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We have Disney+ and Roblox, and my son has hardly any interest in Disney+. It wasn't because of him we got Disney+.

Meanwhile my sons pocket money gets split between V-bucks for Fortnite and Robux, because that is what he wants to spend money on. He could've funded that Disney+ subscription several times over with what he spends on Robux.

I think the things he buys are idiotic, but here's the thing: Over several years, he's never once expressed regret at these purchases. He continues to get enjoyment from it.

A lot of the hate for Roblox I see here feels like parents trying to impose their own preferences on their kids, instead of considering just how idiotic their parents would have found the things they spent money on as kids.

Your last comment nails it. But I think its also a Hn trope at this point to have a huge blindspot for social platforms and media companies... the demographic here tends to not grok their value appeal to the broader public.

Basically if you followed HN purely for investing advice you would probably have missed out on all of the major social media and new media platforms of the last 10-15 years.

I don't know. Roblox isn't like, the Grateful Dead, the Super Mario of our time. It's hard not to sound like an ass, but its games will feel as culturally irrelevant today as all but one or two Warcraft 3 Custom Maps feel today. Trust me, you're not wrong, it's idiotic.

None of us spent all of our money as kids on things that still feel culturally relevant today. It's not an interesting metric.

That said, there are games my son's circle of friends have kept coming back to longer than pretty much all games I played as a kid. I think you seriously underestimate the stickiness of the platform.

I started playing Roblox back in 2009 as a 10 year old. I think you're wrong; to this day I still remember spending time in skateparks and Heli-Wars and Person299's Minigames. Not all of those games are around anymore but the playerbase still remembers them. In particular I remember playing Arsenal in early freshmen year of high school, only to find out that it became one of the largest games on the platform by the time I checked back in on Roblox my senior year of college.

I "waste" a lot of money on Roblox - $30-40/mo. It's where all my kids friends are, and it's a safe space on the internet that I trust as a parent. They build theme parks, space stations, small businesses – it's amazing, silly, and safe.

> a safe space on the internet

IMO, we should be teaching the next generation, by example, that the safest spaces on the Internet are the small, decentralized spaces that we create for each other, not the large, centralized ones created by companies that aim to exploit us.

Agree but kid trends are hard to fight. There is a lot of kid baggage that comes with pushing children to adopt non-mainstream ideals or games or clothes or content etc. There has to be a nice middle ground.

Also, it is easier to teach kids about something they have experienced.

> Disney+, arguably the finest destination for 8 year olds

Do we really want another generation addicted to consuming big-budget media? Especially now that most of that media is encumbered by DRM that makes free computing platforms much less attractive?

Mind you, I'm not sure that Roblox is the answer. But it might be better, since it at least puts more focus on creating rather than consuming.

> since it at least puts more focus on creating rather than consuming.

My point is, there's no focus on creating. You're imagining Minecraft, but you don't make stuff in Roblox. You can make stuff in Roblox Studio, but there are hardly any 8 year olds doing that, because you have to write Lua, and 8 year olds categorically cannot do that. Unless they're prodigies, in which case, they will thrive doing many things, and creativity expressed in Roblox is the symptom and not the cause of their gifts.

What do kids actually do? There's a lot of "casual" role playing games, clicker games, shooter games and things that feel like Counter-Strike custom maps from the early 2000s. It feels a lot like a Steam Workshop page. Clunkiness abounds, stuff that even older children will not play.

> because you have to write Lua, and 8 year olds categorically cannot do that. Unless they're prodigies

How do we know this is true? How many more 8-year-olds would program if they had been given a chance? My guess is that most are never given a chance to try.

I learned Applesoft BASIC on an Apple IIGS when I was 8. But I was lucky to be in a home with a computer that came with a disk that had an intro to programming on it. I think that's more relevant than any innate skill I had.

I'm pretty sure there are a number of Roblox games that allow you to build things like buildings or logic circuits. Enough to say that "you don't make stuff in Roblox" needs qualification, at the very least.

My kids astound me by having little to no awareness of what toys there are to buy, and I'm convinced this is because of commercial-free streaming (and perhaps the dearth of print catalogs.) Maybe it's a devil's bargain, but a bit of DRM feels worth being free from a materialist/consumerist monkey on your back.

Interesting. I don't have any kids myself, but I know that my nieces (6 years old and under) really like the whole Frozen franchise. Their parents and grandparents have bought them Elsa dresses, toy microphones that let you sing along with one of the songs from Frozen 2, and I don't know what else. So the consumerism is definitely still there. Then again, my nieces and nephew watch a lot of YouTube in addition to paid streaming, and I've been told that when they watch YouTube, the adults in the room have to be careful that the kids don't watch lots of videos that are just promotions for products. I guess what I would prefer is that the kids spent more time creating or at least playing rather than watching. But then, they're not my kids.

I agree some games are clunky but my kids don’t care about that. I offered to buy them Steam games but they were not interested.

You should also check out Phantom Forces on Roblox. Really impressive game play IMO and not clunky at all.

>A third person character running around with virtual joysticks: so clunky.

This doesn't bother kids, it's all they know. I cringe watching my niece and nephew playing Minecraft and Roblox on their phones with touchscreen controls but they don't care and can use it fine even if it looks clunky and painful to me.

> would never waste money on Robux

Why do you assume that? My nephew is obsessed with Roblox and has asked for Robux for his birthday, which he will probably get.

> the appeal of Roblox compared to Disney+, arguably the finest destination for 8 year olds, is that, on the face of it, Roblox is "free."

Um, no. Roblox is a gaming platform with a somewhat kid-friendly social network. You're comparing going to the movies vs. going to the arcade.

> Roblox is probably setting back the arrival of the metaverse, not advancing it. Whatever that means.

A true metaverse is predicated on utility.

It helps people get the things they want to get done, done.

That's ultimately been the failure of the majority of attempts.

Social, yes, easy. Entertainment, yes, easy.

Anything else?