Interesting. I just talked to the experts - my 7 year old and 9 year old. They play Roblox sitting side by side on the couch, right beside me. They spend $0 and I just asked them, are you looking to buy anything, and they said "No" you don't need to, but they do know a kid who has spent $100 and is addicted to it (their words, not mine...could be exagerated).
Then again, the 9 year old also has a steam account, and they buy all their games from their $5/week allowance. It's their choice. We do not control what they spend money on.
They made a couple of bad purchased, and cried, and regretted it, but it taught them to be careful. So I guess, you can say, there are ways to letting kids play Roblox and controlling their spending.
And to be fair, it really depends on the kid. Some resist buying impulsively better than others. Also, as an aside, they try to add kids that they know in real life.
They get their video time from 6:15pm until 7:15pm on weekdays. They pick their video time. Whether watching Planet Earth, Youtube, Steam, Roblox, it doesn't matter. BUT, they get 1 hour. Essentially we are trying to give them power of choice, and ability to fail. It's not perfect, but...I guess we're just learning as we go along.
> It's not a game, it's a whole platform/ecosystem.
It is and it isn't, that's one of the points the linked article is trying to make, yes, it's an ecosystem but, at the same time, it's highly consistent because many aspects such as assets/mechanics/moderation/currency etc. are consistent across all games. In fact they are so consistent that you can immediately identify a game as being a "Roblox game" in the same way that Skyblock or Bed Wars[1] are clearly "Minecraft games" (I made this comparison because most people think of Minecraft as a single game, not as an ecosystem).
[1] In case you don't know what those are, they are "minigames" that run on modified Minecraft servers, many features of "vanilla Minecraft" are retained but the game mechanics are modified heavily, here is a link with more info: https://hypixel.net/play/#games
True. They try different games. I tried asking them what they would recommend to other kids, but they said Arsenal, sports games, and Natural Disaster...they were not helpful!
Either way, they only play a few times a week, so maybe 3 hours a week. They usually play other stuff as well.
Then again, the 9 year old also has a steam account, and they buy all their games from their $5/week allowance. It's their choice. We do not control what they spend money on.
They made a couple of bad purchased, and cried, and regretted it, but it taught them to be careful. So I guess, you can say, there are ways to letting kids play Roblox and controlling their spending.
And to be fair, it really depends on the kid. Some resist buying impulsively better than others. Also, as an aside, they try to add kids that they know in real life.
They get their video time from 6:15pm until 7:15pm on weekdays. They pick their video time. Whether watching Planet Earth, Youtube, Steam, Roblox, it doesn't matter. BUT, they get 1 hour. Essentially we are trying to give them power of choice, and ability to fail. It's not perfect, but...I guess we're just learning as we go along.