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The Roblox Microverse

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101–110 of 210 posts

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#101
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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).

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#102

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?

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

jimmyvalmer has no idea what he’s talking about. Probably never even tried Roblox. Just ignore him.

[deleted]

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#104

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…

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...

Zynga was pretty bad company.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#105
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!

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#106
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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#107
post #85

I wanna play Roblox on Debian Linux and distros based on Debian. Why can't I? it supposedly works on ChromeOS

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#108
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#109

> 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.

Roblox got mass adoption by integrating with educational platforms. Massive quantitative change is often qualitative enough to be transformational.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#110

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 otherw…

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.

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!
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