[HN Gopher] The Roblox Microverse
___________________________________________________________________
The Roblox Microverse
Author : Kinrany
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-03-09 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| modeless wrote:
| Can someone explain to me how Roblox doesn't violate Apple's "no
| app stores in the App Store" rule? And the rule against running
| non-JavaScript code not bundled with the app? And probably a
| bunch of other rules too? The article mentions it but has no
| sensible explanation. It seems impossible to justify.
|
| Apple gets to pick winners and losers by selective enforcement of
| their own rules. Pretty nice for Roblox if Apple prevents anyone
| from releasing a competitor!
| villasv wrote:
| > Can someone explain to me how Roblox doesn't violate Apple's
| "no app stores in the App Store" rule?
|
| The games available inside Roblox are impossible to ship as an
| independent app on the App Store without re-implementing the
| entire Roblox platform. It's a middle ground between Minecraft
| selling maps and an actual app store.
| endergen wrote:
| For the step 2 and 3 phase, I think it should be mentioned how
| important games becoming free was for mass adoption. As much as I
| as a former game dev did not love the model of free and then
| upselling. I might just be old school at this point. Free and
| then upgrading avatars has grown on me.
| jonheller wrote:
| I used to push back had on my kids wanting to buy hats, pets, etc
| in Roblox. Seemed like a waste of money and I hate
| microtransactions.
|
| Then I realized that this is literally the only game they play,
| and it's free. Compare that to me at that age, buying Nintendo
| games for $50 a pop, why am I hesitant to support these creators
| with a $2 hat?
|
| I still limit purchases just for general personal finance
| lessons, but otherwise let them spend money here like they would
| on actual paid games.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Makes me think of collectible card games. If I hadn't spent my
| own pocket money as a kid on MTG, Star Trek CCG and Pokemon,
| there's no way in hell I would let my kid buy into an obvious
| scam CCGs are. But I did spend money on them and enjoyed it, so
| I'm not so sure now.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| We had an unfulfillable mania to complete our collection
| (which we now know is was VERY difficult/expensive due those
| 1-2-5 cards that were super rare). Supporting the developers
| with a couple of dollars didn't hurt anyone. As long as the
| kids won't try to "complete the collection of all hats). That
| would teach them to control their spending, understand that
| they can't just 'buy what they see' (as some young adults get
| to do on their first paychecks), and chores-chores-chores!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because it starts with a $2 hat, but quickly escalates into $2
| hats 3x a day or even more expensive perks. Once you give into
| a kid about making purchases, it's a much harder fight to say
| no the next time.
|
| These games are designed on emotional responses in kid's brains
| just as much as FB's algo for its feed is.
| sv123 wrote:
| It's also kind of cool because a lot of the games are created
| by other kids. Roblox Studio is fun to poke around in and has
| gotten my 8 year old very interested in programming and to an
| extent, entrepreneurship.
| remoquete wrote:
| I struggle to differentiate Roblox from Second Life by reading
| Ben's description of it. But then again, being the earliest
| doesn't equate to being the best.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Didn't use Roblox, nor Second Life, but my understanding is
| that Roblox is much more oriented towards gaming.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I've taught my children about pay-to-win and robux
|
| youtube.com / googlevideo.net / 1e100.net _banned_
| antidaily wrote:
| Is anyone making money off Roblox? Tried to make some gear so my
| son could make money and stop asking me for Robux. Failed
| miserably. Anyway, I'll be buying stock.
| Railworks2 wrote:
| Yes. Both Roblox and developers (the game creators) do make
| money from Roblox. This is no small thing either, it is not
| abnormal for developers to buy expensive products from their
| earnings, some do create companies to hire employees to work on
| games.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| Roblox is.
|
| This is just a near-NCAA tier play by the company to make money
| off child labor. Change my mind.
| dzdt wrote:
| I think a negligible fraction of Roblox games are child
| created. The focus is either Roblox-created games like
| Bloxburg or indie adult-created games. Children (with their
| parent's credit card info) are the target consumers, not
| target creators.
| antidaily wrote:
| No doubt about that. You have to have a premium account just
| to make and list items for sale.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| This is different than Apple, how? Platforms take cuts.
|
| At least the money is out in the open and explicit, unlike
| TikTok's questionably-declared influencer payments.
| antidaily wrote:
| I'm just agreeing that Roblox is making money.
| joezydeco wrote:
| My son's best friend is pulling down $1K/year doing Lua
| scripting and object modelling for people on a subcontracting
| basis.
|
| He's 15. He acknowledges he could be pulling in a _lot_ more
| money if he spent 2x or 4x the time on it. Or dropped out of
| high school, perhaps.
| robocat wrote:
| Any pointers to where they find the paying work?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Roblox seems to have nearly doubled their value during the
| pandemic. Will this hold water once kids are back in school?
