Don't consider Roblox a traditional game. It's basically Gmod for kids and with official corporate support and a official way for developers to wring money out of its consumers with micro transactions.
More platform than game. It's really easy for developers to develop a game, easily implement real money transactions, and have an audience.
My 8 year old and 5 year old girls spend literally their entire allowance on Robux. They would spend literally the entire day playing if I allowed it. The developer toolset is crazy strong too, I bet they're not even 10% of the way with their market penetration.
Same here, with daughters 4 and 7! They beg me for Robux on a frequent basis and 100% of their weekly allowance goes towards it.
I have no doubt Roblux will continue to make mountains of money. The amount of people playing it is mind blowing and I’m sure there are additional ways to monetize their ecosystem.
As a side note - it’s cool to see them play so well together and I even play with them too to engage with them on something they enjoy. On the other hand, I sometimes get concerned with how much they play and how addictive the micro transactions are for kids their age. Then again, I spent most of my days growing up playing games like EverQuest, WoW, learning to program, etc. , so it’s hard for me to judge.
Remember arcade machines and scrounging up quarters?
If it's like that, IMO it's OK. If it's pseudo-gambling or dark-patterned squeezing all your money out, that's not OK. Roblox is more like the former, usually.
Oh, I remember 194x and Gauntlet being a bit abusive and pay-to-win. ;)
I disagree with you. I don't think that pay-by-usage is inherently bad, for adults or kids.
I also feel like... it's probably best if one doesn't encounter these kinds of things as an adult for the first time. What's better to learn moderation with?
My kids (11, 9, 6) have, so far, largely shrugged off microtransaction things and think they're kinda dumb... But they've spent maybe 10% of their discretionary money since birth on Pokemon cards, which scratches many of the same itches. I don't feel like A) it's bad for them, or B) that they're going to look back at the time and money spent and regret it. But they have regretted spending a little bit on Pokemon cards that they'd later rather have spent on something else, and that's a great lesson.
I mean, I'm not necessarily taking a side on GP's claim, but don't be disingenuous.
Should firearms for kids be illegal? Should driving for kids be illegal? Should gambling for kids be illegal? Should starring in porn for kids be illegal? Should data-mining the behaviour of children be illegal? Should paying children to work in mines be illegal?
Obviously the principle would be something along the lines of "games with microtransactions are potentially hazardous to the buyer in a way, or to a degree, such that while we should allow adults to make their own choices, we should protect children from the consequences of being partially-formed minds, and so we should avoid targeting children with that business model". Same as gambling, or selling your PII to get free services, or starring in porn. I'm not saying it's a slam-dunk argument, I'm saying the structure of the argument is obvious and straightforward. And I expect every adult to be at least partially sympathetic to it, even the ones who end the paragraph with "but, on the balance, freedom is more important, so it should not be illegal".
Well. I admit. I mostly agree with GP's claim. But not with high confidence.
The way micro transactions work in those games (effectively for skins, special privileges in games, etc.), I think the toy comparison isn’t terribly far off the mark. Guns, starring in porn, working in mines, etc. is extreme in comparison.
Whether it be tycoon games, social adventure games like About Me, Royal High, etc., it’s basically the new form of entertainment for kids. About the time my daughter became generally disinterested in toys was about the time she started liking Roblox.
A toy for a kid, as fleeting as they can be with new toys, is a physical object that can represent clearly some monetary value.
They know that their parents won't be buying many of them, if they have a lot they can see the toys peppered around and parents can point to those and say "no more toys, you don't play enough with all of the ones we got you already".
A skin, special privileges, etc., are quite abstract concepts for a kid to tie it to a monetary value, they buy a skin, they can use it in game and... That's it, they will want the next fix, a new skin, more privileges, it's a bottomless pit of purely virtual assets that are easy to detach from money.
That's my take at least, from being a kid in the 90s and comparing my experience when I got real toys vs when I got digital toys (MMO subscriptions like Ultima Online, for example). I can't imagine how much harder for my parents it'd have been if instead of a subscription I was asking for them to pay or give me enough allowance to buy every item I wanted in a game. It'd be hell.
True, but in a lot of ways their vbucks/robux/etc. thing is equivalent of anything else that is paid for that has no physical or value going forward. Do I really need to do anything ppv or movies on demand? It's fleeting enjoyment much like those are.
