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Comment by x87678r | Hacker News Reader

My daughter's class are all at home and often they're playing roblox during class. If we let her it'd be all day all night 7 days a week.

Games look boring AF to me, but tweens seem to love em.

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It's a super interesting point: why are these games so appealing to tweens and are dismissed as shit to everyone else? I spent about 10 hours playing a game on the platform called Bee Swarm Simulator and some other game where you build a rocket and I think the answer is that it's actually a social platform first, then a game dev platform. In financial news everyone is comparing it to Unity in an attempt to price the IPO, but I think Roblox probably in a class of its own.

My kids FaceTime their friends and play Roblox together, the bee game and adopt me. And the obbys and piggy. All they want is Robux. They like Minecraft too but there are Minecraft like games inside Roblox too. It’s nuts. Definitely buying this stock.

Ditto. The last thing my daughter asked me to do tonight was to go login to adopt me for her so she could get the daily prize...

ok, so I wasn't the only one that's not tweens playing Bee Swarm Simulator. Hi there

This is exactly it - they're fairly simple games (in some cases) but the social dynamics are what makes them.

In the current pandemic setup where my kids are so isolated Roblox has been a huge win as it's so much like a digital playground for them to hang out on.

This was noticed over the last few years with minecraft, fortnite, etc. Can't find the good article about it (it was posted on HN at some point), but there's https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2019/06/04/is-fortnite-t...

I bet it was Matt Ball.

Maybe this? https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse

That's the one, thank you :-)

> Games look boring AF to me, but tweens seem to love em.

I saw my nephew spend _hours_ in Roblox manning a virtual restaurant cash register for some incredibly minuscule amount of Roblox bucks (like, pennies worth). That’s when I knew this was going the be the biggest thing ever.

Can you explain what this means for someone who is too old to “get” Roblox? Was he earning a minuscule amount of robux or was he spending a minuscule amount of robux? If he was earning them, how does that work? Where does that money come from? Are there ads? Or some sort of time-limiting mechanism?

Earning, I’m assuming paid by either the game itself or the virtual “owners” of the restaurant, ads are there, but “paid” for by USERS, for their in game services.

What do you mean by time-limiting mechanism? Parental controls?

I had the same thought when my 10 year old showed me the games he plays on Roblox. Absolutely awful graphics, gameplay, "story", etc, but they are _obsessed_ with them.

On the other hand the graphics are simple enough that it runs smoothly on phones, tablets, and hand-me-down computers from the mid-2000s, which is what many kids are running.

It's gotten my eldest son into Lua programing and 3D modelling, so I have no problems with the platform as it currently is.

A few of the games/servers were interesting: Phantom Forces was a reasonably well polished FPS, and the Murder Mystery games (sneaky murderer vs sheriff and villagers, typical social deduction/betrayal game) were pretty fun.

Hoping it doesn't get completely and totally overrun with ads.

I think part of it (as some other comments have alluded to) is that maybe the low quality production brings the kids closer to it because they feel like they could possibly build something if they wanted to. Or that someone like them built the game they are playing. It’s perhaps more relatable than some ultra polished AAA title.

Not even just a feeling - they really can build these experiences themselves. I just watched our 5-year old kitbash together a city full of cars in about 4 hours, which is now online for anyone to visit.

I find the platform very appealing even as an adult, as you can script in Lua, and then watch as hundreds of visitors interact with what you just wrote. This week I hacked the Bad Apple music video to run on Roblox, and then had a great time seeing people react to it.

When I was that age it was exactly the same with Flash games. I'm reminded of the "I used be with it" joke from The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrfhsxxmdE

Wow. Thank you for making that connection in my mind. I spent a lot of hours with Flash games growing up but have struggled to understand why teens like Roblox or mobile games so much.

>Absolutely awful graphics, gameplay, "story", etc

So like flash games that a lot of us grew up with then. There is a lot to be said when the games load in seconds so you can jump from game to game and the novelty value is high.

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