D-SIDE and Roblox: New Niches in Online Events
The title and overview are translated from Russian. The full material remains on the original platform. Read the Russian original
About this material
Experience of entering the online-events market through D-SIDE and Roblox: developing a distinctive offering and the lessons learned from working in a new niche.
Key points
Yaroslav’s September 2020 case study explains how a pandemic-era DevGAMM afterparty became a line of virtual-event work and led to the browser platform D-SIDE.
- The initial problem was social: after a day of streamed conference talks, participants needed active shared play. Roblox offered a lightweight, accessible environment for a tropical-island party when travel and physical gatherings were restricted.
- That experiment brought a Geek Picnic commission. The larger experience used planetary travel and quests, ending with participants planting named trees together on Earth. Shared actions gradually changed the landscape.
- Selling an unfamiliar format required demonstration. Guided visits to completed worlds helped agencies understand the offer, while professional delivery required training developers, handling imported models and checking free assets for harmful scripts.
- D-SIDE addressed requirements Roblox did not meet for these clients in 2020: joining through a browser without individual registration, live video and presentations, integrated voice, recognisable photo-based avatars and a more businesslike visual style.
- The lesson is to design around the event’s audience and practical constraints. An entertaining shared world and a formal conference can require different access, communication and presentation choices, even when both use avatars and three-dimensional spaces.
Platform limitations and market claims describe the author’s experience in 2020, not the current capabilities of Roblox or the current market.
The full material is available on an external platform.
