Screentime
Roblox Lures Pro Game Developers Who Compete With Coding Kids
Originally a platform by kids for kids, Roblox’s success has caught the attention of adult-led studios who are bringing polish to the games as the players grow up.
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In the fall of 2018, Mary Rukavina was enjoying her first day of college at the University of Minnesota, where she had enrolled to study biomedical engineering, when she received an intriguing call. RedManta, a video game studio founded that year, offered to pay Rukavina $5,000 a month to make games on Roblox, an online platform that allows people to program their own games and play games created by others.
“My second day of college, I moved out,” Rukavina says. “My parents were like, ‘You’re crazy.’”