I banned my kid from Roblox.... what next?

As we all know, Roblox is garbage tier gameplay structured around psychological cues to get children to fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money.

So I banned my kid from it. He used it a little bit socially with a few friends of his. What online or local multiplayer games should I help him to replace it with? (He’s 10, so please don’t recommend Diablo 4 or anything else that has quite that much gore)

He and his friends have an Xbox Series X|S at home.

Edit: keep your judgemental shit out of here. His whole social group (5 kids he knows from school) got banned on the same day. Me and the other parents are trying to be nice and replace it with better quality games so it isn’t just a punishment.

Edit2: Thanks guys. I got him Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge

LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA,

The Finals is fun and free. Apex Legends is cool too. A lot of shooting but no gore at all.

BingoBangoBongo,

The finals is also only voice chat and its opt in from the get go, so really good for avoiding toxic behavior from randos

pineapplelover,

All I’ve played is csgo growing up. Cool game

JamesConeZone,
@JamesConeZone@hexbear.net avatar

I banned my kid from Roblox… what next?

I would just talk to your kid and listen to his feelings and wants. What does he enjoy about Roblox? Can he find that enjoyment with some other games? Does he understand that its not a punishment, e.g. it’s not anything that he did and that you aren’t blaming him? Sure, you can suggest a few alternatives and they might take and be fun, but you’ll need to be attuned to his feelings around what he might see as a punishment for something that he did so that he doesn’t internalize it and hurt the relationship you have with him.

axont,

yeah this should be the immediate next step. The kid shouldn’t feel punished. It shouldn’t be a “you’re not allowed because I said so.” Kids can be smart and might be able to understand why Roblox is exploitative.

At least this is a better reason to take a way a kid’s video game. My parents banned me from certain games/movies because they had positive depictions of black people.

MrFunnyMoustache,

My parents banned me from certain games/movies because they had positive depictions of black people.

Holy crap, that’s nuts. Are they KKK or something?

axont,

no, just very idiosyncratic white American racists. I don’t even know where they got it from. My grandparents weren’t racists and my parents never listened to Rush Limbaugh or anything.

MrFunnyMoustache,

Maybe they got it from fox news?

axont,

Nah, they don’t watch that either. They’re very detached and only watch football or movies with Humphrey Bogart. My best guess is they felt some kind of resentment their whole lives because they were always the poorest ones out of their siblings. All my aunts and uncles formed businesses or got moderately wealthy, whereas I grew up on the lower middle side of that spectrum. And that turned into standard American racism.

CharadeYouAreNot,

Watch professional sports where over half of the participants are not white. LMAO

axont,

Yeah and you wouldn’t believe how many slurs they scream during an average game

beto,
@beto@lemmy.studio avatar

This is amazing advice! Saving it for when I have a kid.

FIST_FILLET,

minecraft, rocket league

helpmyusernamewontfi,

yeah just make sure text chat is disabled in rocket league

(speaking from experience)

FIST_FILLET,

there’s something about those 1v1s that makes people go absolutely nuclear :’)

clearleaf,

Bible Adventures for NES

Perhapsjustsniffit,

Games my kids enjoy without paying one cent…

All the games they play

We spend zero dollars on video games and yet our kids seem to play a lot of them, my wife and I don’t really play. They even had a friend give them an Xbox and there are computers and tablets and phones in our house. Games don’t have to be a money pit.

jdf038,

Games my kids and I enjoy on Steam:

(Not Xbox sorry)

  • Alba (such a cute story)
  • FPS Chess
  • Dinkum
  • Webbd
  • Tinykin
  • Spiritfarer
  • Wobbly Life
  • LEGO adaptations of series
  • Among Us (canned chat only)
cuchilloc,

Spiderheck, should be cheap!

GrayBackgroundMusic,

fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money.

Honest question, if the money is the issue, then why not let him play the free stuff and not spend money on it?

WetBeardHairs,

I’m crumudgeony enough to remember when buying a game was buying a game. I disliked it when mobile games slowly changed into monitization via microtransactions. Heck, I remember buying games for full price and then they got changed to ftp overnight with mtx. That kind of stuff drove me nuts and I am firmly anti-mtx. That said, I let my kid earn money he can use on mtx for cosmetics and stuff on Fortnite. But it is a dedicated pool of money for mtx, his actual money kept separate so he can buy ice cream or save for bigger purchases without worry. Roblox on the other hand, is a company that exploits children for their labor to create the games and it hires psychologists to ensure kids dump as much money into it as possible all while having no moderation. Roblox is awful. Microtransactions in children’s games are harmful and exploitive. I’m letting my kid get a drip feed so he can get the little benefit from having non-stock costumes in fortnite while also having the learning experience that in games with mtx, you can never have enough - without him becoming a whale.

rubikcuber, (edited )
@rubikcuber@feddit.uk avatar

I’ve recently banned my kid from playing it too. I had only just unlocked it for the first time. I had previously blocked it because it was, IMHO, terrible. As a professional gamedev I find it offensively bad. But I relented, because lots of his friends were playing it. However, and this may be the experiences he was playing, it seems to be almost exclusively training kids up for gambling. Pretty much everything is dopamine based rewards. It’s like a casino. It’s worst than I ever imagined. I’m this close to banning online play in Minecraft because he is similarly gravitating to the same sort of experiences. In our case it’s not about money, he hasn’t spent a cent on these things. But the content is very problematic, I have concerns that it is encouraging developing minds that gambling is the norm.

WetBeardHairs,

I’m not a gamedev, but I do software development and you really echo my distaste for roblox very succinctly.

