I remember really vaguely reading an article about how it had kind of an exploitative model, especially considering the amount of labor done by kids, but it’s like an entirely different world i just tried to understand when my nephew played.
A few years ago I posted in a reddit advice thread about how I banned my kid from roblox because of that exploitation-by-design and everyone freaked the fuck out at me and told me I was a terrible person.
Yup. For most kids, it can be exploitative because of the restrictions around withdrawing funds, the super vast majority of the audience is under age, many games have gacha models (gambling). I did get to make & work on games relevant to my kids, so that was very cool.
On the whole, I’m glad I’ve left that area of the industry for now. I’d prefer not to go back (only did about a year / 12 in my career). There are great companies in that space trying, but it’s not easy.
I remember really vaguely reading an article about how it had kind of an exploitative model, especially considering the amount of labor done by kids, but it’s like an entirely different world i just tried to understand when my nephew played.
“Kind of”. Exploitation is the whole game. I linked to some videos in another comment that dug into it (https://lemm.ee/comment/20719563).
A few years ago I posted in a reddit advice thread about how I banned my kid from roblox because of that exploitation-by-design and everyone freaked the fuck out at me and told me I was a terrible person.
Yup. For most kids, it can be exploitative because of the restrictions around withdrawing funds, the super vast majority of the audience is under age, many games have gacha models (gambling). I did get to make & work on games relevant to my kids, so that was very cool.
On the whole, I’m glad I’ve left that area of the industry for now. I’d prefer not to go back (only did about a year / 12 in my career). There are great companies in that space trying, but it’s not easy.