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Totally ignorant perspective with perhaps no basis: Seems like
| Roblox must be successful despite its games, not because. I'm
| sure there are gems as there are with any user-generated
| platform, but surely most of the 18 million games are about what
| you used to get on Xbox Live Indie Games: sloppy little
| experiments made by, well, kids.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > little experiments made by, well, kids
|
| I think that's _spectacular_.
| foobarian wrote:
| Not only can a kid go from download to having a playable game
| created from a template in probably less than 30 minutes, but
| that game has world class multiplayer support and is
| available on the Roblox platform for anyone to join and
| explore. And there is no fragmentation like with Minecraft
| Bedrock/JE.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Totally ignorant perspective with perhaps no basis: Seems
| like Roblox must be successful despite its games, not because._
|
| As a parent with two kids who play Roblox a lot (and have
| played some myself), the quality varies widely but there are
| _many_ good games. Part of the fun is talking with friends and
| watching YouTube to find the best ones.
| jayd16 wrote:
| And Myspace was often hideous but that didn't matter.
|
| It seems like a solid platform for young creators. They never
| played the classics anyway, so the million clones is probably
| not an issue.
| deelowe wrote:
| When I watched my kids play Roblox, I realized it is a social
| media platform that happens to use games as the medium. Roblox
| shouldn't be compared to Games Platforms any more so than early
| YouTube should be compared to Television.
| tootie wrote:
| Roblox (and Minecraft) have fulfilled the dream of products
| like Second Life.
| magikaram wrote:
| As a recent college grad, I remember when I used to play Roblox
| as a middle school student with my best friend back in the day. I
| tried for nostalgia's sake to see how the game is present day.
| While I am somewhat lacking in understanding some of the changes,
| and road that the game has gone down now, it still appears to be
| a good online community for those who need an easy game to get
| around.
|
| I might still have the Roblox Studio tool (circa 2012/13)
| installed on an old Pentium 4 laptop.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I will buy this company when it is listed tomorrow.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Roblox games are really clunky to make on PCs, let alone phones.
| You'll never be able to make one on a phone. It's crazy clunky.
|
| A third person character running around with virtual joysticks:
| so clunky.
|
| Roblox has been around longer than smartphones have, it has
| always been a port, much like Minecraft. Which sure, _kids_ play.
|
| Roblox is probably setting back the arrival of the metaverse, not
| advancing it. Whatever that means.
|
| If you actually make and play games you don't talk about things
| that way. You're more aware of stuff like Dreams or Garry's Mod,
| you've touched stuff like Unity and Unreal and Flash. You kind of
| get that Roblox isn't competing with Grand Theft Auto but with
| YouTube Poop. Literal puppet shows. Like what are we even talking
| about.
|
| As an aside, the biggest threat to Roblox is if parents spent
| money. I don't mean in Roblox. Surely, you guys understand, that
| the appeal of Roblox compared to Disney+, arguably the finest
| destination for 8 year olds, is that, on the face of it, Roblox
| is "free." It's a catch 22 really: the audience where they would
| anticipate all their revenue growth would _never_ waste money on
| Robux, they would just get a Disney+ subscription.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >A third person character running around with virtual
| joysticks: so clunky.
|
| This doesn't bother kids, it's all they know. I cringe watching
| my niece and nephew playing Minecraft and Roblox on their
| phones with touchscreen controls but they don't care and can
| use it fine even if it looks clunky and painful to me.
| matthoiland wrote:
| I "waste" a lot of money on Roblox - $30-40/mo. It's where all
| my kids friends are, and it's a safe space on the internet that
| I trust as a parent. They build theme parks, space stations,
| small businesses - it's amazing, silly, and safe.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > a safe space on the internet
|
| IMO, we should be teaching the next generation, by example,
| that the safest spaces on the Internet are the small,
| decentralized spaces that we create for each other, not the
| large, centralized ones created by companies that aim to
| exploit us.
| fumar wrote:
| Agree but kid trends are hard to fight. There is a lot of
| kid baggage that comes with pushing children to adopt non-
| mainstream ideals or games or clothes or content etc. There
| has to be a nice middle ground.
