What's more is that 176.3 million hours of gameplay has been poured into Roblox in 2012, which is a 50% increase over the 2011 stats.

Well, some of them are. At the Roblox 2012 conference on Saturday at the Santa Clara Convention Center, hundreds of budding game designers rubbed real shoulders with their virtual friends and idols.

CEO of Roblox Corporation David Baszucki says his company rolled out new security features to protect kids from predators, after a series of high-profile abuse cases.