[choo-t]

You can (and should) be mad at the government and at Roblox at the same time.

Also, don't use Roblox, you can freely share games made with PICO-8, Löve, Godot, Rpgmaker, Game maker and the like, no need to go to the hell scape that is Roblox and its dark patern and locked down ecosystem.

[skrebbel]

My kid does Godot and TIC-80 (a bit like PICO-8 but more forgiving) as well. Those are great but they don’t beat Roblox on distribution nor multiplayer by a long shot.

I agree that Roblox is a hellscape when you want to make serious games, eg make money from it or sth, but if you just want to mess around making a “supermarket horror tower defense” game full of in-jokes and then have all five of your friends join it, and It Just Works, sorry but nothing comes close to Roblox.

Until they required age verification for that ofc.

Also, just don't ever buy any Robux and kids will auto steer away from the shitty games that need it. That filters out 95% of the badness of Roblox right out the gate.

[choo-t]

Yeah multiplayer is kinda problematic because of port forwarding and dynamic IP.

S&B or other engine-as-game solve that by using the platform account system and master server for discovery and NAT punch through.

[pibaker]

None of the engines you mentioned are nearly as approachable as roblox when it comes to making a 3D game with little programming or art skills.

Don't get me wrong. I agree roblox is a very shady operation, but that does not erase the fact that their platform is unmatched when it comes to letting kids make games.

[amelius]

> Don't get me wrong. I agree roblox is a very shady operation, but that does not erase the fact that their platform is unmatched when it comes to letting kids make games.

Ok, well then, toss your hands in the air and throw away all your principles then, I suppose.

[anonreplier]

how is the view in your ivory tower?

[amelius]

Pretty much the same as my view before roblox even existed, which is not bad.

How is the view in your FOMO dungeon?

[choo-t]

RpgMaker is really approachable for a 13yo.

There also Luanti, the new name of MineTest, which is closer to the Roblox experience (in the sense that there already a playable game there, and creating new stuff is closing to modding than to game making).

[pibaker]

The Roblox experience also includes a huge existing player base who may come and play your game without having to install anything new on their machines. I'd say this social factor actually matters a lot for Roblox where many if not most games are multiplayer.

The only thing close is minecraft, which from what I heard already has similar restrictions on in game chat, plus other shady maneuvers from Microsoft.

[choo-t]

Of course Roblox have more player, but does your child really need millions of players?

It's the same network effect with other megacorp, we could argue the same about X/Instagram/Mastodon, the question could be changed to: Do you want your children to be groomed to use closed source ecosystem from shady companies or do you prefer they gain experience in using relatively open ecosystem ?

Luanti let you make multiplayer games/mods too. For Minecraft there way to play outside of Microsoft sanctioned versions and servers.

[jstummbillig]

> Of course Roblox have more player, but does your child really need millions of players?

Nobody uses platforms because they are are looking to exercise billions of options. The point is easy commonality. You sit next to a kid, and, what do you know, they are into Roblox too. Cool. Wanna play?

[jandrese]

It's the difference between getting a trickle of random players on the map vs. never ever seeing another player.

For Minecraft random people are more of a nuisance than an asset, but for a Roblox obby there is an expectation that other people will check it out.

[inigyou]

When I was a kid I loved this obscure multiplayer game engine called BYOND. In fact it's so obscure that even mentioning it provides several bits of fingerprinting. It technically still exists today, but it's been on life support for 15 years. We should make something like that again.

Besides the game engine, it provided central identity (optional - you could allow players to sign in as Guest), a website to browse games and servers, a forum to discuss games and programming, and an IDE with a built-in sprite editor (it was 2D), map editor and object browser.