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<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Matt Weinberger/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Left: Alex Balfanz, co-creator of "Jailbreak." Right: Andrew Bereza, creator of "Miner's Haven."</p></div><p></p></div></div>This past February, Alex Jafanz spent much of his 18th birthday on an important phone call discussing the future of his video game business. </p><p>About three weeks earlier, Jafanz and his business partner had published a cops-and-robbers video game called "<a href="https://www.roblox.com/games/606849621/APARTMENTS-Jailbreak-Beta">Jailbreak</a>" on <a href="http://www.roblox.com">Roblox</a>. Although Jafanz and his partner had created Roblox games before, "Jailbreak" was their first overnight success, hitting about 65,000 simultaneous players on the day it launched and maintaining that level afterward. "Jailbreak" is on track to generate "seven figures" in revenue this year, and Jafanz said he's already made enough to cover the entire four-year cost of his undergraduate education at Duke University, where he plans to study artificial intelligence starting this autumn. </p><p>Now, Roblox's developer relations department wanted to pick Jafanz's brain about the game's success and figure out how they could work together. It was just the exclamation mark on a period where he had to manage both the last few months of his senior year of high school, and a growing community of paying players.</p><p>"That was pretty crazy," said Jafanz, who lives in Florida "A lot of things happening at once." </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">"Jailbreak" is one of the most popular games on Roblox, with as many as 65,000 people playing it simultaneously.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The same might be said about Roblox. The company offers a massively multiplayer online platform that encourages anybody and everybody to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-ceo-david-baszucki-interview-funding-2017-3">create games for its mostly-younger audience to play together</a>. </p><p>This past weekend, Roblox held its annual conference, an invite-only event for the platform's top developers. At the event, Roblox officials said the company expects to pay out $30 million to developers this year. One young programmer is on track to bring in $3 million. Two more could hit $2 million each.</p><p>I was on the ground at the conference, aiming to hear more about Roblox, the massive entrepreneurial opportunity it's creating, and how it's turning teenagers into media moguls. Here's what I found out.</p><h2>The big deal</h2><p>If you're older than, say, 15, there's a good chance you've never heard of Roblox. Although it's been available for PCs since 2005, it exploded in popularity only over the last few years as the newer smartphone, tablet, and Xbox versions of the app have opened it up to a new generation of players. </p><p>Nowadays, Roblox boasts 56 million monthly players. That actually puts it ahead of Minecraft. Earlier this year, Microsoft said about 55 million people <a href="http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/02/27/minecraft-has-55-million-monthly-players-122-million-sales">play its hit game every month</a>. Meanwhile, by some measurements, more people search for Roblox's website than for Lego, company officials boast. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">Roblox CEO David Baszucki shows off one of the new Roblox toys.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Roblox's platform is open; anyone with the requisite skills can make a game for it. That openness is reflected in the tremendous variety of games on offer. Beyond "Jailbreak," popular games include "Roblox High School," a high school role playing game; "Work At a Pizza Place," which is pretty much what it sounds like; and "Pokémon Brick Bronze," a multiplayer homage to the Nintendo franchise. </p><p><span>Players use a virtual currency called Robux to buy items in games. In "Jailbreak," for example, you can buy a stereo for your in-game car, or a VIP pass with unique privileges. </span></p><p><span>Roblox sells Robux for real money; alternatively, players can earn the currency by playing games. </span><span>When users spend their Robux in a game, the game's developer gets a cut. </span></p><p><span>Robux's platform is "a<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-ceo-david-baszucki-interview-funding-2017-3"> free market that works remarkably well</a>,"David Baszucki, the company's CEO, told </span><span>Business Insider in an interview earlier this year.</span></p><h2><span>The supply chain</span></h2><p>In conversation with Jafanz and other Roblox developers, one thing became clear: Most people who make Roblox games started out by playing games on the platform when they were younger.