| felideon wrote:
| > the appeal of Roblox compared to Disney+, arguably the finest
| destination for 8 year olds, is that, on the face of it, Roblox
| is "free."
|
| Um, no. Roblox is a gaming platform with a somewhat kid-
| friendly social network. You're comparing going to the movies
| vs. going to the arcade.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > Disney+, arguably the finest destination for 8 year olds
|
| Do we really want another generation addicted to consuming big-
| budget media? Especially now that most of that media is
| encumbered by DRM that makes free computing platforms much less
| attractive?
|
| Mind you, I'm not sure that Roblox is the answer. But it might
| be better, since it at least puts more focus on creating rather
| than consuming.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > since it at least puts more focus on creating rather than
| consuming.
|
| My point is, there's no focus on creating. You're imagining
| _Minecraft_ , but you don't _make_ stuff in Roblox. You can
| _make_ stuff in Roblox Studio, but there are hardly any 8
| year olds doing that, because you have to write Lua, and 8
| year olds categorically cannot do that. Unless they 're
| prodigies, in which case, they will thrive doing _many_
| things, and creativity expressed in Roblox is the _symptom_
| and not the _cause_ of their gifts.
|
| What do kids actually do? There's a lot of "casual" role
| playing games, clicker games, shooter games and things that
| feel like Counter-Strike custom maps from the early 2000s. It
| feels a lot like a Steam Workshop page. Clunkiness abounds,
| stuff that even older children will not play.
| antiterra wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are a number of Roblox games that
| allow you to build things like buildings or logic circuits.
| Enough to say that "you don't make stuff in Roblox" needs
| qualification, at the very least.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > because you have to write Lua, and 8 year olds
| categorically cannot do that. Unless they're prodigies
|
| How do we know this is true? How many more 8-year-olds
| would program if they had been given a chance? My guess is
| that most are never given a chance to try.
|
| I learned Applesoft BASIC on an Apple IIGS when I was 8.
| But I was lucky to be in a home with a computer that came
| with a disk that had an intro to programming on it. I think
| that's more relevant than any innate skill I had.
| antiterra wrote:
| My kids astound me by having little to no awareness of what
| toys there are to buy, and I'm convinced this is because of
| commercial-free streaming (and perhaps the dearth of print
| catalogs.) Maybe it's a devil's bargain, but a bit of DRM
| feels worth being free from a materialist/consumerist monkey
| on your back.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Interesting. I don't have any kids myself, but I know that
| my nieces (6 years old and under) really like the whole
| Frozen franchise. Their parents and grandparents have
| bought them Elsa dresses, toy microphones that let you sing
| along with one of the songs from Frozen 2, and I don't know
| what else. So the consumerism is definitely still there.
| Then again, my nieces and nephew watch a lot of YouTube in
| addition to paid streaming, and I've been told that when
| they watch YouTube, the adults in the room have to be
| careful that the kids don't watch lots of videos that are
| just promotions for products. I guess what I would prefer
| is that the kids spent more time creating or at least
| playing rather than watching. But then, they're not my
| kids.
| shortlived wrote:
| I agree some games are clunky but my kids don't care about
| that. I offered to buy them Steam games but they were not
| interested.
|
| You should also check out Phantom Forces on Roblox. Really
| impressive game play IMO and not clunky at all.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Roblox is probably setting back the arrival of the
| metaverse, not advancing it. Whatever that means._
|
| A true metaverse is predicated on utility.
|
| It helps people get the things they want to get done, done.
|
| That's ultimately been the failure of the majority of attempts.
|
| Social, yes, easy. Entertainment, yes, easy.
|
| Anything else?
| vidarh wrote:
| We have Disney+ and Roblox, and my son has hardly any interest
| in Disney+. It wasn't because of him we got Disney+.
|
| Meanwhile my sons pocket money gets split between V-bucks for
| Fortnite and Robux, because that is what he wants to spend
| money on. He could've funded that Disney+ subscription several
| times over with what he spends on Robux.
|
| I think the things he buys are idiotic, but here's the thing:
| Over several years, he's never once expressed regret at these
| purchases. He continues to get enjoyment from it.
|
| A lot of the hate for Roblox I see here feels like parents
| trying to impose their own preferences on their kids, instead
| of considering just how idiotic _their_ parents would have
| found the things they spent money on as kids.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| > would never waste money on Robux
|
| Why do you assume that? My nephew is obsessed with Roblox and
| has asked for Robux for his birthday, which he will probably
| get.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I now have 5 or so years experience with Roblox in the house.
