The road to Roblox Once upon a time, all we had was Space Invaders and Pacman. Simple games for simple devices. But the worldwide web we spun became a literal gamechanger. It enabled not just massively more games, but platforms which countless creative teenagers have since built careers on. Britt Coker catches up with one local developer who found global success with some wacky wizards.
D
ay one. Create video game. Day two. Earn $2 from day one’s work. Are you disappointed? If you are Janzen Madsen the answer is no. You are in fact, ‘super jacked’. Now if a single gold coin could bring that much jack to him then you can only imagine that after six years, dozens of games and millions of plays, Janzen must be beside himself. Instead, he appears, as we speak, to be the antithesis of this. Though I guess that euphoric moment was a quarter of his lifetime ago and game developing is a job for him now. The 25-year-old is a creative director of a company that employs 15 game developers based in the UK, USA and Canada. Yes, it turns out that day one’s effort has generated many more days, and many more two dollars since.
Son of Nelson musician Paul Madsen, Janzen had fancied the idea of making video games from a young age. When he was 19, he sat down and did something about it. “I just played Roblox at a party and then the next day I just like logged in and decided to create a game. Back then as well, Roblox was a lot different. It’s still relatively easy now. A lot of people come to the platform and create games but it’s a lot more competitive now because it’s like a lot bigger.” Roblox, if you haven’t heard of it (don’t worry, me neither), is a U.S platform with more users than Minecraft. Games are often free to play, (and when I say, games, the official Roblox line is ‘experiences’) but the players do need to spend money on game passes or accessories within the game.
