Roll20 interview: New CEO Ankit Lal on his biggest priorities and challenges

Roll20 allows players to experience games like Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a plethora of tabletop RPGs, completely online. With systems and resources that make these games playable without the need to physically gather, Roll20 saw a massive boost in popularity during the pandemic. Recently, Roll20 brought on former Google product & business strategy lead Ankit Lal as its CEO. We caught up with Lal to further discuss his new role.

In our interview, Roll20 CEO Ankit Lal discussed the company’s increase in popularity, as well as his biggest priorities and challenges as the new CEO.

Shacknews: What are some of the biggest priorities in your new role as CEO of Roll20?

Shacknews: How has the increased popularity of playing tabletop games online informed your decision-making at Roll20 and what effect has the pandemic had on your player base?

Shacknews: How does the work you did at Google inform what you’re doing now?

Shacknews: How will the new GM Hub empower Game Masters?

Shacknews: In what ways is Roll20 making it easier for game makers to get their products on the platform?

I don’t want to spoil our upcoming features too early, but we want to be the biggest digital TTRPG Marketplace globally - to do that we have to improve every step for artists, publishers, and independent designers from creating character sheets to uploading art packs, and even to how users access that content once they’ve purchased it. We’re working on immersive map & lighting features like doors, windows, and an overhead layer; new types of content for GMs to share with players; UI & ease of use improvements as well as performance improvements. We are also focused on improving our tools for in-person and hybrid play with printable character sheets, additional compendium features from the Roll20 mobile app, and we recently added compendium sharing on the website, rather than just within the VTT. You can read more from our CTO, Morgan Buck, here on the blog.

It was an insightful chat with Ankit Lal, full of interesting tidbits about his philosophy as a leader and what we can expect from Roll20 going forward. For more interviews with the biggest names in entertainment, stick with Shacknews.