Roku City

The screensaver depicts a slowly looping city street in the foreground, composed of businesses, a diner, a movie theater, and a city hall. Across a body of water in the background sits a silhouette of skyscrapers and buildings, with unusual amounts of chaos: volcanoes, a spaceship, a robot monster, and more. The complimentary color scheme is prominently composed of pink and purple hues. The scene changes with the seasons; in the autumn months, trees change colors. The illustration contains easter eggs[1] of various films and characters, including King Kong[2] andThe Wizard of Oz,[3] and more.

The illustrations were created by Kyle Jones,[4] a freelance graphic artist, who took inspiration from art deco architecture to design the city. The name of the background known internally at Roku was City Scroll: Movie Magic, and it debuted in 2018.[5]

It slowly began adding advertising to the city through branded partnerships in 2023,[6] including with McDonald's,[7] Paramount+,[8] and Disney.[9] Roku built a real life, pop-up display of Roku City for the 2023 SXSW festival.[10]

As Roku became a popular player in the streaming space, the ubiquity of Roku City gave rise to semi-ironic fascination among users, and it became the focus of memes.[3] Olivia Craighead of Gawker wrote: "Roku City haunts me. What would it be like to live in such a place, where there is peace in one borough while just a river away there is mass hysteria and a giant robot is terrorizing the masses."[11] Roku's internal team observed an uptick in attention at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people stayed home and nightlife was nonexistent.[5]

Its widespread usage has been considered unprecedented. Luke Winkie at The New York Times wrote: "Roku has become the unlikely venue for a massive public art experiment. Due to the size of the company’s customer base, countless homes peer into Roku City every weeknight."[5]