story” about Roblox and fascists and “how it indoctrinated hundreds of kids.”
I’ve been reporting on extremism in online games for several years. In general, games and gaming platforms have not yet caught up to social media when it comes to accepting their responsibility as culture-generators. It’s become clearer than ever lately: After the tragic terrorist attacks in Christchurch, I saw that over 100 Steam profiles had changed their name to honor the shooter. It was one of those Holy shit moments. But when I went to research exactly what the relationship is between video games and extremism, there was so little out there aside from those now-debunked studies about video games and violence. I wanted to contribute to that corpus of knowledge by sharing the experience of Ferguson and his childhood friends.
Ferguson gave me hours’ worth of tours–from the Group Recruiting Plaza, where we saw a red, white and blue booth with a Confederate flag, to the Washington, DC role-play where my avatar was incarcerated and interrogated about Black Lives Matter. And look–I’ve spent a lot of time in online games. I’ve heard some shit in Valorant. I’ve seen some shit in Second Life. But that time in Roblox was like nothing else I'd witnessed. Along with all of the whimsical, pro-social experiences kids were enjoying there, there were also pockets of insidious, inappropriate, even hateful behavior masquerading as the former. I hoped to understand how being exposed to those things in Roblox impacted people years later.
“Today’s younger generation of gamers has the tools to fluently express themselves through digital costumes, emotes and, in some instances, games or mods they themselves design and publish on platforms like Roblox. Nobody else is doing that at Roblox’s scale.”
You’ve reported about how Roblox, as a platform, is growing up alongside its audience. But it’s also a platform that is highly appealing to very young kids. How is the company handling becoming a platform for adults and kids? Does it feel like it’s preferring one over the other?
D'Anastasio: Roblox is doing its best to age-up its audience by adding in more graphically sophisticated technology for avatars. I’m sure Roblox would like a higher percentage of its users to own credit cards and purchase in-game goods. But it’s hard to say whether Roblox “prefers” kids or adults. I think it just wants to be everything for everyone, and it may even have the potential to be at some point down the line.
I realize this is a slightly loaded question, but based on your time investigating Roblox, does it strike you as a safe platform? Perhaps put another way: does it seem any better or worse than other platforms like it, which find themselves aimed at and appealing to young people?
D'Anastasio: I have to give a complicated answer here and apologize if it is unsatisfying.
If I had children when I reported that article years ago, I certainly would have hesitated to give them access to Roblox. The reason why I'd hesitate rather than outright prohibit it is because I grew up in online games and turned out okay.
Today, I feel confident that Roblox is investing an appropriate percentage of his resources in trust and safety. Roblox’s latest 10-K says the company has “thousands” of trust and safety agents detecting content 24/7. It spent $7.4 million on trust and safety and infrastructure in 2020, and in 2022, that number was $56.2 million.

Anyone who operates online games will tell you that moderating them is a huge challenge. Anyone who operates a platform centered on UGC [user generated content]would say the same thing. Roblox is both. I don’t say this to make excuses–I’ll be the first to say that much of what I saw when I reported that article was stomach-turning–but I do say this to acknowledge that Roblox is grappling with serious moderation challenges.
Because Roblox is popular with kids, it’s been more thoughtful than other social media platforms about some things. But because it’s ultimately a collection of millions of separate gaming instances, where it’s enormously difficult to police role-playing, it’s always going to be a little dicey.
TL;DR Roblox is taking more seriously its obligation to culture. If it wants to pitch itself as the next stage of the social internet, then it has to earn that honor.
What do you think Roblox looks like in 10 years? Is it still around?
D'Anastasio: I do not have the hubris to predict the future but would be very surprised if a time-traveler told me that Roblox ceased to exist.
Also:
It’s been interesting to see the different reactions from Crossplay readers about what it’s been like for them to deal with the Roblox question, too, ranging from completely banning it from entering the house and begrudging acceptance.
“Roblox is the only video game that is a hard no in our house,” said one reader on Twitter. “I’ve explained to my kids )7 & 4) why we aren’t playing it and I give them options of other games to play. Luckily my kids seem to be the go to source in their friends for games so no one we know is talking about it.”
“Robux were exclusively an Easter basket/Xmas stocking/birthday card thing when my kids were really into it,” said another reader. “Otherwise it felt too much like flushing dollar bills down the toilet.”
Add me to the list who Roblox is really the only hard no (so far!) with my kids (9 & 6). I know there are likely thousands of good, safe games and experiences for them within Roblox that they would enjoy. But there has been just enough stories of highly questionable games and experiences that really give me pause and I just don't have the bandwidth or really the desire to research and vet stuff. I know my kids want to play because their friends play but I have had basic talks with them and they seem to understand my stance.
One thing that Cecilia said pinged me, a little on topic and a little on topic:
"The reason why I'd hesitate rather than outright prohibit it is because I grew up in online games and turned out okay."
This has been something that I have struggled with in terms of what to introduce and when with my kids with regard to online experiences. We got internet in 1994 when I was 13 and I quickly found my way to IRC chatrooms. The vast majority of those experiences were innocuous and it some ways they helped me find my own voice....but there was also some things where I look back and say "yeah that wasn't a good idea". And yeah I did turn out just fine but the internet now is a far different place than the internet 30 years ago, not to mention that I had a level of maturity (if you can call any teenage boy mature) when I was exposed that my kids have not reached. You can have talks and try to educate your kids the best you can but its natural that they want to push boundaries as much as they can get away with (and sometimes even go beyond those boundaries). I do think my stance with Roblox is partly due to this issue and trying to figure out when its ok to give them a little more leeway and explore on their own knowing that it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
I didn't even know what Roblox was until I came across this video from People Make Games: https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
While this is a year old, I found it pretty troubling! Seems like exploitation is built into the bones of Roblox and I'm not sure if there's a simple way to take that out.