By: David Kleeman

It’s been quite an interesting week in the mediasphere. Let’s start with these year-over-year highlights from Roblox’s first-quarter report: 

• Average daily active users were up 26% to almost 100 million
• The number of users who spent money on the platform rose by 29%
• Engagement hours increased by 30% to 21.7 billion

And then there was a second bit of big news. The American government announced its intention to establish a 100% tariff on films made outside of the country (even though it has a trade surplus in films).

Now, there are several logical reasons why this threat is unlikely to be realized:

• Levying tariffs on filmed content will be even harder than levying them on cars, where parts and assembly cross borders frequently. Particularly as digital production eliminates the need to ship physical film from place to place, a typical movie will have a multinational footprint.
• How would “100% tariff” be valued in advance of a film being offered to an audience?
• Other countries will retaliate, a disaster for a US film industry that has eager audiences worldwide.
• The near-total blending of film and TV/streaming distribution will further complicate decisions about what types of media receive or avoid the tax. 

But this final point leads me to ask a question that connects the news of the week in a fascinating way. If the foreign film levy ever came into effect, how quickly would we see the first movie release—global and tariff-free—on Roblox? How long before AMC would open its first Roblo-plex?

Some IP owners (e.g. Spin Master with Bakugan) have already been allowed to experiment with showing video content (episodes) on the platform. And Netflix has its Nextworld Roblox activation that lets fans explore, engage and immerse themselves in their favorite storyworlds; surely it wouldn’t be hard to add screening spaces, like the living room in Netflix’s Meta Quest VR app, for example.

Then the next question becomes: How would films be monetized on Roblox? Seeing how the platform has evolved, this seems clear. Rather than paying US$40 per ticket at the cinema because tariffs have driven pricing up substantially, families could buy a screening pass with their Robux. (Don’t forget that the platform has already hosted Fandango in-game ticket sales for IRL screenings of Beetlejuice 2.)

And that’s just the start—fans would be eager to buy UGC swag (clothes, accessories, props) for their avatars, and the soon-to-launch Shopify direct link from Roblox will help them easily get physical product lines as well. Admittedly, popcorn is a little more challenging.

Recently, we haven’t been using the term “metaverse” because, even though its elements are present now, the big-picture interconnected worlds are too distant and too diffuse for most people to take on board. But what if external pressures, like a tariff on foreign films, hastened the development of “metaverse” concepts that made everyday activities easier and more affordable.

David Kleeman is SVP of global trends for Dubit, a research and strategy consultancy and games studio. He has worked in children’s media for more than 35 years.

Image courtesy of Spin Master.