| I've helped my kids make games and I have to say, VC is missing
| out big time. Roblox (or the concept) has an enormous TAM. Roblox
| corp is struggling with DX DevRel and moderation. It's an
| absolute fucking zoo and the tools are shit. Major game
| publishers have had their accounts taken over by scammers, or
| just shut down by Roblox because of scammers trying to steal
| their accounts.
|
| Somebody who understands product, gaming, and devrel could really
| knock this out of the park. Please do it, so I can go back to
| making games with my kids.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| There's a heap of new products in the space. We're building dot
| big bang (https://www.dotbigbang.com) which is web based so you
| can play and make multiplayer games on your smart fridge
| amongst other devices.
|
| If you're interested you can learn more about the company and
| project here: https://controlzee.com/
| Kinrany wrote:
| What are the other products?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Off the top of my head Dreams, Crayta, The Sandbox,
| PlayBytes, RecRoom, Hiberworld and so on.
| felideon wrote:
| Well, fwiw, they did just hire Manuel Bronstein who led product
| at Zynga, YouTube, and Google Assistant:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/joining-roblox-manuel-bronste...
| watwut wrote:
| Zynga was pretty bad company.
| guidoism wrote:
| Roblox pisses me off so so much as a parent. There are some good
| games but it's mostly wading through an ocean of shit. And the
| vast majority of games that are popular are clickers that
| incentivize children to pay money to get more for each of their
| clicks.
|
| And it's full of scams. Kids spend $10 for a hat or something in
| the game and it doesn't end up working in all the games and
| there's no recourse. It's a true free-for-all wild-west.
|
| What we can learn from it is: 1. Making games easy to make and
| distribute. It's honestly amazing what kids are doing these days.
| I give Roblox a lot of credit for this. 2. Roblox has become an
| awesome way for kids to communicate with each other, they share
| their username at the playground.
| lumenwrites wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with Roblox.
|
| But I have been learning Godot, and it makes creating games
| extremely easy and fun. And Godot now has https://gotm.io/, you
| can easily upload games there to be played in the browser. It's
| really amazing how simple this is.
|
| I imagine that this could be the future of game creation and
| distribution. We used to have flash, then it went away, and now
| we'll have something much much cooler.
|
| Shameless plug, some of the games I've made:
| https://gotm.io/godotacademy
|
| (playable only on desktop, I still haven't figured out what's
| necessary to make them work well on mobile, but that should be
| easy as well)
| Kinrany wrote:
| Godot is not comparable: Roblox is a platform, not an engine.
| chc4 wrote:
| Roblox is a game engine, though. All of the games hosted on
| Roblox are made in Roblox Studio, which is comparable to
| the Unity editor.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| They're linking a platform for web-based Godot games.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Fair. What I mean is, without the multiplayer aspect it
| cannot compete at being a social network centered around
| virtual experiences.
| djaychela wrote:
| I disagree that the games are mostly crap... I have 4 step kids
| who game, and 3 do on roblox a lot. Some of the games may be
| objectively poor, but they enjoy playing in them anyway, and
| some of them are spectacular. I spent quite a few hours playing
| with them during the original UK lockdown,which was doubly good
| as I don't live with them so didn't see them for 3 months. In
| that time we "did" many things,including "going" to a theme
| park, and spent many hours exploring and seeing how bad I am at
| it. Without roblox we wouldn't have had that experience.
|
| In terms of scams, I'd rather they learnt using their pocket
| money than their wages when they are older.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Can you link some examples? It's hard to navigate Roblox
| without participating in the social network-ish aspects.
| tra3 wrote:
| I like naval warfare [0]. Its simple but still fun. You can
| spawn boats, subs, and planes. There's a collaborative
| aspect of course. Lots of fun.
|
| [0]: https://naval-warfare-
| roblox.fandom.com/wiki/Battleship
| skrebbel wrote:
| "Theme Park Tycoon" is a Rollercoaster Tycoon clone that's
| really nice. It's pretty much single-player, but you can
| check out other players' theme parks which is very cool.
|
| "Islands" is mostly a Minecraft ripoff but you're building
| air castles (you can fall off an "island" and die). This
| lets the kids do all kinds of invented in-game games, such
| as building an obstacle course for one another, playing
| hide and seek etc.
|
| "Fishing Simulator" starts out as a pretty dull pirate-
| themed fishing game but turns out to have a lot of depth,
| adventure game style. It also has amazing content for
| Roblox standards.
