When a Gen Zer or Gen Alpha kid plays a Roblox game or engages with an in-game activation, there’s a good chance that Gamefam had a hand in creating it.
The game developer is behind several popular Roblox games like Barbie DreamHouse Tycoon and RoBeats, and is a key player in creating branded experiences on the platform. As time spent in the multiverse is only increasing, Gamefam Chief Business Officer Ricardo Briceno is keen on convincing brands looking to engage younger generations to get on Roblox.
Ahead of the Marketing Brew Summit, where Briceno is set to speak about fan engagement and community building, he shared more about his tips for marketers aiming to go deeper with their audiences.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tell me about your role at Gamefam and how it relates to fan engagement. As chief business officer at Gamefam, I lead all business-related functions including Gamefam’s brand partnerships and advertising network. Every decision made at Gamefam, including all the work we do with brands and the games we develop on Roblox, is designed with players and the player experience as our number one priority. The brands we work with—from FIFA and Nickelodeon to Lego and Old Navy—are looking to engage with new and existing Gen Z and Alpha fans on these platforms where they spend the majority of their time.
What kinds of communities are increasingly important for brands to get involved with? What strategies are you using to connect with them? Every brand needs a Roblox strategy if they are looking to engage and be relevant with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Brands that don’t activate there risk falling behind competitors who are moving quickly to gain share of voice, mind, and heart with these generations.
To further illustrate the marketing opportunity, we have launched over 125 campaigns for our brand and IP partners, including Mattel, Sega, Intuit, Lego, Warner Music Group, FIFA, the NFL, Old Navy, Paramount, and many others. These partnerships range from simple media buys such as display ads to standalone games to brand activations and immersive gameplay integrations in some of the most popular games. With these offerings, we’ve recorded over 11 billion brand engagements via our campaigns, and our portfolio is home to five of the top 20 brand games on Roblox. including No. 1 Sonic Speed Simulator (over 1.2 billion gameplay sessions).
What’s your favorite recent cultural tie-in that Gamefam has been in on? In Q4 2024, we worked with Warner Music Group to bring Coldplay to Roblox for the first time with a multi-game takeover timed to the launch of their 10th album, Moon Music. It was an interesting problem to solve: Coldplay has captivated the world for nearly three decades, their timeless music spanning generations. Yet today, their core audience skews toward millennials.
In just two weeks, we successfully introduced Coldplay to the next generation of fans and drove excitement for the band’s new album. In total, we recorded 26 million visits on Roblox and 295 million minutes of brand engagement, equivalent to listening to Moon Music 6.7 million times. Directly following the event, Moon Music soared to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking Coldplay’s first No. 1 album in over a decade and fifth No.1 album all time.
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As sports partnerships continue to be ever popular and football season kicks off, how do you see your brand getting involved in the sports landscape? Football is always a fan favorite on Roblox, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to have worked on not just one Super Bowl activation but two—one becoming the No. 1 concert on Roblox and the other becoming the No. 1 multi-game brand event on Roblox at the time.
Currently, Gamefam and our partners at FIFA are working on a really exciting program to celebrate the road to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in our game Super League Soccer, the official FIFA game on Roblox. We are building a full calendar of World Cup-themed gameplay events to get players excited every step of the way—looking back at World Cup history, celebrating the qualifying matches, creating buzz around IRL milestone moments like the draw, introducing the tournament mascots to players, and more.
All this activity and fan excitement for the world’s biggest sporting event will also create huge in-game opportunities for brands in and around the soccer world to engage meaningfully and at scale with some of soccer’s biggest Gen Z and Alpha fans with hyper-relevant content.
What do you think marketers are getting right about fan engagement? Where do you think they could improve? Here’s our recipe for success for marketers. Test and learn…It takes time to figure out what works and doesn’t work.
Go beyond the test and learn phase: Showing up and learning is a huge first step—but it’s only the beginning. Once they dip their toes in, they should move toward implementing a persistent presence year-round to keep their brand top of mind for this key audience…Many brands look to build their own game or world, but it’s actually not always our recommended approach, because it is not easy to build an audience on Roblox, and IP-based standalone games struggle to attract players and keep them engaged at scale. That’s why integrating within a hugely popular Roblox game or multiple—where millions of players are already actively engaging every day—tends to be the winning strategy and is a sure way to deliver scale and impact.
Understand the community. Roblox players know what they like and don’t like. Brands must ensure they’re speaking the same language as these Gen Z and Alpha players so they can engage them with authenticity…Delight players: Find the right game with the right gameplay that aligns with your brand values. That’s the way to offer gameplay value to players…invite them to engage with your brand meaningfully while they’re already having fun, and ultimately build fandom.
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