[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-09 23:01 UTC)