|
| "Build A Boat For Treasure" is a lot less fancy than the
| above, but it has a very cool concept. You design & build
| your own boat, then go sit in it, and take it through a
| river full of obstacles. The way you build it determines
| how it deals with the obstacles because when you sail away
| you can hardly navigate it anymore. So you need to design
| for robustness etc, which turns out to be pretty hard.
|
| A lot of the games are shit, but also a lot of the games
| _look_ shit but have super original ideas. Eg there 's a
| game that you're in a building and then some disaster
| happens (tsunami, volcano eruption, whatever) which slowly
| destroys the building and whoever survives the longest in
| the collapsing building wins. I'm really not sure if that's
| a ripoff of anything, it strikes me as genuinely original.
| It's not very deep, but it's good fun.
| marianov wrote:
| related: is there some resource to know what a game/social
| network concerns may be?
|
| My small kids requested: Minecraft, Roblox, Among Us, tik tok ,
| Hogwarts Mystery and the list goes on. My due diligence process
| is overbooked.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| https://www.commonsensemedia.org
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _related: is there some resource to know what a game
| /social network concerns may be?_
|
| If you search for "roblox parents" you'll find several good
| resources.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| If you go for Roblox, I recommend using the parental controls
| to enable curated games only. It wasn't on by default for my
| <13 yo, which annoys me to no end. If you don't turn it on,
| you'll end up with your kids in games with freeform sketching
| and all sorts of questions you weren't planning to answer
| until later. :-)
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I have always used https://www.pluggedin.com/
|
| It's run by a Christian org but to their credit they seem to
| be the only group that actually cares about what kids see and
| hear in movies and tv. And they cover the most popular movies
| and tv really quickly.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| "Pisses off adults" is historically a pretty good metric for
| evaluating success.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| You've clearly forgotten what being a kid means. Any game kids
| want to spend money on is inherently "good" and not "sh_t"
| according to the one metric that matters: is it fun or not?
| antiterra wrote:
| You've clearly forgotten how _disappointing_ things can be
| when you 're a kid. How you waited for Christmas or saved for
| weeks only to find the thing you got is garbage. I've heard
| plenty of stories about kids being absolutely gutted for not
| getting what they thought they were getting for virtual
| currency in Roblox and Minecraft.
|
| That's also not mentioning how different aspects of a game
| can be fun or unfun. It could be that kids just want some
| item in aspirationally in a game but actually have no
| interest in playing the game itself. Much like how kids can
| have zero interest in the Pokemon card game but desperately
| crave spending $4 for the pleasure of 1 minute of unwrapping
| new cards.
|
| That's also not factoring in the social pressure and envy
| kids feel when their friends talk about things they have.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| > You've clearly forgotten how disappointing things can be
|
| I must have because I don't remember being at all "gutted"
| when I obsessed over the one $20-or-less item my parents
| allotted me each Christmas. This is quite contrary to what
| I see amongst kids today who spend all of a couple hours
| with their physical gifts and go right back to the
| Minecraft/Roblox marathon.
| indigochill wrote:
| Is the distinction here between Roblox and Second Life that
| Roblox has official apps on mobile and console (that seems to be
| where he refers to it as a "metaverse")?
|
| I've generally been under the impression Roblox is basically
| Second Life for kids.
| acehw wrote:
| I wanna play Roblox on Debian Linux and distros based on Debian.
|
| Why can't I?
|
| it supposedly works on ChromeOS
| Railworks2 wrote:
| Roblox has made repeated statements on this, latest from their
| Roblox Developer Con 2020.
|
| In short, not enough demand that requires more support for
| players.
|
| There has been repeated demands for this but every year is a
| no.
|
| Here is one of those threads
| https://devforum.roblox.com/t/proper-support-for-the-linux-p...
|
| ChromeOS works because it uses the Android version of Roblox.
| pueblito wrote:
| It feels like Roblox is being pumped for the stock issue
| tomorrow.
| NDizzle wrote:
| My 8 and 10 year olds give out their Roblox user names to
| friends. Most recently at a softball tournament, my little short
| stop traded names with a few players that she befriended on other
| teams.
|
| I'm not sure if there is any grand meaning to this, I just
| thought I'd share a thing I noticed.
| thunderbong wrote:
| I'm also a parent who's child plays Roblox a lot. I don't know
| much about PC games, so can the parents here suggest some better
| alternatives?
| airstrike wrote:
| Retrogaming
| watwut wrote:
| Roblox costs less money and those games are actually targetted
| at kids. Really, new games cost a lot and steam discounts on
| aggregate cost more.
