5 ms·

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

by cr125rider 2y ago

jncfhnb 2y ago
This game certainly doesn’t feel exploitative
- teddyh 2y ago
  The one being exploited is the developer. From the article: > I spent $100 on advertising after publishing the game More information: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ>
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Shrug. The developer seems to be enjoying their experience and is not profit motivated (at least as far as the article indicated).
    - teddyh 2y ago
      In this case, the developer is an adult seasoned game developer. But if you know Roblox, you know how this is not the case for most developers on that platform.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        Ok? It’s still irrelevant
        teddyh 2y ago
        I’d argue that this developer is still being exploited.
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        How
        hipadev23 2y ago
        Exploited how? He made a game for free, it’s hosted globally for free, and he decided to pay for ads to advertise his game. How in the world is that exploitation of a child or an adult?
        teddyh 2y ago
        As I understand it, the platform is closed; i.e. you can’t get the word out any other way than buying the platform’s own advertisements. And even I am wrong, and you can, the overwhelming majority of people don’t look at anything else than the platform’s own ads for choosing what game – I’m sorry, “experience” – to play. The platform does not make it easy to see good games, only the top played games and advertised games. The platform lures developers in with the promise of a large audience and a chance to get huge amounts of money if their game becomes popular. But the only games becoming popular are those for which developers pay the most for ads. Therefore, it’s exploiting developers’ drive to make good games popular, by requiring them to pay for expensive ads. Bonus: Now, since most of the developers on Roblox are kids, replace the word “developer” in the previous paragraph with “kid”. Does it seem exploitative yet?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
waltbosz 2y ago
This is my take as a parent who was very hesitant to let my kids play roblox for this same fear. The exploitiveness of an individual Roblox game really depends on that game's developer. They get to decide how to extract money from their players. I've seen a lot of different sales techniques used. Most common are pay to get an overpowered weapon or ability or to skip levels. The ones that annoy me the most are the artificial scarcity/limited time only sales techniques. "Adopt Me" is one of the most popular games. Their main product is digital pets that cost about 12USD, or upgrades for your pets. They have rotation of pets that are only available for a limited time. My kids are really suspectable to that technique. There are also some games that are obnoxiously full of unavoidable little floor buttons that when stepped on will trigger the confirm purchase dialog. The dialog is easy for kids to learn to just-cancel, but the developers who use this technique seem to have real contempt for their players. That said, there are tons of fun games that you can play without spending any money or being exposed to obtrusive ads. My favorite game is called Secret Staycation. It's really well made, and there are zero in game purchases. I only saw one ad in the whole game and it was for a physical plush toy of one of the game characters. Also, shame on Mark Rober for his buggy abomination of a Roblox game. That felt gross and exploitive.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I have a really hard time convincing my child that paying for 10M experience wouldn’t immediately end up with him doing exactly the same thing he was already doing. I’m really tempted to show him by purchasing it once, but I very much doubt it would help, and just exacerbates the problem. I do enjoy a bunch of roblox games though, even the ones designed to extract money. You don’t stick with them very long, but kicking soccer balls off the moon all the way to earth is fun.
- devjab 2y ago
  What convinced you to let them play? I’m genuinely curious as I’ll never allow any my kids to play these sort of exploitive games (or in this case platforms since not every Roblox game is exploiting). I’m not preaching by the way. Exposure may be a better strategy to teach about the dangers of these digital garbage cans. I just don’t want my kids to grow up having even experienced any of these things that I consider terrible consumption patterns. Similarly they don’t get on YouTube or any form of SoMe until they are at least 13. I am a little undecided when it comes to actually creating something… I’m not sure how I would handle it if my daughter wanted to make a YouTube channel about her gardening as an example. Or in the case of Roblox create a game.
password4321 2y ago
I didn't find much good about Roblox in the past few years here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=roblox%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=roblox%20comments%3E10&sort=by... -- 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 "Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is 'a gift'" >Arguing that it's a "gift" when they're taking a 75% cut is just offensive. 2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36812765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36812765 "Data breach exposes personal information of 4k Roblox developers" >who was hiding the incident for 2 years? 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 "Problems at Roblox" >It is as dangerous as any dark corner of the Internet, except that it appears child-friendly to parents. 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 "Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers" >to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux [...] That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it -- Personally I recommend disabling chat and creating on some other platform (I'm going to try Godot first). FWIW Roblox open-sourced their "Luau" scripting language and there is even VS Code support. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962711
- cylemons 2y ago
  Today I learned you can filter by amount of comments when searning hn.
pandemic_region 2y ago
Came here to make this remark. As a society we've really evolved in hooking our kids onto things that they cannot resist as early as possible in their life, building a future customer base i guess?

