My son makes games in Roblox. He just turned 14 and I highly encourage it. As a result he learned how to use an IDE and how to write LUA. Fantastic way to learn to code. He even downloaded blender and watched youtube tutorials on how to create 3d models.
I enjoy hearing about how kids are doing things like this. I'm also very jealous of the resources available to them. I started learning 3D modeling when Lightwave came bundled with the Video Toaster. There was no YouTube. The internet wasn't even a thing yet. Resources were very limited to me, to the point that I got frustrated with not being able to get past very rudimentary models but I kept playing. The thing that really killed my interest was the incredibly long render times on that 8MHz CPU. If you told me back then that real time rendering would be possible, I'd have laughed in your face.
If I had access to Unreal type 3D then, you wouldn't have been able to pull me away from the computer. So probably a good thing for me it wasn't!
Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I became a programmer because I had many, many hours with nothing to do at my grandparents' house. I did have a programmable calculator and the reference programming manual that came with it, so I'd recreate (in extremely basic form) the games I read about in magazines/that my friends told me about and that I dreamt of playing but didn't have access to, such as Diablo/Sim City/etc. Later I learned assembly to make faster games (I'd print out z80 asm reference tutorials at the library, write code by hand on paper, and then type it out, compile it, and load it on my calculator from a library computer a week or so later).
Honestly, lots of respect for the kids these days that are so self driven that they'll spend hours on their projects and not watching mindless short form videos. I don't think I'd have had that self discipline if I had had a phone with unlimited internet/YouTube/TikTok/etc access.
> Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I'm jealous of the resources, not of the kids. No way in hell I'd want to go through being a teenager again, especially with social media existing. But that has nothing to do with the learning resources available now that were not when I was their age.
Another thing for teenagers growing up in such an environment is that the capability delta keeps expanding.
Not only are the job opportunities just starting to dry up, the competition for these openings gets ever fiercer, giving only the most dedicated people a real chance.
I'm really glad to be almost in my 40s. Going through a junior job market without having parents providing you with thousands of $$$ for the extra opportunities is not going to go well, as most will likely find out in the coming 10-15 yrs.
> I'm really glad to be almost in my 40s. Going through a junior job market without having parents providing you with thousands of $$$ for the extra opportunities is not going to go well, as most will likely find out in the coming 10-15 yrs.
Additionally, because of the scarcity of information and degree of difficulty in learning those skills 15+ years ago, you could actually get paid well enough to have very good access to the housing market wherever you'd want. Now, in some places where work actually exists, if you get a job that you can sustain long term, it might cost 100% of your paycheque to land a mortgage on much more than a tiny apartment. You realistically need to shack up with another software engineer or whatever, not just anyone you fancy which itself seems quite difficult to pin down even well into one's 30s
Go to school -> take the debt, grind for potentially years to get a job if you're lucky -> find someone who also has a high paying job -> take on an amount more debt that your grandparents can't even visualize, and are yet responsible for -> kids?
Same here. All I had was a C= 64, its manual and several magazines which sometimes had printed 6502 assembly bytes. Took me three years to figure out how to poke them to the correct ram address.
From what I have seen about Roblox, it is a game which parents should be extremely critical of and if I had children I would absolutely not let them play it.
Not only are there repeat allegations of unfairness towards the player, Roblox also contains a stock market so that children can start gambling early. (See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ)
Besides that and far more disturbingly there are repeat and ongoing accusations of child abuse and child sexualization, which the company behind Roblox is ignoring. These accusations are bad enough that they have caused short selling of the company stocks.
Here is the report by (the late) Hindenburg Research about dangers to kids on Roblox. Can't vouch for the contents, but I think parents should at least skim it and take precautions. https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox
I've played it with my kids. It's a simple and fun tycoon type game. You buy seeds, plant them, harvest crops, sell crops, repeat. Upgrade your crops, etc. There are gacha eggs that grow into pets that you buy with free game economy money . The few items that cost robux (which you buy with real world money) are not heavily advertised.
It’s good that you play with your kids, and they’re not playing alone.
I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that. She said Roblox and Discord are the top places right now where predators are hanging out cruising for kids to exploit. Discord makes sense, but I was surprised at Roblox.
As someone who came of age in the free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era (“borrowed” shell account at a local university), it’s really disappointing how exploitive the internet and gaming is, especially in spaces that could stimulate creativity.
Any place with a large gathering of children and free form text input/chat instantly turns this into exploit. Pretty much every video game w/ chat has to deal with this.
> free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era
In simplest terms, the predators hadn't fully adapted yet.
It's sad but as with any tool that gains mass adoption it'll get both sides of the coin weaponizing it into something nefarious. In this regard I am worried about predators adapting AI tools in ways that aren't obvious and I am concerned for my children, but exactly as you say, we must "play with them" which helps ensure their safety at multiple levels.