And in the case of Fortnite and Roblox, the games are free so it does make sense to pay at least some into it (there's no such thing as a free lunch) and thankfully none of the things you pay for give the player an advantage so it is mostly what elicits an "I want my avatar to look like this" reaction. Plus, it teaches limits and in the case of my daughter, she weighs what she really wants in the game vs just seeing something shiny. In Adopt Me, that is mostly ride/fly potions for pets she has raised and turned to neon via raising 4 and merging.
I do, however, think there should be limits on it. But I think lessons can be learned from the experience all the same.
Aren't the micro-transactions a bit beside the point? Those seem more harmful to parents' wallets. Surely it's the addictive nature of the games that is more harmful to kids?
If the principle is that anything hazardous for kids should be banned, it makes sense, at least in theory. In practice I think it might change a lot of what is currently considered "part of childhood", though.
My 9 year old brother plays Roblox and discusses the trade values of pets in the games Bubblegum Simulator and Adopt Me on Fandom all the time, but doesn't spend actual money on any microtransactions in the game. Still, I'm surprised to see that there are people that will charge and pay huge amounts of money for rare digital pets in the game.
I see this sentiment often from parents. It baffles me.
If you made decisions in your youth that you think were mistakes, you should be passing on the lessons of those mistakes. Not stepping back in non-judgment because "who am I to say". You are their parent!
Yeah, sorry for the confusion - that sentence likely could have been more complete. As others mentioned, I feel as though I turned out fine and I regret next to none of that time spent.
One thing parents discover is that if it's between dopamine and "lessons", dopamine wins 100% of the time. My 16 year old right now is playing games instead of doing his homework. He's going to have 2 "F"s this semester, just like the last, and one before that, and one before that. Doesn't give a shit - never experienced any hardship (yet).
Oh no, I'm not "waiting". I'm trying to convince him that he's making bad choices, that he's making his own life dramatically harder in the long run, and so on, trying to get him to actually think what he wants to be when he grows up and create a plan of some sort for how to get there, maybe. He even nods in agreement. The moment I turn around he fires up a game or YouTube and he's right back to his dopamine cycle. So I'm afraid the school of hard knocks it'll have to be.
There's this misconception among non-parents (or even parents of well behaved kids) that kids are robots and they will automatically listen to whatever "lessons" you give them. That may or may not happen, depending on the kid, and you really have little to no control over whether it does happen.
And gaming, social media, etc, companies aren't making any of this any easier, unfortunately. This is something we'll have to pay a heavy price for in 10 years or so, that much is pretty certain.
I'll play devil's advocate here: is he making a bad choice because of simple dopamine addiction or does he actually not want to go down the path that you want him to?
My 17 year-old cousin is flunking school because (in his parents' eyes) he was "addicted" to online gaming, yet strangely when with other family members his "addiction" symptoms would disappear and he would be helpful, diligent and talkative.
He'd even listen to advice and help out unprompted. As in, you literally take a phone call and come back and he's doing the dishes. Not playing Fortnite, not watching YouTube, scrubbing plates.
The reality of the situation, that's painfully obvious to everyone except his mum and dad, is that a) there is some sort of breakdown in the relationship that has nothing to do with online technology (he has his iPhone on him 24/7 and will go hours without using it outside the home) and b) he fully understands that dedicating himself to his studies will help him follow the path his parents want for him - it's just not what he wants.
Drug addicts disengage from society well before they become addicted. I don't see any reason why "Dopamine addicts" are any different.
I'd be happy to support whatever "path" he wants at this point, though it'd of course be much easier for me to support something related to STEM. Best I can tell, he doesn't have any plan or path. He just expects to ride on my coattails for the rest of his life, which I articulated to him many time is not something I'm willing to allow.
In contrast, growing up in rural Russia I had no coattails to ride on (and my father told me this countless times), so I'm a rather extreme example of social upward mobility.
My kids almost never do what I tell them unless they can see the point in it themselves.
To me, it sounds like the school is either bad or the match with where your son is right now is wrong.
I've always been curious, also as a kid, but I do remember most of the class mates spending most of their time staring blankly out in the void. The only reasonable conclusion is that those lessons were wrong.
