It’s more popular than Fortnite but you never really hear much about it.
My kids rotate between Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox. Recently they added Among Us to the mix, but that game feels like a meme and it won’t last.
I regularly drop $20 per kid per week on one of those goddamn games.
I don’t play any of those three, but can I be one of your kids?
You need to do all your homework and chores to get your allowance. And you have to listen to me gripe about wasting it on Robux. Or Minecoins, or V-Bucks.
If Roblox was official LEGO I probably would have tried it out myself by now. But LEGO requires more polygons to not look like junk.
Yeah the younger (six year old) is heavily into the Minecraft, the older moved on to Roblox. Neither plays Fortnite yet…
And so today was the day that Roblox went public. Initial offering was priced at $45, but it opened at $64.50 and then hit a high of $74.83. As of this posting, it’s hovering around $70.
Impressive showing for what has largely been considered a “kids game”. All I can say is that I’ve now attended a couple of virtual concerts in Roblox alongside my son, and watched him trying to develop a variety of story-driven games for his friends, and I’m amazed. If anything is going to evolve into a Gibsonian cyberspace, or the OASIS, I’d put my money on Roblox. In fact, I think I will. I set my limit price to $50, so the trigger wasn’t pulled today, but I’ll definitely buy a few shares. If only to teach my son about investing.
What a world.
Here’s an article I came across about Roblox for those not familiar. For what it’s worth, both of my kids are pretty addicted and I agree with the writer’s assessment of the game. It’s just not very good.
That’s a hilarious article, and largely accurate. My only complaint with it is it’s completely wrong about the creation aspect being missing from the game as compared to Minecraft. The Create button sits at the top of any Roblox session launched on a computer. It automatically downloads and installs the very powerful and free Roblox Studio if it’s not already found. There are thousands of YouTube and Roblox curated tutorials covering everything from graphic design, 3D modeling, and scripting / programming.
Roblox has literally paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to its independent developers. Sure, they’re largely developing crap (as per the article), but it’s still pretty amazing.
There’s some really good, creative stuff. But like everything else, 98% is crap.
I like the article, because it drags on Roblox, which is awful and I hate it. But I don’t understand this part:
However, the saving grace of Minecraft is that all the tools the developers use to create are right there in the game. Every kid who plays Minecraft is invited to tinker with, learn about, and explore these tools for themselves. Roblox has removed this, the single best thing about Minecraft , and put a wall between the creator/developer tools and the experience a customer/player gets.
What? No, that’s not true at all. The developers of Minecraft use Java. Java is not in Minecraft. If you want to tinker with Minecraft you have to know Java, and furthermore you have to use some kind of third-party mod manager because Minecraft, the single most modded game probably ever in history, doesn’t support mods.
Roblox does have a creator tool, which I think my kids have downloaded and looked at, but never seriously attempted to make anything in, because really, why would you. But it is there (and this is pointed out in the article!)
Edit: unless the author thinks playing minecraft is the same as creating it? Because you’re “editing” the world? I guess then playing Factorio is the same as developing it?
That’s my read, that you can learn a lot about how the game works from making your own stuff. My son was super proud of himself when he built a functioning redstone mine cart roller coaster. There may be corresponding tools in Roblox but my kids either haven’t found them or haven’t been modified to try them out, unlike Minecraft.
Sure, Minecraft is turing complete, you can find videos of people making computers in Minecraft.
But I assure you the developers of Minecraft don’t write the game using redstone blocks :)
I mean, I guess the alternative would be thinking that kids are ripping into the code and making their own crazy mods. And there may be super smart kids out there doing that kind of stuff, but I doubt they’re the majority.
On the other hand, their financials are somehow very bad.
Somehow they’ve managed to have their costs rise linearly in lockstep with their revenue, and I don’t see a Amazon investing in AWS infrastructure or Netflix investment into streaming argument for how that trend breaks.
There are Roblox coding classes being offered at my kids’ school. There are Roblox toys on the shelves at Walmart and Target. The hype is real. This is the next Minecraft. As soon as I get some free cash I’m buying in. I think they may be acquired by Microsoft or some other big gaming player.
Roblox has been around since 2006, it’s not the ‘next’ anything. It’s already a behemoth.
Fair enough! In 2006 I didn’t have kids so it was not on my radar. It’s only been the last year or so that my kids got into it. Probably due to Covid boredom.
Yeah, it’s only been on my radar the last couple years too, mainly because my kids are now perfectly in that target demographic. I will give them credit for being one of the main methods my kids have maintained their sanity during the lockdown.