</p><p>Take Andrew <span>Bereza. Bereza is an 18-year-old who lives with his father in New Jersey. He started playing Roblox as a kid, but as he got older, he started experimenting with programming and designing in Roblox and released some basic games. </span></p><p><span>Nowadays, Bereza is best-known as the creator of "<a href="https://www.roblox.com/games/258258996/Miners-Haven">Miner's Haven</a>," a "tycoon" game that casts users as mining barons. First released in June 2015, the game is still going strong with thousands of players. Bereza said he's "lost track" of how much money he's made on the game. But it was enough to pay for his entire undergraduate education at the University of Washington, where he'll start later this year. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">First launched in 2015, Roblox game "Miner's Haven" still has thousands of players.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Some developers, as their experience deepens and ambitions broaden, <a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/16/unturned-making-of/">abandon the Roblox platform to pursue their own fortunes</a>. But Bereza said his success wouldn't be possible without Roblox. </span></p><p><span>"The cool thing about Roblox is that it handles a lot of the hard parts," he said. </span></p><p><span>If you're building with Roblox, you don't have to worry about configuring servers, or building a way for players to connect with each other, or setting up a payment service. You also don't have to worry about porting your game to different platforms, because</span><span> Roblox has already done the hard part of configure its app to work on a variety of devices, </span><span>from PCs to phones to games consoles.</span></p><p><span>Because of that support, and because Roblox is accruing so many new players, Bereza plans to continue developing for the platform for the foreseeable future. In fact, he's working as an intern at the Roblox office right now, bringing his perspective as a developer back to the company's Silicon Valley mothership.</span></p><p><span>"I think Roblox is growing at an incredible rate right now, and it would be silly to abandon it," he said. </span></p><h2><span>The ecosystem</span></h2><p><span>Jafanz and Bereza are extreme cases, but there's a lot of opportunity on Roblox even for those who aren't the developers of a hit game on the platform. </span><span> </span></p><p><span>Jafanz and his partner, for example, have subcontracted out lots of work for "Jailbreak," including sound design, the user interface, and character art. To really stand out in the crowded Roblox marketplace, you need your game to be as polished as possible, Jafanz said. That's creating a booming opportunity for specialists. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Matt Weinberger/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">From left, Kacey "KaceyWillEatChu" Matthews, Anne "Myzta" Shoemaker, and Vivian "EvilArtist" Arellano, all of which have found opportunities on "Roblox" as freelance artists and designers.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Among those who are benefitting is </span><span>Anne Shoemaker, 18, who was visiting the Roblox Developers Conference from Florida. A 3D artist and scripter, Shoemaker goes by "Myzta" on the platform. </span></p><p><span>Shoemaker's been taking on freelance work for other Roblox developers while she raises funds to make her own passion project. Thanks to Roblox, "I started falling in love with game design," she said. She now intends to pursue it as a career. </span></p><p><span>Another beneficiary is Kacey "KaceyWillEatChu" Matthews, a 17-year-old from North Carolina. Matthews does freelance design and also streams Roblox gameplay to <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/kaceywilleatchu">her Twitch channel</a>. She hopes to parlay her participation in the Roblox community into a job at the company itself. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">One of Shoemaker's original Roblox creations.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>And then there's Vivian "EvilArtist" Arellano, a 17-year-old freelance artist from Texas. She's made about $1,000 from Roblox in the last few months, contributing art to projects and drawing custom portraits of in-game characters. As Roblox grows and matures, there's more demand for artists and designers, not just programmers, Arellano said.</span></p><p><span>Arellano praised the Roblox community for being supportive. She brought her stepfather to the Roblox Developers Conference, and while he was skeptical at first, even he was won over by the generally positive atmosphere at the event.</span></p><p><span>"They're all nerds," Arellano's stepfather told her, approvingly.</span></p>      <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/minecraft-facts-fans-video-games-2017-1">6 reasons why 'Minecraft' is so incredibly popular</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="cwdzhsdTo_KZyeLiFgYGlgIdZt7askeB" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A video game you've never heard of has turned three teens into multimillionaires - and it's just getting started

