Erik Cassel
| Erik Cassel | |
|---|---|
| Born | Erik Stefan Cassel December 16, 1967 Los Angeles |
| 💀Died | February 11, 2013 (aged 45) San FranciscoFebruary 11, 2013 (aged 45) |
| Other names | erik.cassel (on Roblox) |
| 💼 Occupation | Vice President of Engineering at Knowledge Revolution (formerly) Co-founder of Roblox Corporation |
| 📆 Years active | 1991–2013 |
| Known for | Co-founder of Roblox Corporation |
| Notable work | Roblox |
| Title | Vice President of Engineering (formerly) |
| 👶 Children | 2[lower-alpha 1] |
Erik Stefan Cassel[1][2] (December 16, 1967 – February 11, 2013), known by his Roblox username erik.cassel[3], was an American entrepreneur, engineer, and software developer. He formerly worked in Knowledge Revolution as the Vice President of Engineering for nearly a decade, and is best known as the co-founder of Roblox Corporation, along with David Baszucki before dying of cancer in 2013.
Early life and education
Cassel was born on December 16, 1967, in Los Angeles, California, United States.[lower-alpha 2][4] When he was five, his father would take him to his work and sit him in front of a punch card machine for fun, which sparked his interest in computing. He considered being an actor in his childhood,[4] and in his teenage years, he played Dungeons & Dragons and numerous other pen-and-paper role-playing games. In junior high school, he programmed on a Radio Shack TRS-80 every day[5], which motivated him to become a good programmer. He commented that in recess, he would program games on it. He quoted that he "would program a game and only have a few minutes to play it before the bell rang. The computer didn't have a hard drive, so I would lose the program and have to write a new one the next day. This really motivated me to become a good programmer. The faster and better I could code, the more time I would have to play."[5] He also played soccer in high school and made it to the school's team.[4] After graduating high school in the late 1980s, he went on to get a bachelor's degree in science in Cornell University.[4]
Career
Knowledge Revolution
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Shortly after graduating in 1989, Cassel read in a MacUser magazine of David Baszucki, who at time founded the company Knowledge Revolution and developed and distributed a simulation called "Interactive Physics", which was designed as an educational supplement that would allow the creation of 2D physics experiments.[6] After seeing the potential of the company, Cassel flew out for an interview to work with Baszucki. During the interview, Erik presented a piece of software which he created while studying at Cornell University for his physics department.[5] After Baszucki saw his potential, he was hired as the Vice President of Engineering at Knowledge Revolution.[5] The two spent nearly a decade building educational software for teaching physics.[5]
In December 1998, Knowledge Revolution was acquired by MSC Software, a simulation software company based in Newport Beach, California, for $20 million.[7][8][9] Both Cassel and Baszucki took senior roles in the company[7][10], but went their separate ways a few years later. Although they no longer worked together, Baszucki still kept in touch with Cassel.[5]
Roblox
In December 2003, Cassel along with Baszucki began working on an early prototype of Roblox under the working title eBlocks[11], then later GoBlocks, then DynaBlocks using their own money.[12][13] Inspired by the work of futurists and science writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and Neal Stephenson,[13] over the span of 2004 and 2005, they worked from an office in Menlo Park, California alone to build alpha and beta versions of Roblox.[14][8][7][5] They began preliminary work on the video game DynaBlocks, which was launched in a beta state that was available to select players.[9][12][7][10] The game's name was changed to Roblox, a portmanteau of "robots" and "blocks" in January 2004. Roblox and its addon Roblox Studio was formally released on September 1, 2006.[14][12] Roblox was a massive hit, with community members creating their own games, rivaling what Roblox itself was making.[14] Seeing the potential of the company, Cassel and Baszucki hired additional employees, most notably Matt Dusek and John Shedletsky.[13][14] Shortly after hiring Dusek and Shedletsky, Roblox closed a series B investment for 1.1 million dollars.[14] Cassel was referred as the "Chief Scientist".[3] On the website, Cassel was fairly active, but rarely visited any games.[7] In an interview done in 2010, his hobbies were cooking, cycling, violin, ultimate frisbee, woodworking, and taekwondo.
