Toya: Creating Games for Girls in Roblox
Roblox is one of the most popular online games among children in America and all around the globe, with over 30 million active users daily and 220 million active players every month. Although the pandemic and lockdowns have definitely contributed to the massive growth they have had over the past 2 years, their growth isn’t just a one-off thing. Even now as countries open up and people are finally filling up the streets again, their numbers continue to grow at a steady pace.
Without a doubt, their success can be attributed to the many right business decisions they have made over the years, from acquiring Loom.ai, a company specializing in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars using deep learning, computer vision, and VFX, to embracing the vision of creating a metaverse around its players.
However, one of the most important decisions they have made is pouring millions into developing their talented users/developers and providing them with every possible tool they may need to create new games since Roblox is a platform that relies pretty heavily on independent users/developers to create fun games and experiences for their player base after all.
Over time, game startups and small indie game studios started to see the value of creating games on Roblox and they climbed aboard. One of them is Toya, an Israeli game studio based in Tel Aviv that is comprised of mostly women (80% to be precise).
They have noticed the lack of diversity when it comes to game development, which has always been predominantly male-dominated even in Roblox, and they aim to change that. They want to become the kind of role models that the young female players in Roblox could look up to, and most importantly, they want to create free games that girls and young women on Roblox (a significant 44% of them) can truly enjoy. After all, not everyone plays Roblox just for its shooter games!
According to Toya’s cofounder and CEO, Anat Shperling, “We want to have more female characters, female avatars, and games that go beyond pink and beyond dress up and makeup”.
“We believe that the variety of representation and increasing the visibility of female characters. Both girls and boys need to be exposed to an equal world also when playing,” she told the reporter from VentureBeat.
Their message apparently resonated with the female player base in Roblox, specifically between the ages of 7 and 14 years old, with two of their four prototypes released back in 2019, namely My Farm and My Cat Box, hitting the top charts, garnering over 25 million and 8 million visits respectively. As a result, they have caught the eye of IP owner, ZAGTOON, and ended up securing the rights to produce the very first official Roblox game based on the popular kids’ adventure TV series, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir – Miraculous RP: Ladybug & Cat Noir, in collaboration with Zag Games (ZAGTOON’s gaming division).
To date, Toya has launched a total of 7 games on Roblox, with more games to come. In fact, in an interview with VentureBeat last year, Shperling revealed that they are currently working on several new projects, some of which are based on original intellectual property. We definitely can’t wait to see what else they have to offer!