BleatingZombie,

It’s also just an extremely dangerous platform. They have a stock market, game mode development with children employing children (clearly neither one understands employment laws), and unsurprisingly a ton of pedophiles

unreasonabro,

why let your child play shit games

why not teach your child what good gaming can be

why just not care what your child spends his time doing

good grief

toastal, (edited )

Don’t do Minecraft when Minetest is open source. It’s not meant to be installed as vanilla per se tho as mods are for building gameplay and vanilla is just a sandbox/canvas to build Minecraft-like or addjacent games. Especially if you can get him on PC, I could be a hopskip away from creating his own open mods (as opposed to the content farm of underpaid “devs” for Roblox which have wild stories if you look it up).

Veloran is also a good alternative for free software with an adventure MMO aspect that might appeal to the guy.

Being projects without a profit motive & a strong community where the players are the developers is a safer route where you would never expect loot boxes, microtransacitions, dark/addictive patterns because those aren’t fun & money isn’t an incentive. With the source available your son is more than welcome to read it to figure out how games work, contribute ideas/code, & learn to make mods which are all great, real-life skills learned while accidentally gaming & trying to make the game better for yourself & friends—and if he’s not a future coder, there are assets & stories to build, or just playtesting a friend’s mod.

haui_lemmy,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

Sound idea. Additionally, it’s now possible to stream games to the tv quite easily. So pc is really the better alternative to get away from psychological abuse through console and game manufacturers.

Also, Minecraft on console is no better than roblox imo. It is a microtransaction pile of sh*t. You could argue that minecraft java works but I get the strong feeling that it wont stay like this forever since bedrock makes more money and allows for stronger manipulation through nonexistent mod support and everything is monetized there.

toastal,

If it’s set up correctly. The biggest selling point of a console is that it boots you to “play game” mode as the default & games have better expectations since the hardware is standardized. That said, in the case of Steam, there’s nothing to say you can’t install Linux & have it boot directly into Big Picture mode (but you’ll still need to remember to get software updates for the OS as they aren’t integrated like a console).

haui_lemmy,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

Two things I see differently:

  • the hardware of a pc is standardized as well and the performance of a console is not better afaik
  • there is something called unattended upgrades for linux which takes that away as well. You also don’t ever need the newest version of linux
modcolocko,

Minetest simply doesn’t have the content catalog of Minecraft, for a game that the appeal is the fact you can pretty much never get bored of it, that’s a massive drawback.

toastal,

Build it m8

WetBeardHairs,

We’re already firmly invested in minecraft. I have the java edition on my computers - and he has bedrock on the xbox. It sucks that they arent compatible, but he’s too young for a pc.

arlaerion,

Too young for a PC? My daughter got my old components with 8 years. Now with 10 years, playing Veloren, Minetest, Terraria and LotRO with me at her side on it…

toastal,

That’s adorable

riseuppikmin,
@riseuppikmin@hexbear.net avatar

If you/the kids are playing vanilla look into Geyser as it allows Bedrock and Java players to play on the same server.

WetBeardHairs,

I had no idea that was possible. I’m looking into it now. Is it any good?

riseuppikmin,
@riseuppikmin@hexbear.net avatar

I haven’t used it since the 1.16.5 days but it worked perfectly fine for vanilla back then and I’m sure it probably does now too.

If you have more questions after you read a bit more about it feel free to drop them here.

dominiquec,
@dominiquec@lemmy.world avatar

Minecraft has been suggested here but there’s also Minete St, free/open source version. The experience isn’t exactly the same but the basics are there. Works with PC and Android. You can also run one of the computers as a host and you can do multiplayer. Absolutely no microtransactions.

ZugZug,

Reddit.

b0gl,

Just let them play minecraft instead. Minecraft dungeons could be good but it’s only 4 people at the same time tho.

Gabu, (edited )

Minecraft / Terraria, 100%. Both games have available co-op, so they can play with their friends, and allow quite a bit of creative expression. Terraria is made by some of the best indie devs ever, if it helps, having been getting free updates for years, even though the devs said they had finished the game years ago.

For a more socially open experience, I could also recommend Sea of Thieves. It’s a game about manning a pirateship and collecting loot, where you can sometimes run into real people on their own adventures (or get your ship sunk by them, after all, they’re also pirates). There is co-op, too. A cash shop is available, but all items are strictly cosmetic, with many items available through gameplay alone.

WetBeardHairs,

Yeah I love Terraria. I’ll see if I can get his friends interested in it too. Heck I’ll buy them all copies for xmas.

evranch,

Terraria for the win, way more fun than Minecraft with more motivation for exploration and of course the combat.

I wonder if they still do that “friends pack” deal where you get 4 licenses for not much more than 1?

danque,
@danque@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t seen the latest Roblox but when I was a kid 15 years ago it was great! Played lots of gamemodes with people. Has it really become that bad?

Coskii,
@Coskii@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

The method to it’s madness is fairly underhanded to adults, much more so for its’ intended audience.

I wish I could find the video that did a basic deep dive on all (negative) aspects of the roblox community, from the robux, to the game makers potential for being exploited, and the oddly nft/stock market of cosmetics which are a massive fomo money sink. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t aimed at children, but because it is, that only makes the handful of bad/fringe cases even more unsettling.

It’s no big secret that kids are dumb enough to try and get robux for free from almost any link saying they can online. But the incentive is there for them to try.

Removing roblox from a kids library is a good thing for peace of mind. Plus there are plenty of other games out there to play with friends and depending on how they spent their time on roblox, it likely wouldn’t be terribly hard to match to another game within whatever genre they were playing.

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