The DeanBeat: Roblox public offering is a vote about the metaverse

Roblox, the platform for user-generated games, will go public through a direct listing of its shares on March 10. I see its pending success or failure as a stock as a kind of referendum on the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. Is that a reason to buy the company’s stock next week?

As much as anyone, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki is a kind of James Halliday figure, the fictional billionaire who built the Oasis, or the version of the metaverse in Ernest Cline’s sci-fi novel Ready Player One. (OK, maybe he’s more like Ogden Morrow, the cofounder of the Oasis in the novel). Like Halliday, Baszucki is the visionary who dreamed of building the metaverse in the early days of his company 17 years ago.