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Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
261–270 of 399 posts
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree regarding in-game currency. I find it distasteful. But in my mind, paid mods are a different thing that can exist independently. I don't find those distasteful. I find their existence slightly positive.
If it's made by randoms, then Microsoft is barely better than a rent-seeking middleman. If it's made by Microsoft, they should just put it in the f-ing game or move on to making something new to get more money.
Neither of those really sound like a problem with Minecraft for my purposes.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is the Roblox games have exclusive timed events that give the children FOMO. So much that they have breakdowns and refuse to do their normally scheduled activities. And it changes their behavior.
That sounds like me when my parents made me go to bed instead of watching "The A-Team" or "Knight Rider". Broadcast TV (UHF/VHF) was exclusive timed events which gave everyone FOMO, at least until the VCR became commonplace and affordable. That gave you the ability to time-shift, as long as you could figure out how to set your VCR clock.
Same for me with religious education class and Saturday morning cartoons.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crony capitalism was brought to you literally by companies and millionaires scared of regulation and heavily pushing for deregulation. They supported Trump and republicans by large margin, especially financially.
If you think only one of the two parties of capital are to blame for this timeline, I have a bridge to sell you. Democrats manufactured consent for Trump's rise in a 1000 ways over decades. Neoliberalism delivered us Trump, who is merely a symptom of this broken system. Dems/Repubs play good cop/bad cop; always in service to capital interests. We have a uniparty, but people are fooled by reasonable election turnout a…
Yeah, you know what, the culpability of republicans is so much higher at this point, that yeah, they are the primary responsible for current state.
This both sides game is just how they were enabled again and again by people who like to frame themselves as reasonable above the politics center, but are in fact just their supporters.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I play Roblox with my daughter from time to time and we have lots of fun. I’ve explained the dangers to her (strangers messaging, gambling style games, etc), and I see it as an opportunity to teach her while she still listens to me. When she’s older and I’m not privy to everything she does on a computer I don’t want her stumbling across these things uninformed. A portion of her pocket money goes to Robux, which she s…
I've had a similar approach. My kids computers are setup next to mine and I keep an eye on what they're playing. I've instigated a purchase wait period of at least 3 days. Very often they themselves realize that the thing that they wanted to spend their pocket money on was a brief desire. I was super proud when I heard my son say "meh, this is pay to win" as quitting a random roblox game he was trying out.
> My kids computers are setup next to mine and I keep an eye on what they're playing.
laptops and phones mage that a lot harder.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I let my kid play Roblox for a couple of weeks and I was absolutely horrified by all the inducements to seek Robux. So I removed it from her iPad, which is locked down. She gets along just fine without Roblox.
I play Roblox with my daughter from time to time and we have lots of fun. I’ve explained the dangers to her (strangers messaging, gambling style games, etc), and I see it as an opportunity to teach her while she still listens to me. When she’s older and I’m not privy to everything she does on a computer I don’t want her stumbling across these things uninformed. A portion of her pocket money goes to Robux, which she s…
To summarize a bit glibly, you're saying to be a good parent. Which of course is awesome, and it is important for people like yourself to explain how to do that using the available tools, etc.
I think the concern many people have is that not everyone, maybe even not most, are good parents. They are themselves addicted to their screens, sports betting, credit cards, etc etc.
How much of a "nanny state" we create is a fair question. Of course due to economic incentives the companies will generally tend to outsource the problem as "be better parents", and indeed the problems of digital society are not these games' fault or burden alone. But to me it seems we have to break the cycle somewhere, and regulating these apps more is a perfectly sensible starting point. We should have freedom, yes, but also need to make systems that match reality on the ground and don't fail under the lowest common denominator situation.
Edit: not to assume you were implying otherwise. Just that we should avoid the "well it's not a problem for me, just do " error.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#267This is a sympton of something worse. The bigger issue: Roblox isn’t the real problem, it’s filling the gap left by the disappearance of unstructured, unsupervised play in the physical world.
Kids used to build worlds, take risks, and form friendships outdoors. Now many have no safe places to roam, no peers outside scheduled activities, and no cultural permission to be on their own. So they do all that in Roblox instead.
You can tighten access control, but it won’t change the core dynamic: when real childhood spaces shrink, digital platforms become the default playground. Until kids have room to be independent offline, they’ll keep escaping online.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We played tag at building sites, jumping gaps meter wide and five deep, made explosives out of match sticks As someone who thinks kids should have freedom, like kids in Germany or Japan have, I hate it when ridiculous arguments like these show up. Look, if you was regularly doing all that, you probably should not have all that freedom. But, most kids are actually more reasonable, if raised right.
What problem with me as I am now would you solve if you had any power to prevent me from being a kid and doing pretty common things kids were doing then ? See, neither me nor any of my friends became terrorist bombers, heck, there is not even a single stuntman around us! On the contrary, that unimaginably dangerous activity in our childhood raised responsibility in us better than any supervision. We knew what we did.…
> On the contrary, that unimaginably dangerous activity in our childhood raised responsibility in us better than any supervision.
I have no reason to believe that. The issue with 2 out of 3 activities you listed is also the danger or damage to OTHERS and their property. Which you do not even noticed, clocked or cared about. The only thing you care about is you feeling some pain, presumably.
Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am probably not the right generation but all attempts to engage with Minecraft with my children have always ended badly. It seems very tedious and clunky. The learning curve seems steeper than playing factorio casually.
Yeah, I tried playing it with my son, but I've never quite understood what you're supposed to do . I grew up on RPGs and adventure games where you usually had an objective out there in the world. In comparison, Minecraft is extremely solipsistic; there are no structures in the world to meaningfully interact with, and it seems one is supposed to simply treat the world as a sort of Lego set.
You're supposed to build a place to live and sleep, and then you find some magma and water and create a portal to a less friendly place. Eventually you find the bad dragon and murder it.