Just like if you design a UI and 70% of your users can't use it. Then we blame the designer, not the laziness of the users.
As an adult, I've since learned that large parts of the establishment doesn't regard people as humans. They don't care.
I'm a middle school teacher. I try to create engaging, interesting lessons for a clear path for why things are worthwhile. I also only teach what many students consider "fun stuff": robotics, "How to Make Almost Anything," etc. My programs and classes have done pretty well in the past on metrics of engagement, learning, student satisfaction, etc-- partially because of the cheat code of having material that's pretty intrinsically interesting.
There is still a pretty big subset of students that without the threat of enforcement or bad grades leading to parental action, will do almost nothing. It's especially visible now with some of my students being remote-- it's a constant battle to avoid previously engaged, excited, and interested students from just popping a Fortnite window open and escaping the class discussion.
I can make 75% of my class time fun; I can make it pretty obvious why the skills we practice are extremely valuable stuff in both the near term and the long term whether or not they decide to be an engineer one day. But I can't make every minute of class time more immediately rewarding than playing Fortnite.
Case in point: one of my son's classes is video game design. That's one of those "F"s he's going to get. I've looked at it as I was helping him, the class is actually surprisingly good. If this is not sufficiently engaging, nothing will ever be.
And as far as parental action, parents can't really do shit nowadays. Nearly 100% of homework is done on a computer, which of course also runs games and YouTube, and provides endless opportunities for distraction.
re: nothing to be done: There's always spyware/locking down devices/etc. You -can- do stuff, but you need to really think about whether it's worth it.
I hear you saying the class is surprisingly good. Just for anyone else, though: keep an open mind and open ears about these kinds of classes. There is a whole lot of "fun STEM" out there that is really... not. Nothing is more soul-crushing than something that's supposed to be fun being mindless small steps way below one's ability.
I do my very best to -not- have my classes be in that category, most of the time.
Spyware or locking down doesn't really work in this day and age if the kid is using a Windows PC. In most (if not all) Windows PCs you have local access to you can create an administrative account not subject to parental controls or anything else. No admin access is required to create it. This is trivially discoverable through Google.
And I think the class I mentioned is genuinely good, actually. It's how I'd teach the subject - builds up from simple to complex, using an industry-leading game engine (Unity), interesting assignments, etc. Of course kids nowadays want to build an AAA 3D game right off the bat, but there's value in understanding that this doesn't work, and you have to start simple.
If your kid bypasses controls, though, that's something else you can address. Surely you have some levers you can pull.
My eldest is currently locked down on devices because he googled a couple of answers to the online advanced math class he was taking. (It was stupid; he had honestly completed much harder problems but for some reason decided to cheat on a couple of easy ones).
He's not going to bypass controls because A) he knows he will get access back (carrot), and B) he knows that if he further abuses trust that things can get much worse (stick)... and of course C) he knows that we will know if controls are bypassed.
Surely you have some degree of stuff you do for him that is in excess of what is legally required of being his guardian.
I'm not parent of a teen, yet, and I know things are difficult to implement (it caused enough angst to restrict and lock down my 11 year old -- it certainly wasn't the most painless option in the near term).
But you don't want to keep heading towards an inevitable cliff... fight the good fight. I wish you the best, and I'm sorry if this is tonedeaf and naive.
> The only reasonable conclusion is that those lessons were wrong
There's another reasonable conclusion: some kids just don't give a shit no matter what you do. That much is plainly obvious to any parent who has such a kid.
It is interesting to me that this is a commercial entity. It looks to me more like it should have been an open source platform. It kinda has that vibe to it.
Yes, multiplayer is a good point. Roblox is an easy way to make games that are
1) Multiplayer (skipping all netcode, account systems, and so forth)
2) Have a secured, safe, and trusted way to make transactions
If you were to try and make a multiplayer, microtransaction based game in Unity, that is a large amount of work, especially for a younger developer, and it's _critical_. Messing up payment code has huge consequences.
How do they get away with being essentially a platform itself for multiple games and not run afoul of the same restrictions that prevent cloud gaming platforms being sold in the App Store?
That's a very good question. Also it seems that Roblox games are scripted in Lua. How do they get away with running downloaded user scripts inside their app?
