Roblox is not as well-known as Fortnite and Minecraft but it recently announced that it now has over 100 million monthly active users.
It is more obscured than its rivals, so parents are asking their children to play it or asking for a primer.
What’s Roblox?
It is not one game. It is a collection of over 50m games that its players have created. YouTube is the simplest example of this: it’s a vast library of user-generated content, but here the content is games and not videos.
Roblox exploit is available for children and adults. It can be downloaded on computers, tablets, phones, and games consoles. Children and adults can browse and play the Roblox games catalog. It also has social features that make it appealing, such as the ability to chat with and add friends while you play.
Roblox is not a new concept. It was launched in 2006 and has grown steadily since then.
How many kids play it?
Roblox does not split its 100,000,000 figure between children or adults. However, it does state that 40% are women and girls.
According to Kids Insights, Roblox is played by 1.5 million children in the UK. Based on an annual survey of 20,000 British kids, it shows that Roblox is used by 24% of the 10- to 12-year olds in the UK. This is more than TikTok (13%) or Snapchat (20%), and almost as popular as Instagram (25%).
The company adds that 19% of seven-to-nine-year-olds in the UK are playing Roblox, some way behind YouTube (43%) but ahead of TV brands like CBBC (11%), Nickelodeon (10%) and Cartoon Network (8%).
Dued1 offers a job at a Pizza Place. Teams of players fill orders, earn credit and can buy furniture.
Why Roblox is so popular?
“We don’t do a lot of advertising. A friend invites someone to our platform. This is the best way for them to learn about us. Craig Donato, chief business officer at Roblox, says that the second is to watch others playing on YouTube. It’s a natural phenomenon.
He suggests Roblox’s popularity may also be due to its emphasis on “unstructured” play in an age when children are more limited in their physical-world activities.
“When I got home from school, I would get on my bike and go to the woods to play pick-up baseball. He says that today’s world makes it difficult for children to play unstructured with their friends. “Most of our experiences aren’t about winning an object. It’s a shared experience that you share with others: a shared experience.
How can people make games for it.
You can create a Roblox game (or an “experience”, – they can just be virtual spaces). Download the Roblox Studio software. According to the company, it boasts more than 2,000,000 “creators”, which is around 2% of its users. The most popular games are played by as many as 100,000 people at once.
Many children find that creating a game or virtual space where they can play with their friends is too difficult. Others build more complicated games and make money by taking a cut from in-game purchases made using Roblox’s virtual currency Robux. They expect to receive more than $100 million in 2019.
Donato says, “We have these groups forming businesses and making millions of dollars per year.” Roblox wants to foster this community. In 2018, Roblox launched its own curriculum that is available for educators under a Creative Commons license. Donato claims it reached over 500,000 children its first year.
Is this really a way for people to make a living?
They are. Josh Wood is one the British Roblox game-makers. He is 18 years old, but discovered Roblox when he was 13 and began to create his own games for it one year later.
He says, “From there, I continued to learn from other people and collaborate on projects until Game Dev Life was released, which has so far had more than a million play session.”
Wood now has his own company to develop games for Roblox. He also hires other artists, developers, and testers. In partnership with Roblox, he even launched a line toys based on Game Dev Life.
He says, “With the money I earned from my games, I was able to pay my university tuition and continue to invest in my business.”
Abbie Leigh, a young British developer who works on Roblox games, is another. Abbie Leigh, now 19, started playing Roblox at the age of 19 and moved into development in 2017. She initially created assets for other games. She is currently working on three games including her own sports-themed title and plans to make freelance development her full-time job.
It never feels like work, which is the best part. I enjoy building things and do it in my spare time. I feel rewarded when I do what I love.
Game Dev Life by DoubleJGames. The goal is to create a game that is successful. Roblox
Roblox is safe for children?
Roblox headlines have been often negative when they appear in mainstream media. There have been reports of Roblox users trying to groom children in 2017, and most recently, Roblox’s virtual sexual assault in June 2018. Two male avatars attacked a seven-year-old player’s avatar after hacking the game’s code to display explicit imagery.
The Sun published a report the following month claiming Roblox was “a haven to roleplay as jihadis and Nazi leaders, Ku Klux Klan members” According to the company, it has been working hard in addressing wrongdoers and fixing any flaws in its platform.
We don’t take offense if something goes wrong. We stand up and say, “This is how we fixed it, and this what we’re doing so it doesn’t happen again,” Laura Higgins, a British child safety veteran, was hired by Roblox as its “director of digital civility” in January 2019. Her job is to help young players avoid harm and learn from these problems.
Safety is our number one priority. She says that while we recognize the fact that there are younger players, safety is our number one priority.
It’s a well-known fact that people will gravitate to children if they have bad intentions. We are constantly looking for ways to improve the tools we have.
How parents can keep in touch about it?
Roblox also launched a section on its website called for Parents. This section explains Roblox’s safety tools, including algorithms that block swearwords and names, addresses, and text chats. It also has a reporting system for inappropriate content or chat. Roblox even has an algorithm that detects whether avatars are dressed in “appropriate attire”.
Higgins acknowledges that parents can be “very frustrated” when there is a horror story about safety on Roblox. She says it is difficult to stop these things from happening. It’s not easy, but it is the right answer. It’s usually because someone is trying to destroy your systems.
She wants parents to see the positive sides of Roblox games, and she cites the example of a Roblox game that was created by a teenager who had just lost her father.
She says, “He created a game about managing mental wellbeing and mental health as a way to help other young people who are experiencing these kinds of issues.” It was an incredible outlet for him, but it also helped many other young people who used it to express their emotions.
Developer Abbie Leigh also highlights this aspect. “I love the entire developer community. She says that everyone sticks together, supports each other’s creations, and helps each other when they need it most. “From games feedback to personal problems.”