|
| Plus, competitive online pc gaming is something I dont want my
| kids near to. Mostly because of culture and addictive nature of
| it.
|
| Speaking of addiction, worst are MMO like games, things like
| league of legends or world of warcraft. I dont want my kids to
| play any of that, these games tend to consume whole person.
|
| Roblox is safe and age appropriate.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I'm a parent who plays roblox (mostly Arsenal) with my kids :)
| duggable wrote:
| My kids play Minecraft on the switch (creative mode), and they
| absolutely love it. I think it's a bit addicting, but I don't
| mind since it's essentially virtual legos.
| damontal wrote:
| If you're a parent with a kid that plays Roblox make sure you
| lock your account down. Creating an account in the iOS app
| doesn't require an associated email address. If your kid somehow
| forgets their password you might not be able to reset it without
| an associated email address. If their account gets stolen which
| happened to my daughter and you don't have an associated email
| address it can be a real headache to unlock the account and get
| it back. Also make sure you have two factor authentication
| enabled. I know this is pretty mundane advice but the fact that
| Roblox lets you create an account without an email address or an
| associated phone number for 2FA means you can find yourself with
| a real headache if your kid gets locked out of their account for
| whatever reason.
| [deleted]
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| Does anyone know why _the_ game for kids switched from Minecraft
| to Roblox? I remember both of them being around when I was
| younger, yet everyone chose Minecraft. Today, it's the opposite.
| watwut wrote:
| Multiplayer for free. You don't have to run server.
|
| Plus, it is many different games, not just one that is not for
| everyone. Minecraft was popular, but there were many kids that
| found it boring.
|
| Yet plus, all kids that I know who play minecraft had it
| explained by someone. It could be other kid, but basically,
| game is not self explanatory and is difficult to figure out at
| first.
| foobarian wrote:
| The multiplayer piece is night and day compared to Minecraft.
| Doing any kind of social gaming in Minecraft requires a
| sysadmin setting up servers and upgrading Java plugins. It's a
| double benefit because game creators don't have to reinvent the
| multiplayer wheel. I think it's a brilliant setup and why my
| kid prefers to play Roblox with her friends instead of other
| socially fragmented games.
|
| Edit: and don't even get me started on the Bedrock/Java Edition
| schism!
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > In short, Roblox isn't a game at all: it is world in which one
| of the things you can do is play games, with a persistent
| identity, persistent set of friends, persistent money, all
| disconnected from the device that you use to access the world.
| That is the transformational change.
|
| Second Life, The Sims Online. We've been here before. Those
| platforms didn't nail it like Roblox, but Roblox did not
| transform anything.
| karpour wrote:
| VRChat is becoming one of those platforms. Creating is easy and
| I spend way too much time playing a faithfully recreated 3D VR
| of Among Us in there!
| villasv wrote:
| Second Life and The Sims Online are wildly different from
| Roblox. You're right that the particular sentence you've picked
| doesn't capture what Roblox did different, but it did transform
| the building of virtual experiences.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Roblox got mass adoption by integrating with educational
| platforms. Massive quantitative change is often qualitative
| enough to be transformational.
| emmelaich wrote:
| You can add MUDs and MOOs to that list.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Remember that sweet time when marketing departments of
| (aspiring to be) trendy companies where rushing to create their
| "digital presence" in Second Life... Yes, we will interview
| candidates, meet our business partners, talk to our customers
| in there, etc. We had a good laugh.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| We had a professor who held office hours in second life.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I almost worked for a startup whose goal was to offer MS
| PowerPoint and Excel in Second Life ... for presentations
| RGamma wrote:
| Let's see how long this stays benign until chasing growth targets
| sinks the ship.
| aduitsis wrote:
| This is supreme nitpicking, but the author being quoted about the
| term "metaverse" is Neal Stephenson, not "Neil Stephensen".
| fredfoobar wrote:
| The optimist in me is very excited for the possibilities in this
| game in the future.
| skrebbel wrote:
| We have Roblox (kids age 5 and 8). From the start I made a hard
| "no Robux" rule, which has worked out well so far. This has had a
| very nice and totally unintended side effect: the kids self
| select against games that are only fun if you pay.
|
| Eg my youngest likes the clicking simulators. Many of those are
| awful "pay to win" schemes but some actually have fun game
| dynamics (not unlike the Paperclip Simulator html game that's an
| HN favorite[0]). Those are the ones he returns to.
