Why Do Kids Play Roblox?

“I don't think enough people are across just how catastrophic an entire generation being raised on Roblox and Fortnite is going to be for the ENTIRE video game industry, not just the AAA end,” wrote Aftermath editor (and Sports! guest) Luke Plunkett on Bluesky recently. “These kids have no interest in playing or paying for anything else. And they're not ‘growing out of it.’”

I think this sentiment is common, and the angst and handwringing about what Roblox’s influence will mean for games is understandable given there are only two kinds of headlines: 

• Roblox just recorded more concurrent players at once than all of Steam

And…

• Roblox accused of being a 'hunting ground' for child predators as legal firestorm against gaming giant intensifies

Roblox is huge in many senses of the word. It’s played by most children—and also, it's true, brings them a lot of joy! It happens almost every day in my own house with a nine-year-old and five-year-old and they are, like most kids who use Roblox, fine. But my approval of Roblox in the house doesn’t take away from noting it’s also undeniably dangerous, both in the exposure it gives to potential predators and the way it tries to pickpocket their money with trivial microtransactions. 

You're also, in many ways, just describing navigating modern internet platforms. Similar concerns exist across many of them. It sucks.

The former gets the headlines, but I gotta say, the latter is what gives headaches. You cannot enter a Roblox “experience” without being aesthetically assaulted by pop-ups demanding that you pay a few dollars for basic parts of playing a video game, like checkpoints. Hey Congress, do something useful and block companies like Roblox from targeting kids like this, okay?

In our house, the policy is that we don’t pay for in-app transactions in Roblox. The kids aren’t even allowed to buy “robux” gift cards with their own money. We just don’t engage. There have been a few exceptions, like buying access to a special room full of exclusive clothes in the popular (and well-designed, importantly) dress up game Dress to Impress. I also bought a cosmetic that let both kids look like a Labubu. Both were harmless. Both were exceptions.

Sorry, we gotta back up for a second and explain the “experience” thing. It’s hilarious.

Roblox is full of games. Games. But Roblox doesn’t call them games to skirt Apple’s App Store guidelines. (What Roblox users define as a “game,” however, is the more important distinction.)

Bizarre, right? 

Over time, Roblox is going to completely change video game design. But it’s also a situation where we can replace “Roblox” with “Minecraft,” if you want. You can swap it for Fortnite, too. The trends match.

Roblox and Fortnite are, to many young people, the equivalent of Steam. It’s not a game, it’s a platform. You log on to find out what the new trending thing is that everyone is playing, much like you’d open up Netflix and scroll through the service’s top 10 lists to find a decent time waster. The kinds of games that appear on these platforms often resemble the games that you and I obsess over, but under the surface, they’re operating in fundamentally different ways. 

Recently, a colleague asked me “Are Roblox games good games?”

The answer is complicated and comes with bias towards past and current game design history as being forever lessons in the way video games should be designed. The way it will always be.