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The Roblox Microverse

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Re: The Roblox Microverse

#121

Post by vidarh »

an_opabinia wrote: post #10

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 tha…

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#122

Post by antiterra »

mwcampbell wrote: post #51
an_opabinia wrote: post #10

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 tha…

> 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.

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#124

Post by antiterra »

an_opabinia wrote: post #72
mwcampbell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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, a…

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#125

Post by damontal »

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#126

Post by jimmyvalmer »

antiterra wrote: post #120
jimmyvalmer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

> 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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#127

Post by emmelaich »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #95

> 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.

You can add MUDs and MOOs to that list.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#128

Post by fumar »

mwcampbell wrote: post #39
matthoiland wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: The Roblox Microverse

#130

Post by karpour »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #95

> 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.

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!
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