|
| These are the games that are more creative in nature, the games
| that are more challenging and so on and so forth. I feel that at
| least 7 out of 10 times I check on them, they're doing a game
| that involves creation, economics, collaboration, and often
| multiple of those.
|
| [0] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| I'm fairly sure you're aware that more than 9 out of 10 kids
| would find Robux-free Roblox immensely more appealing than
| whatever economic simulations your preternaturally moderate
| children are taken with.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Ok I'm not sure what "preternaturally" means, but yes I agree
| that Robux are an awful scam and Roblox would be better
| without them. That said I'm also not nuts and I realize that
| Roblox would likely not exist without them.
|
| I'm advocating for picking all the VC-funded (and user-
| generated) freebies off the platform and giving nothing back.
| It's like using YouTube with an ad blocker.
|
| That said, I'm not sure I parsed your comment right, so just
| to clarify: when I say "economic" I mean stuff like "Pizza
| Tycoon" where you run a restaurant and need to buy stuff with
| fake money to get more customers etc etc. That's not Robux
| money, that's 100% in-game fake money that you earn by
| selling pizzas. Even the better clickers have this dynamic,
| where you click to get some kinds of points and then you can
| use the points to buy/build stuff that auto-generates clicks
| etc. It's not unlike the economies in Starcraft (yeah I'm
| old) and the likes.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| > I'm not sure I parsed your comment right
|
| My fault. Resummarizing, you shouldn't take your kids
| finding "Pizza Tycoon" competitive or even preferable to
| Roblox (with or without Robux power assists) as applicable
| to the general population.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Pizza Tycoon is a game in Roblox, how could my kids find
| it preferable to Roblox? Sorry, I still don't understand
| what you mean.
|
| I'm sharing something that worked for us, which seems
| relevant when the thread is full of parents complaining
| about how Roblox is full of "pay to win" scams. I did not
| run a scientific study, my sample size is 2. Why are you
| even assuming that I think my anecdote is generally
| applicable? I suggested no such thing.
| zikzak wrote:
| I could have written all of your comments in this chain
| myself and am similarly confused. Sample size +1.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| jimmyvalmer has no idea what he's talking about. Probably
| never even tried Roblox. Just ignore him.
| [deleted]
| rozab wrote:
| Roblox is not a game as such, it's a platform for user
| generated games. I'm not sure why you have such a strong
| opinion on this if you don't even know what it is
| kitd wrote:
| > _I made a hard "no Robux" rule_
|
| I had that to start with, but now he's older and using the
| platform to interact with his friends (especially during
| lockdown), we have relented and now use Robux as incentives for
| doing chores etc.
| rkalla wrote:
| Out of curiosity (I have 2 that are into it) what did they
| 'get' by you relenting and allowing them to spend Robux? Is
| it just cosmetics or are there certain
| games/modes/experiences that are only available if you pay?
| nomel wrote:
| There are per game purchases (thousands of games) and
| system wide cosmetic purchases.
| colecut wrote:
| Every Roblox game is different, the developer is free to
| monetize their world in any way they want to..
|
| It could be skins or abilities or anything else that is
| part of the world.
| dzdt wrote:
| Not the OP but my kids (8,9) spend allowance on robux.
| Mostly it lets them build a big house for their friends to
| come over (in game) and play with them. They pair Roblox
| with video chat as their online hangout.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > I feel that at least 7 out of 10 times I check on them,
| they're doing a game that involves creation, economics,
| collaboration, and often multiple of those.
|
| Could you recommend a few titles that are worth checking out?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Yeah: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401924
| chett wrote:
| I had some fun with my son (age 7) writing python to beat one
| of the "clicking" games. I wrote the code but he thought my
| clicking app was like magic.
| https://automatetheboringstuff.com/chapter18/
| kongcode wrote:
| First off, I consider myself pretty liberal in my views and open
| to online gaming in general. However, as a parent and
| grandparent, I think Roblox is HIGHLY dangerous for kids. I've
| watched my granddaughter play some games that were completely
| ripe with players looking to exploit her. Music playing with
| Rated-XXX lyrics - referring to varied sexual acts. Games based
| on pets (wolves) wanting to "ride" each other and playing what
| seemed like a pornographic soundtrack in the background. I'm
| talking about true porn, moaning, foul language, you name it.
|
| She is no longer allowed to play the game at our home. I would
| have to spend all my time policing her online play and dealing
| with her disappointment at not being able to play specific games.
