The earliest version of Roblox lacked the ability to program games. Instead, players created experiences by arranging predefined gaming elements in their virtual environments. The rationale was usability—it is easier to create a game with smart objects than to script a game by hand. But there was a critical downside: reduced creativity, both in achieving creator vision and in the diversity of experiences that could be created. The best games would be throttled creatively by the best tools developed by Roblox rather than grow with the mastery of our community.

The story is that Erik Cassel, a believer in giving creators scripting power, implemented the scripting language Lua into Roblox in a single day and showed a prototype the next day. There are no words that beat working code, and Erik Cassel was known to speak through code. Erik was Roblox’s cornerstone of masterful speed—fast and competent. He shipped code while the rest of us were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do. And when the code he shipped wasn’t quite right, he quickly changed it. Erik once told me that everything we did was a prototype, and we’d make better the things that people actually used, with one caveat—the prototype had to deliver enough quality and functionality to accurately gauge people’s interest.

Erik was the embodiment of Extreme Programming,^[1] a software practice that holds fast time-to-market as its North Star and pursues it through rapid iteration. Erik developed this mastery over years through the advancement of his technical prowess and an enduring commitment to speed—from the rapid, third-party integrations at Knowledge Revolution to the multitude of complex projects he shipped at Roblox.

Erik lived competent speed, improved with experience, and role modeled it for the team. Erik’s mastery of speed added to Roblox’s differentiation in continuously delighting the community, and his raw personal capacity kept the team smaller in those early days.

[1] “Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction,” Extreme Programming, accessed June 14, 2024, http://www.extremeprogramming.org/.