> I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that.
I've heard the same advice from a friend who works in law enforcement in this same area (child abuse, CSAM, exploitation) for the US (federal) government. Some of the stories I've heard...
> it’s really disappointing how exploitive the internet and gaming is, especially in spaces that could stimulate creativity.
Think of it this way: Why don't those problems happen out on the street? Because law enforcement and public response stop them, with the former driven to a great degree by the latter.
Where is that response on the Internet? Law enforcement - and much of the public, and corporations - have abidicated their responsibilities, as they have abidicated so many other responsibilities on the Internet to their communities, the consequences of their actions, even decency.
Did you even consider that predatory behavior should be stopped by law enforcement and by the corporations that control these websites, or did you accept that the Internet is lawless?
It's cool that this generation has their own tools to get into writing games
Probably a heck of a lot less clunky than the 2000s too! That era you had to either mod something that already existed, or attempt to make a source mod (+fight with Hammer to make maps).
Plus there weren't too many good free 3D tools, but now Blender is as good as commercial software. On top of the huge selection of good IDEs and documentation for the coding bits.
Glad to see there's still a scene around just making things for the fun of it!
I’m a full-time dev on the platform, here’s my take.
Roblox algo heavily favors games with good retention, that explains something like the first 50k concurrent users. But this game also has a lot word-of-mouth effect because the seeds for sale are the same for everyone, creating a Wordle-like effect of talking about the best thing to buy.
This is actually weirdly very inspiring! It makes me feel that I should be more bold with sharing early versions of the things that im building without being too worried about how polished they might be.
For comparison, there are relatively casual/mobile games like Genshin Impact with an estimated of more than 50-60 million players (though of course it took a bit more than one teen to develop).
"Real games" as found on Steam et al are still very niche in the grand scheme of things; while gaming is more popular now, that mainly applies to things like Flappy Bird (and Roblox, etc) and not PUBG.
My son makes games in Roblox. He just turned 14 and I highly encourage it. As a result he learned how to use an IDE and how to write LUA. Fantastic way to learn to code. He even downloaded blender and watched youtube tutorials on how to create 3d models.
I enjoy hearing about how kids are doing things like this. I'm also very jealous of the resources available to them. I started learning 3D modeling when Lightwave came bundled with the Video Toaster. There was no YouTube. The internet wasn't even a thing yet. Resources were very limited to me, to the point that I got frustrated with not being able to get past very rudimentary models but I kept playing. The thing that really killed my interest was the incredibly long render times on that 8MHz CPU. If you told me back then that real time rendering would be possible, I'd have laughed in your face.
If I had access to Unreal type 3D then, you wouldn't have been able to pull me away from the computer. So probably a good thing for me it wasn't!
Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I became a programmer because I had many, many hours with nothing to do at my grandparents' house. I did have a programmable calculator and the reference programming manual that came with it, so I'd recreate (in extremely basic form) the games I read about in magazines/that my friends told me about and that I dreamt of playing but didn't have access to, such as Diablo/Sim City/etc. Later I learned assembly to make faster games (I'd print out z80 asm reference tutorials at the library, write code by hand on paper, and then type it out, compile it, and load it on my calculator from a library computer a week or so later).
Honestly, lots of respect for the kids these days that are so self driven that they'll spend hours on their projects and not watching mindless short form videos. I don't think I'd have had that self discipline if I had had a phone with unlimited internet/YouTube/TikTok/etc access.
> Kids these days have tons of resources, but I don't know if I'm too jealous of them, as it comes with other challenges.
I'm jealous of the resources, not of the kids. No way in hell I'd want to go through being a teenager again, especially with social media existing. But that has nothing to do with the learning resources available now that were not when I was their age.
Another thing for teenagers growing up in such an environment is that the capability delta keeps expanding.
Not only are the job opportunities just starting to dry up, the competition for these openings gets ever fiercer, giving only the most dedicated people a real chance.
I'm really glad to be almost in my 40s. Going through a junior job market without having parents providing you with thousands of $$$ for the extra opportunities is not going to go well, as most will likely find out in the coming 10-15 yrs.
> I'm really glad to be almost in my 40s. Going through a junior job market without having parents providing you with thousands of $$$ for the extra opportunities is not going to go well, as most will likely find out in the coming 10-15 yrs.
Additionally, because of the scarcity of information and degree of difficulty in learning those skills 15+ years ago, you could actually get paid well enough to have very good access to the housing market wherever you'd want. Now, in some places where work actually exists, if you get a job that you can sustain long term, it might cost 100% of your paycheque to land a mortgage on much more than a tiny apartment. You realistically need to shack up with another software engineer or whatever, not just anyone you fancy which itself seems quite difficult to pin down even well into one's 30s
Go to school -> take the debt, grind for potentially years to get a job if you're lucky -> find someone who also has a high paying job -> take on an amount more debt that your grandparents can't even visualize, and are yet responsible for -> kids?