Health problems
Early into Roblox's development, in 2010, Cassel was diagnosed with cancer.[4][14] Cassel would then take a few weeks off working to spend time with his family to process the news. When Baszucki had heard of Erik's diagnosis, he "worked selflessly to make sure his knowledge and insights were transferred" to members of Roblox.[5] Baszucki and Cassel had many talks, with Baszucki offering Cassel to take all the time he needed to focus on his health. Despite this, Cassel declined Baszucki's offer and still worked on Roblox. Even so, he attended the ROBLOX Rally 2011, Roblox's first in-person game convention, and the following ROBLOX Game Conference 2012.
Death
On February 11, 2013, after battling for three years, Erik Cassel passed away from his cancer in San Francisco.[5][7][10] The Roblox staff stated on the Roblox Twitter account that Erik Cassel had "lost his fight with cancer" earlier in the day at the age of 45. However, it was not clear what the size of Cassel's ownership stake was when he died, as his holdings were not disclosed by the company.[5]
Legacy
Baszucki's blog post
On February 12, 2013, one day after Cassel's death, Baszucki made an online blog post on Roblox documenting his time with Cassel.[5][14] Many other employees also paid their tributes. In the blog post, Baszucki shares his story of his two decades working with Cassel. Baszucki quoted:
All of us at ROBLOX will miss Erik deeply. He will always be a role model to me and to all who worked with him. We celebrate the time we have been able to spend with him. Erik was incredibly talented, but I will always think of him as the "nicest guy I've ever met."
— David Baszucki
John Shedletsky and other employees of Roblox also shared their stories on the blog.
Online memorial
On the same day, hundreds of players on Roblox gathered in a game called "Erik Cassel Memorial" that were created by his children to mourn the death of Erik Cassel.[5] Many of these people dressed up as Cassel's character on Roblox to pay tribute to him. On February 15, 2013, Roblox created an online shirt titled as "Official Erik Shirt" in memory of Cassel. The item went off sale eight days later. Furthermore, Roblox changed the name of a hat formerly known as "Well Worn Hat" to "Erik Cassel's Hat" and put it on sale for a short time.[4] Roblox then changed the two items' descriptions to the following:
To honor our co-founder Erik Cassel, Roblox will make a substantial contribution to cancer research in Erik's name. Thank you to everyone for your respect and support.
— Roblox
References
- ↑ "Erik Stefan Cassel (1967-2013) - Find a Grave..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2025-07-31.
- ↑ "Google Patents". patents.google.com. Retrieved 2025-07-31.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Basic ROBLOX Lua Programming. Brandon LaRouche. ISBN 978-0-9854513-0-1. Search this book on
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Kumaran, Mari "Mak" (2022-12-18). "Who created Roblox? Exploring developer details and more". www.sportskeeda.com. Retrieved 2025-01-28.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 Russell, Melia. "Roblox's lesser-known $45 billion cofounder was the architect of its smashing success and the 'coolest guy'". Business Insider. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
- ↑ Risley, John S.; Gjertsen, Margaret (1992). "Orlando Exhibit Brings News of Educational Software Advances". Computers in Physics. 6 (2): 111–112. Bibcode:1992ComPh...6..111.. doi:10.1063/1.4823052.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Fennimore, Jack (July 24, 2017). "Roblox: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know". Heavy.com. Archived from the original on November 29, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 8.0 8.1 Adams, Susan (June 10, 2016). "Why The Creator Of Roblox Thinks His Gaming Platform Will Top Minecraft". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 10, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 O'Neill, Rebecca (2021-02-06). "10 Facts You Didn't Know About The Making Of Roblox". TheGamer. Retrieved 2025-01-29.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Gatollari, Mustafa (March 6, 2020). "'Roblox' Has Been Captivating Players for Over 13 Years, and It All Started With Two Men". Distractify. Archived from the original on January 28, 2021. Retrieved January 3, 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Baszucki and Associates". 2003-12-03. Archived from the original on 3 December 2003. Retrieved 2025-01-27.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Bolte, Mari (2022-01-15). Roblox. Norwood House Press. ISBN 978-1-68450-792-4. Search this book on
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "The CEO of Roblox on Scaling Community-Sourced Innovation". Harvard Business Review. 2022-03-01. ISSN 0017-8012. Retrieved 2025-01-27.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 Morrison, Chris (2019-07-11). "How Roblox avoided the gaming graveyard and grew into a $2.5B company". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-07-31.
Notes
External links
Erik Cassel on TwitterLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 23: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
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