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">Roblox CEO David Baszucki introduces one of the Roblox action figures.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Roblox is an online gaming platform with 64 million players.</strong></li><li><strong>On Wednesday, Roblox revealed for the first time that it's cash flow positive, with "hundreds of millions" of dollars in bookings in 2017.</strong></li><li><strong>Roblox has also hired Mike Guthrie as its new CFO, as it mulls whether or not to go public.</strong></li><li><strong>Roblox has also released a sponsored study from comScore that shows that it's more popular by some measures than YouTube and Facebook - at least, for under-18-year-olds.</strong></li></ul><p>If you're under 18, or you know somebody who is, there's a pretty healthy chance you've heard of Roblox - a massively popular online gaming platform with <a href="https://blog.roblox.com/2017/12/2017-another-breakout-year/">64 million players</a> that also <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-how-teenage-developers-are-making-millions-2017-7">turned three teens into millionaires last year</a>.  </p><p>On Wednesday, Roblox revealed that this popularity has translated into a booming business, as the company says that it's free cash flow positive for the first time. Roblox also says that it had "hundreds of millions" of dollars in bookings in 2017, up 158% from 2016. </p><p>And so, to manage that fast-growing business, Roblox has hired Mike Guthrie as its new Chief Financial Officer. Previously, Guthrie served in the same role for TrueCar, a website for car buyers and dealers, which he helped take public in 2014. </p><p>So far, Roblox has raised $99 million in venture capital, most recently in a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/roblox-ceo-david-baszucki-interview-funding-2017-3">$92 million funding round announced in March 2017</a>. So will Guthrie help take Roblox public, too? </p><p>"He's the right person to help us figure that out," Craig Donato, Roblox's chief business officer, tells Business Insider.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Matt Weinberger/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">"Murder Mystery 2" is one of the many, many games on Roblox.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Donato says that the growth of Roblox is reflective of the fact that it might be more than a video game platform. Roblox believes that entertainment is getting less passive and more interactive, and that it's riding the wave. Indeed, while many compare Roblox to Microsoft's "Minecraft" phenomenon, Donato looks at it differently. </p><p>"We really believe we're ushering in a new form of entertainment," says Donato. "We see ourselves not as a gaming platform, but as an entertainment platform." </p><p>To that end, Roblox also today released the results of a study it commissioned from comScore, showing that the platform eats more attention among under-18s than YouTube, Netflix, or Amazon's Twitch. There are some caveats - for instance, comScore doesn't track mobile usage. However, the data clearly shows the sheer popularity of Roblox. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">This Roblox-sponsored study shows how popular the game has become.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>If you're not familiar, Roblox is actually almost entirely generated by its fans. Popular Roblox games like "Jailbreak," "Work at a Pizza Place," or "Roblox High School" were all created by its mostly-teenage developer base. </p><p>The games are free to play, but you can use real money to buy premium Roblox currency. That currency is, in turn, used to purchase in-game items, like weaponry or new hairstyles. When a player makes one of those in-game purchases, the developer gets the lion's share of the revenue, and Roblox takes a cut. </p><p>All told, Roblox paid out $30 million to its two million creators in 2017. Three of those creators even cleared the $1 million mark. </p><p>Whether or not it chooses to go public, Donato says that Roblox has big plans for the not-so-distant future.</p><p>Last year, Roblox started putting action figures in stores, based on characters from the most popular games, and shared the revenue with the creators. Next up, Donato says, is apparel like t-shirts and hats, coming soon to a store near you. </p><p>The company is also staffing up beyond the 300 employees it already has, as it pursues other new opportunities: Right now, Roblox is only available in English, but Donato sees a big opportunity in adding more languages in the name of building a more global fanbase. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">Another part of the Roblox comScore survey.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>He also says that more brand partnerships are in the works. For instance, Roblox has teamed up with Warner Bros. to make games themed around "Ready Player One," the forthcoming Steven Spielberg blockbuster, so players can have their own adventure.</p><p>Donato says to expect more of that. In fact, he says it's somewhat indicitative of how the company approaches entertainment in general: It's a way to actively, not passively, engage with the film. It's that kind of active engagement that he sees as Roblox's best advantage, going forward.</p><p>"We really think we're laying the groundwork for how content is created and delivered," says Donato. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/buildable-cardboard-kit-hold-nintendo-switch-console-video-game-2018-2">We built Nintendo's next big thing, Nintendo Labo</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The video game that's turning teens into millionaires has hired a CFO as it considers an IPO