Is Roblox anything other than exploiting kids?

jncfhnb 2y ago

This game certainly doesn’t feel exploitative

teddyh 2y ago
The one being exploited is the developer. From the article: > I spent $100 on advertising after publishing the game More information: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ>
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Shrug. The developer seems to be enjoying their experience and is not profit motivated (at least as far as the article indicated).
  - teddyh 2y ago
    In this case, the developer is an adult seasoned game developer. But if you know Roblox, you know how this is not the case for most developers on that platform.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Ok? It’s still irrelevant
      - teddyh 2y ago
        I’d argue that this developer is still being exploited.
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        How
        hipadev23 2y ago
        Exploited how? He made a game for free, it’s hosted globally for free, and he decided to pay for ads to advertise his game. How in the world is that exploitation of a child or an adult?
        teddyh 2y ago
        As I understand it, the platform is closed; i.e. you can’t get the word out any other way than buying the platform’s own advertisements. And even I am wrong, and you can, the overwhelming majority of people don’t look at anything else than the platform’s own ads for choosing what game – I’m sorry, “experience” – to play. The platform does not make it easy to see good games, only the top played games and advertised games. The platform lures developers in with the promise of a large audience and a chance to get huge amounts of money if their game becomes popular. But the only games becoming popular are those for which developers pay the most for ads. Therefore, it’s exploiting developers’ drive to make good games popular, by requiring them to pay for expensive ads. Bonus: Now, since most of the developers on Roblox are kids, replace the word “developer” in the previous paragraph with “kid”. Does it seem exploitative yet?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

waltbosz 2y ago

This is my take as a parent who was very hesitant to let my kids play roblox for this same fear. The exploitiveness of an individual Roblox game really depends on that game's developer. They get to decide how to extract money from their players. I've seen a lot of different sales techniques used. Most common are pay to get an overpowered weapon or ability or to skip levels. The ones that annoy me the most are the artificial scarcity/limited time only sales techniques. "Adopt Me" is one of the most popular games. Their main product is digital pets that cost about 12USD, or upgrades for your pets. They have rotation of pets that are only available for a limited time. My kids are really suspectable to that technique. There are also some games that are obnoxiously full of unavoidable little floor buttons that when stepped on will trigger the confirm purchase dialog. The dialog is easy for kids to learn to just-cancel, but the developers who use this technique seem to have real contempt for their players. That said, there are tons of fun games that you can play without spending any money or being exposed to obtrusive ads. My favorite game is called Secret Staycation. It's really well made, and there are zero in game purchases. I only saw one ad in the whole game and it was for a physical plush toy of one of the game characters. Also, shame on Mark Rober for his buggy abomination of a Roblox game. That felt gross and exploitive.

Aeolun 2y ago
I have a really hard time convincing my child that paying for 10M experience wouldn’t immediately end up with him doing exactly the same thing he was already doing. I’m really tempted to show him by purchasing it once, but I very much doubt it would help, and just exacerbates the problem. I do enjoy a bunch of roblox games though, even the ones designed to extract money. You don’t stick with them very long, but kicking soccer balls off the moon all the way to earth is fun.
devjab 2y ago
What convinced you to let them play? I’m genuinely curious as I’ll never allow any my kids to play these sort of exploitive games (or in this case platforms since not every Roblox game is exploiting). I’m not preaching by the way. Exposure may be a better strategy to teach about the dangers of these digital garbage cans. I just don’t want my kids to grow up having even experienced any of these things that I consider terrible consumption patterns. Similarly they don’t get on YouTube or any form of SoMe until they are at least 13. I am a little undecided when it comes to actually creating something… I’m not sure how I would handle it if my daughter wanted to make a YouTube channel about her gardening as an example. Or in the case of Roblox create a game.

password4321 2y ago

I didn't find much good about Roblox in the past few years here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=roblox%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=roblox%20comments%3E10&sort=by... -- 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934101 "Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is 'a gift'" >Arguing that it's a "gift" when they're taking a 75% cut is just offensive. 2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36812765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36812765 "Data breach exposes personal information of 4k Roblox developers" >who was hiding the incident for 2 years? 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754 "Problems at Roblox" >It is as dangerous as any dark corner of the Internet, except that it appears child-friendly to parents. 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034 "Roblox faces criticism for 'exploiting' young game developers" >to withdraw it, they need to have raked in roughly $1,000 worth of Robux [...] That $1,000 worth of Robux becomes $350 when you go to extract it -- Personally I recommend disabling chat and creating on some other platform (I'm going to try Godot first). FWIW Roblox open-sourced their "Luau" scripting language and there is even VS Code support. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962711

cylemons 2y ago
Today I learned you can filter by amount of comments when searning hn.

pandemic_region 2y ago

Came here to make this remark. As a society we've really evolved in hooking our kids onto things that they cannot resist as early as possible in their life, building a future customer base i guess?