The App Store review guidelines prohibit this very clearly:
> Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not [...] download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app [...]
There is only one narrow exception which clearly does not apply to Roblox for several reasons; for example it's only for HTML5 content.
Tim Cook just testified to Congress that all developers are treated equally, but this seems like a clear case where an app that is "too big to fail" gets special treatment.
because most companies do not recognize roblox as a platform, they recognize it as a game. nobody realizes that the development of games on it is on a similar level to web development, it's like explaining social media to congressmen.
it's not them getting special treatment purposefully. it's been on the iOS app store since 2012.
apple's policy here is a bad one. if it were fully remove, true web browser diversity could come to iOS, and roblox could finally do JIT compilation of Lua, among so many other possibilities.
> it's not them getting special treatment purposefully. it's been on the iOS app store since 2012.
So they're grandfathered in? I wonder how much of their valuation can be attributed to the fact that it's essentially impossible for anyone to make a competitor available on iOS?
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This seems like a reasonable question, and yeah Apple definitely breaks their App Store rules when needed if it will make them more money.
And I for one think it is very good that Apple does not require them to break Roblox up into multiple games. It is nice having one game that I generally know what its content is like and mechanics are versus the crap that my kids want to download from the App Store.
It's Roblox for the next generation, and extremely fun even to me when I tried it out as an adult. I hope Roblox expands into VR or recroom will eat their lunch. VR is the future and people spend HOURS in there playing all sorts of official games and community made games.
VR probably has a higher per capita usage among kids than 30 year olds to be fair. My first graphics card was bequeathed to me at the tender age of 11 back when GPUs were a niche thing
You can play recroom with an Oculus Quest, PSVR, or regular screen if you want. The Quest 2 base model costs $300 and is entirely standalone, no PC required.
I have a Valve Index ($1,000 + gaming PC + installing 2 lighthouses on my walls), and while my experience is definitely better (other than the cord), the Quest provides a comparable experience for beat saber, rec room, pistol whip, which comprise 90% of what I use my Index for anyway.
Yep. The time is upon us. My friends who aren't even big into games are getting quests because of super hot and beat saber. And Christmas is coming around soon.
If VR fails at this point I would be surprised. If Facebook got some competition it would be good for long term VR development. But there's already a good amount of VR hype and great games and it won't be going away anytime soon.
Quest 2 is $299, that's a barrier but not insane. Also, Rec Room is not VR only, there are clients for iOS, PC and PS4 that run in a mode with no VR (obviously VR isn't even an option for iOS). That's not as much platform coverage as Roblox, but it's not bad. Definitely worth checking out even if you don't have VR.
The only thing VR is going to eat in the next 5-10 years is (more) dirt. It’s still niche and I have yet to see any application to make it not niche. Including that.
VR is going to be as big as smart phones. It'll kill Hollywood, create new forms of entertainment, and entirely new economies will arise along the (Twitch, Patreon, OnlyFans)-axes.
Why do you think Zuckerberg cares so much? It might be the smartest bet he's made since Instagram.
It has the potential, but it is still so hampered by the physical constraints. You look like an idiot, you're not very comfortable, performance is meh, battery life is horrible and you need ample space to play in.
Even if all of this was fixed tomorrow, many people have been burnt by previous generations, and don't have much hype left for VR. I've mothballed my Go, my friends sold their Rifts. Fun as a gimmick but as a main gaming/media platform unthinkable.
While I agree that it's probably inevitable that it will become a staple device like a smartphone is today, I wouldn't hold my breath.
I get that Roblox is a platform and not just another game on the App Store. It appears to be popular and addicting to children, but most children don't have money. Is all of their revenue coming strictly from children's allowances or is this something that has potential to appeal to older people?
ha, you don't sound like you have kids. My kids love Roblox... You're birthday is coming up, what do you want? Roblox gift card. Grandma wants to get you a birthday, xmas, ____ gift, what do you want? Get me a roblox gift card or robucks as they are called. My kids now design shrits and sell them online and take the money and spend it on roblocks. Roblocks is also a way for kids to connect online. For example, mine talk to their cousins that live in another state and their friends from a neighborhood we moved away from.
More platform than game. It's really easy for developers to develop a game, easily implement real money transactions, and have an audience.