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Courtesy of Roblox" title_caption="Laimonas Mileska (middle) with his fans at Roblox's Maker Faire in September." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54d4f505ecad04f565fbf74f-960/loleris-september-2014.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">Laimonas Mileska (middle) with his fans at Roblox's Maker Faire in September.</p></div><p></p></div>When you're young and new to a career, most people struggle to earn even close to $100,000.</p>
<p>But that's not the case for Lithuanian 17-year-old Laimonas Mileska, or Loleris as many know him.</p>
<p>Mileska has been creating video games through a platform called <a href="http://www.roblox.com/">Roblox</a> for about five years under the alias <a href="http://www.roblox.com/user.aspx?id=2312310">Loleris</a>. And he's already made more than $100,000 doing it, even though Roblox's program for paying developers only launched a little more than a year ago.  </p>
<p>Roblox is a website and app where members can play and build online 3-D games. David Baszucki, the founder and CEO of Roblox, says 4.7 million people come to the website to play video games created by other users every month.</p>
<p>A small subset of those 4.7 million users actually build those games, and Mileska is one of the most prominent developers on Roblox.</p>
<p>Roblox doesn't directly pay developers to create games - they earn money whenever players make virtual purchases within their games. Players purchase items within the game with a virtual currency called Robux, and the developers behind those games can exchange that currency for real-world money through Roblox. </p>
<p>Not all developers are as successful as Milesaka, though -Baszucki says that only two or three developers end up making that kind of money. These top developers are starting to make more than $20,000 per month, approaching and in some cases going beyond a quarter of a million dollars per year. </p>
<p>"I think the primary reason is because I'm really keen on trying out new things," Mileska said to Business Insider when asked about why he thinks his games are so successful. </p>
<p>His most popular game to date is "Mad Paintball," a shooter that launched in November and has already been played five million times according to Mileska. </p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Courtesy of Roblox" title_caption="A screenshot from Mileska's game " Mad="" Paintball="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54d4f5f569bedd3341567944-960/mad-paintball-i.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Roblox</span></p><p class="caption">A screenshot from Mileska's game "Mad Paintball"</p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Since Mileska is is an established Roblox developer, it's fairly easy for his games to gain popularity. His first big hit was "Mad Wars 2," a military shooter that he created in 2009.</p>
<p>"Now, anything I make gets noticed and becomes somewhat popular," he said. </p>
<p>Mileska has been running his own video game studio through Roblox called Mad Studios for the past two years, but he only started making money from his games in October 2013 when Roblox's DevEx program launched. He wants to use the money to hire more developers so that he can build new games more quickly.</p>
<p>His end goal is to eventually run a large, well-known video game studio where he would be able to manage several teams of developers.  </p>
<p>Mileska isn't the only teen to achieve such impressive accomplishments in gaming at such an early age. At age 14, Robert Nay <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-weeks-best-selling-iphone-game-was-developed-by-an-eighth-grader-2011-1">created a mobile game called "Bubble Ball"</a> that was downloaded more than two million times in just two weeks when it launched in 2011. He's believed to have made $2 million during that period alone from the game. </p>
<p>The gaming industry has already proven itself to be an incredibly lucrative industry for teens - not just for the ones who create games, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/15-of-the-highest-paid-professional-video-gamers-2014-8#">but for those who play them too</a>. Professional gamers such as Jiang "YYF" Cen earn tons of cash from winning competitive gaming tournaments. Cen <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/15-of-the-highest-paid-professional-video-gamers-2014-8#15-jiang-yyf-cen-43699610-from-39-tournaments-1">earned $200,000 alone from  winning a "Dota 2" tournament </a>with his team Invictus Gaming in 2012. </p>

Meet the 17-year-old who has already made more than $100,000 creating video games

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A video game you've never heard of has turned three teens into multimillionaires - and it's just getting started

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The video game that's turning teens into millionaires has hired a CFO as it considers an IPO

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Meet the 17-year-old who has already made more than $100,000 creating video games

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