Same here. All I had was a C= 64, its manual and several magazines which sometimes had printed 6502 assembly bytes. Took me three years to figure out how to poke them to the correct ram address.
From what I have seen about Roblox, it is a game which parents should be extremely critical of and if I had children I would absolutely not let them play it.
Not only are there repeat allegations of unfairness towards the player, Roblox also contains a stock market so that children can start gambling early. (See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ)
Besides that and far more disturbingly there are repeat and ongoing accusations of child abuse and child sexualization, which the company behind Roblox is ignoring. These accusations are bad enough that they have caused short selling of the company stocks.
Here is the report by (the late) Hindenburg Research about dangers to kids on Roblox. Can't vouch for the contents, but I think parents should at least skim it and take precautions. https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox
I've played it with my kids. It's a simple and fun tycoon type game. You buy seeds, plant them, harvest crops, sell crops, repeat. Upgrade your crops, etc. There are gacha eggs that grow into pets that you buy with free game economy money . The few items that cost robux (which you buy with real world money) are not heavily advertised.
It’s good that you play with your kids, and they’re not playing alone.
I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that. She said Roblox and Discord are the top places right now where predators are hanging out cruising for kids to exploit. Discord makes sense, but I was surprised at Roblox.
As someone who came of age in the free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era (“borrowed” shell account at a local university), it’s really disappointing how exploitive the internet and gaming is, especially in spaces that could stimulate creativity.
> I was surprised at Roblox
Any place with a large gathering of children and free form text input/chat instantly turns this into exploit. Pretty much every video game w/ chat has to deal with this.
> free-wheeling early 90s bbs and early internet era
In simplest terms, the predators hadn't fully adapted yet.
It's sad but as with any tool that gains mass adoption it'll get both sides of the coin weaponizing it into something nefarious. In this regard I am worried about predators adapting AI tools in ways that aren't obvious and I am concerned for my children, but exactly as you say, we must "play with them" which helps ensure their safety at multiple levels.
https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/
Oh yeah. Scary place.
> I don't allow my kids (kindergarten and middle school) to play Roblox based on the advice of a prosecutor in my town that works exclusively with child abuse, endangerment, and other crimes like that.
I've heard the same advice from a friend who works in law enforcement in this same area (child abuse, CSAM, exploitation) for the US (federal) government. Some of the stories I've heard...
> it’s really disappointing how exploitive the internet and gaming is, especially in spaces that could stimulate creativity.
Think of it this way: Why don't those problems happen out on the street? Because law enforcement and public response stop them, with the former driven to a great degree by the latter.
Where is that response on the Internet? Law enforcement - and much of the public, and corporations - have abidicated their responsibilities, as they have abidicated so many other responsibilities on the Internet to their communities, the consequences of their actions, even decency.
Did you even consider that predatory behavior should be stopped by law enforcement and by the corporations that control these websites, or did you accept that the Internet is lawless?
It's cool that this generation has their own tools to get into writing games
Probably a heck of a lot less clunky than the 2000s too! That era you had to either mod something that already existed, or attempt to make a source mod (+fight with Hammer to make maps).
Plus there weren't too many good free 3D tools, but now Blender is as good as commercial software. On top of the huge selection of good IDEs and documentation for the coding bits.
Glad to see there's still a scene around just making things for the fun of it!
The article does not analyse why it became popular or what makes it unique. A shallow article.
Would you be willing to explain? I’m not familiar at all with Roblox.
I’m a full-time dev on the platform, here’s my take.
Roblox algo heavily favors games with good retention, that explains something like the first 50k concurrent users. But this game also has a lot word-of-mouth effect because the seeds for sale are the same for everyone, creating a Wordle-like effect of talking about the best thing to buy.
I meant article does not explain anymuch other than that the game is popular. It should have carried more and deeper analysis.
[dead]
This is actually weirdly very inspiring! It makes me feel that I should be more bold with sharing early versions of the things that im building without being too worried about how polished they might be.
The game: Grow a Garden (on Roblox)
with 5 million active users on May 17th, more than the highest steam game ever, PUBG, at 3.2 million. Made by a teen in 3 days.
At GDC, Roblox was hiring engineers. They announced their goal is to upgrade Roblox to be the best system to make AAA games
For comparison, there are relatively casual/mobile games like Genshin Impact with an estimated of more than 50-60 million players (though of course it took a bit more than one teen to develop).
"Real games" as found on Steam et al are still very niche in the grand scheme of things; while gaming is more popular now, that mainly applies to things like Flappy Bird (and Roblox, etc) and not PUBG.
Farmville had 83 million monthly/34 million daily users. People really love farm games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Does Roblox work on Linux or they still excuse not supporting it even in Wine with some bogus arguments?