|
| I don't see how parents can allow their kids to play Roblox. It
| is wide open to exploitation - there is no restriction, control
| or protection offered for children. And to top it off, 99% of
| gameplay requires purchasing virtual items.
|
| Just bleh, shock and a big nope for my family. Roblox should be
| ashamed at the platform they have created.
| juskrey wrote:
| All I can say is roblox banned in our home network: the whole
| user experience is targeted to make children judge each other
| using wrong incentives and extort money from parents.
|
| On the other hand I have no problems paying children for games
| with honorable practices of one time purchase or reasonable
| subscriptions (which usually end in a month in any case when
| children get bored)
| quornxypt wrote:
| Can you expand on how the experience is targeted to make
| children judge each other? Has this been something your kid(s)
| experienced on the platform? Just curious.
| lallysingh wrote:
| There's a fashion show game where kids judge each other's
| outfits.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| So... grade school?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Although that's actually fun and pretty harmless. Designing
| to a theme is a pretty common thing from Minecraft Build
| Battles through to Fashion Famous. The former tends to be
| worse because you get a lot of trolls building sexually
| explicit and racist stuff.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| People are missing that you need to pay money for the
| outfits in Roblox.
|
| Real outfits are already an expense to keep kids from being
| judged in school. Why add digital ones?
| juskrey wrote:
| My daughter have asked me several times if I can spend at
| least something because other children somehow see she is not
| a paying user and segregate on that basis
| mmkos wrote:
| Wow, if it's true then that's such a vile design,
| particularly for a game designed for children. However, I'm
| more inclined to believe that it's just something your
| daughter may have said to convince you to buy something.
| juskrey wrote:
| How would you expect children to spend money in game if
| not by convincing parents to buy something? Of course she
| received a series of 40 second lectures on how that works
| in life in general, and why I don't want to enclose her
| in virtual fraud simulation - she'll have much better
| ways to do that.
| mmkos wrote:
| I was unnecessarily vague. What I meant was that it could
| have been something your daughter made up, just so you'd
| buy her something.
| juskrey wrote:
| I understand what you have said here. If lies happen,
| that likely mean things are much much worse than they
| look. You don't teach children how to properly intake
| drugs, you teach them how to properly avoid toxic things
| in general.
| watwut wrote:
| More of, it depends who kids in her class etc are. If
| majority of parents in peer group don't buy, all is OK.
|
| If peer group is snoby or normalized paying, issues like
| this happen. It is very naive to think that kids don't
| bully other kids because of issues like this.
| depingus wrote:
| This is a well known occurrence on Fortnite. If you were
| online wearing a "default" you were mocked by your friends
| and sometimes targeted for griefing. And not just online,
| because kids are using the game as a virtual hangout space,
| this bullying would play out IRL too.
|
| https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-
| defa...
| ambicapter wrote:
| If I were into competitive Fortnite I would never leave
| the default skin and get extra gratification from
| stunting on "gamers" who don't know better than to pre-
| judge skills based on cosmetics...
| dudleyf wrote:
| I play Roblox with my son and his friends a lot. Some kids
| use how much Robux you have as a status thing, but I've
| been surprised how little griefing and bullying I've seen.
| I do get called "bacon hair" because my avatar has the
| default skin (which has hair that looks like strips of
| bacon).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My kids haven't asked to spend a penny, and the play I overhear
| seems to be largely collaborative - "come visit my theme park
| and see this cool rollercoaster".
| mempko wrote:
| My child is literally making a roblox game right now. I just
| showed him lua. He is 10. Roblox is a huge gateway into
| programming. He started on scratch, and now roblox. Next
| generation of programmers will have learned programming using
| roblox as kids. I'm impressed with their IDE.
| juskrey wrote:
| I love lua, but roblox ide and general way how it works have
| made an impression of gimmick only used to bait parents into
| "my kid is learning programming", when in fact the system is
| pretty dull and feels too artificial.
| samatman wrote:
| A smart ten year old can write a game and _sell it for
| money_ , that trumps your subjective aesthetic impressions.
|
| All Roblox games are made the same way. Those should be
| what sets your impression of the system, not looking at the
| screen and curling your upper lip.
| juskrey wrote:
| Sorry, I was on that other side of the game, which was
| cheating money out of me, pretending it's teaching my
| children something, while they and all their virtual
| friends were engaging in toxic gangs and "parties" built
| on parents money
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| _Humblebrag alert_ : Yes, I was blown away by what my 12yo
| was doing with Lua because of his Roblox obsession. As
| mindless and addictive as Roblox looks, there's a very
| important silver lining here.
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