When I was in college at Georgetown University years ago, my friend, comedian Joe Gerics, and I enjoyed playing NBA 2K. In addition to playing with our favorite National Basketball Association (NBA) teams and players, we also enjoyed the game's avatar creation tools. We spent hours shaping the off-the-shelf bodies to resemble the players on our own Georgetown men's basketball team (who made it to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen that year). Once our 2K avatars matched the height, body shape and skin tones to the real life people, we then dialed in their ability levels in terms of gameplay: passing, shooting, speed, defense, etc. After playing several games with our college team, Joe and I decided to go one step further. We created ourselves as avatars and inserted ourselves in the game. We gave ourselves incredible in-game skills and then went toe to toe in contests against the NBA's best players. It was so much fun taking people who existed in our real lives and then transport them into our gaming experience, where we spent so much time hanging out. Why am I sharing all of this personal history from years ago? Because wish fulfillment and self-expression through avatars has taken a big step forward on Roblox. Roblox announced that members of its UGC program can now create full avatar bodies and heads. By opening up this program to the community, Roblox is widening the opportunities for fans to have more fun and for creators (and brands) to monetize. I see official branded avatars as a big win for players. They get to "dress up" as their heroes, hang out with their friends while showing off their fandom, and role play to their heart's content. Personally, I would love a Miles Morales Spider-Man avatar. What dream avatar would you want? Interested in understanding more about how brands are leveraging Roblox for growth? Sign up for the Metaverse Marcom Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/g6DFgnXs Listen to the Metaverse Brands Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gK6n9UXj Follow Metaverse Marcom on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gnu_WAHW Follow Stephen Dypiangco, MFA on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gqBFGve5 #roblox #digitalmarketing #videogameindustry #entertainmentindustry
In a recent post "UGC Program: Expanding Creation and Monetization with Avatar Bodies and Heads," Roblox announced that members of its UGC program can now create full avatar bodies and heads. Before this announcement, avatar bodies had been available for purchase on the platform. However, not everybody could create them. Avatars could only be released by the Roblox account, which meant that only Roblox itself and its brand partners could participate. By opening up this program to the community, Roblox is widening the opportunities for fans to have more fun and for creators (and brands) to monetize. We see official branded avatars as a big win for players. They get to "dress up" as their heroes, hang out with their friends while showing off their fandom, and role play to their heart's content. Interested in understanding more about how brands are leveraging Roblox for growth? Sign up for the Metaverse Marcom Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/g6DFgnXs Listen to the Metaverse Brands Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gK6n9UXj Follow Metaverse Marcom on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gnu_WAHW Follow Stephen Dypiangco, MFA on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gqBFGve5 #roblox #digitalmarketing #videogameindustry #avatars #brandmarketing #genzmarketing #monetization
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1yOfficial branding still requires working with licensing. Are you suggesting that every random creator is going to know how, set up a contract with, and actually work with licensing for every brand? Roblox does not appear to have set up a community licensing coordination program. that means that licensing and branding is still the responsibility of the individual developer. How many amateur developers do you really think are going to set up contractual licensing with larger brands? I think the higher likelihood is that they will make whatever they want, and Roblox will find increasing copyright strikes as Brands and Licenses find they need to DMCA avatars. I hope that Roblox is ready for the legal and licensing work that this will entail. But any professional developer knows that making the content is only half the battle. The other half is working actively in professional coordination with license holders to make it such that they are happy with the content.