‘Hi, Barbie!’: Mattel unveils first Barbie Roblox game

Mattel has launched its first standalone Barbie game in Roblox called DreamHouse Tycoon.

Players can construct their own Dreamhouse, or Mojo Dojo Casa House, beginning on October 6. They’ll be able to customize up to four floors and 30 rooms, as well as their own character’s appearance, and visit each other’s excessively pink homes. 

Non-playable characters Barbie “Brooklyn” and Barbie “Malibu” will guide players to various minigames.

A paid beta version of DreamHouse Tycoon opened to players in June to coincide with the release of the movie in July and its $150 million marketing bonanza. The game is now releasing to the general public ahead of the holiday shopping season and not long after the film hit streaming platforms on September 12.

Barbie has previously been integrated into other Roblox games, but DreamHouse Tycoon marks its first solo game.

“With the release of the film earlier this year, we felt it was time for Barbie to stand alone and make her mark on Roblox,” said Mike DeLaet, global head of digital gaming at Mattel, via email. “Roblox has a massive global audience, and we felt it was the best logical place to expand Barbie, especially with its increasing popularity this year.”

Mattel reported a disappointing fourth quarter in 2022 after rising inventory management costs resulted in a 22% year-over-year sales decrease that the “all-important holiday season” could not stop.

Gamefam will update the game with new avatar items and minigames as Mattel releases new Barbie products, such as a product line surrounding animated Netflix series Barbie: A Touch of Magic releasing sometime over the next few weeks. It will also update the game for holiday season product launches.

“We are planning to live operate for the foreseeable future,” said Alli Guglielmino, SVP of growth at Gamefam. “We look very closely at their marketing moments and their other priorities so that we can make sure that what’s happening in the game is also reflected across the brand.”

Some of the KPIs Gamefam will keep an eye on include the game’s rating, as determined by the ratio of players liking or disliking it, and average session length. 

As is typical with most of its games, it’s aiming to hit an 80% rating and reach an average session length of around 12 minutes. While it will keep an eye on player count, Guglielmino stated that Gamefam doesn’t put too much stake in player visits alone, as they don’t provide enough detail about how players are interacting with the branded content.

In September 2020, it released another Mattel-branded Roblox game in Hot Wheels Open World, which remains one of the top 10 most popular branded Roblox games, according to tracker RoMonitor.

Given the tremendous buzz that’s surrounded Barbie all year, as well as the 3 million visits the beta version of DreamHouse Tycoon received, Guglielmino expects DreamHouse Tycoon to have a longstanding player base.

Roblox reported 65.5 million daily active users in Q2 2023. Almost 37 million are 13 years of age or older.

Campaign US and PRWeek recently reviewed a few branded Roblox games to determine what they’re offering brands and how well they’re performing.