„If companies were to do the right thing, they would lose the most valuable customers on earth, preteen kids”

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 257 points –
Jonathan Haidt: ‘If companies were to do the right thing, they would lose the most valuable customers on earth, preteen kids’
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I'm out of the loop. What is Roblox actually?

It's a platform for playing and creating video games. The stated intent was for kids to make games for kids, but as soon as game creators could make real money from it, professional devs took over. The in game currency is called robux, and it seems like every game is littered with buttons to get a higher jump or faster car or whatever for a few dollars' worth.

Because young kids are not savvy consumers, the platform is chock full of identical games with the same name and logo hoping to steal players stay from whichever game is on trend at the moment.

There are certainly some games in there worth playing, but it's a very small minority.

Sounds like LittleBigPlanet without the whimsy and fun.

Basically, yeah, but if every single LBP level wanted to nickel and dime you out of five bucks.

There's two videos from People Make Games about that topic, both very interesting:

https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=g0WlQz5qC3_pmswX

https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=blVIQv15W7sws6wY

From what I understand, it's a platform where you can create games and monetize them by doing things like adding subscriptions, item or ability shops, add access fees, etcetera, that require real world money to be exchanged for them. Though, I think it could also be robux, but I wouldn't know because I avoid that service like the plague.

There's a whole entire webpage dedicated to this monetization thing that's out in the open, if you wanna read it.