John Shedletsky, Roblox’s first employee, built or helped build some of the platform’s most engaging features—the virtual economy, a currency trading system, user-to-user advertising, and the avatar catalog, to name just a few. But John’s mastery was in establishing Roblox’s community culture and identity, going beyond pure gaming to something unique, something that powerfully reflected its audience’s native familiarity with memes, gaming, and the internet.
John engaged the Roblox community with unparalleled creativity. If some creatives think outside the box, John rejects the box entirely or never even saw it. John built some of the earliest gaming hits on Roblox, showing what could be done while delivering uniquely engaging experiences. Among these was Nuke the Whales, an irreverent game that produced a lot of community conversation because, surprisingly, it did exactly what its name suggests. And that is the point—it was not expected. Much more than anything we could say, Nuke the Whales showed players that Roblox was not just about fun, but also about surprise, irreverence, and imagination. It was the right antidote to homework, school, and rules.
John’s creations didn’t just entertain; they also engaged the players to be creative in response. Nothing shows that more than Roblox’s first Egg Hunt. John built a meta game in which employees entered games and dropped eggs from the sky. The eggs were collected by players, each revealing an in-game tool or virtual good. One egg blew up the entire level being played with everyone in it (in a cartoony, nonpermanent way, of course).
The players loved Egg Hunt, and some rapidly built new places that were simply giant bowls to collect the eggs. It is an understatement to say that disrupting any game on the platform randomly at any time for a week, let alone destroying entire instances, was surprising. This is simply not something the average person who’s optimizing engineering investments would think to do. But John did because he is unconstrained by convention and enjoys play—two things that also describe the Roblox community.
John’s mastery of community came from his direct engagement with the community and a deep well of creativity. He was on the forums every day, entertaining as hero and villain in real time. One popular avatar T-shirt was “Blame John,” which captured a recurring community sentiment with each bug found. John also created games in Roblox Studio and understood firsthand the frustration many creators had with our tools. And John used the product, causing a stir whenever he joined a game. His mastery of community helped Roblox differentiate itself, not just among other games but also among all the entertainment options available to young people.