Giving power to the parents

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently a bit annoying to see how some people react to the platform and I would like to help improve it with a few suggestions.

  • Institute a higher account level, similar to the parent account, to users under 18. (Over changing each user for those with multiple accounts)
  • Allow said parent account to restrict specifics genre or age ratings
  • Allow the option to only chat with friends instead of just everyone and no one
  • Allow developers to (real age not account age) age restrict their titles
  • Pocket money system. Parents have money but can’t spend it but can give it the child accounts
  • Play time restrictions (time played and time playable)

If Roblox is able to address your issue, how would it improve your game and/or your development experience?

It would improve all of our games as I believe that giving parents the confidence in the platform as a whole.
Yes, some games would loose audiences as a result as parents/developers would restrict specific titles/genres but I believe this out ways the possible loss.
Yes, users will lie about their age and could create alt accounts to bypass it but we can look at different methods.

An example of a company doing a similar system is Nintendo with their Switch Parental Controls, as seen in their Switch presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bAayBtcb0

Please feel welcome to give feedback to my idea. Any faults in it and do let me know and maybe as a community we can try and improve the impression for the platform.

Edit: Add a mobile app which allows parents to see, control and analyse their child’s play. This improves communication between the two parties.
Play time restrictions are both soft and hard. By default its soft where it notifies but doesn’t restrict while hard will stop playing instantly. See the Switch presentation for more information
In terms of pocket money, it can be both monthly and one off.

20 Likes
The recent addition of Age Recommendations should be grounded in PolicyService
#2

Some of the things here which I won’t mention specifically would be damaging to revenue and play time of both developers and Roblox, hence, they’re unlikely to introduce them, however the idea of a parent account is definitely something I support, and I would REALLY like to be able to know my players’ ages.

4 Likes
#3

What’s more important to you? Income security or raw income.

I would prefer someone’s slightly dropped income (at a guess less than 5%) over knowing that someone’s income is a bit more secure to keep the lights on. It may even increase spending as it gives trust to some who would otherwise never touch or buy onto the platform.

3 Likes
#4

I’d say that this whole ‘media outrage’ thing is pretty small, we hear about it because as Roblox developers we pick this stuff up pretty fast and it spreads pretty fast too.

Roblox has a lot of mechanisms in place already, and things like moderation definitely make players have a worse experience, but having it makes parents happier, which should, in the long term, result in more players and more revenue, this is the sort of thing you’re talking about right?

The pocket money system you speak of is very similar to BC, which has a daily reward anyway, and although it’s not a very good thing to say, let’s be honest, the fact that parents have less control over how/ when their children purchase currency in Roblox likely does increase developer revenue and revenue of Roblox themselves, and I’m not talking about purchasing Robux without consent, if a child has any access to money online that is their own, the parent having power over the management of that money would likely mean they buy less Robux.

The play time restrictions thing is the one I mainly disagree with though, it’s up to the parents to manage how long their kids spend playing through real-life interaction and placing a forced restriction on that isn’t a good idea as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t read any articles saying that Roblox is addictive and that it’s the fault of the company that kids are spending so long playing it, the point is that if it’s a good game people will want to keep playing, and I don’t see how these restrictions could increase revenue in any significant way, improve brand trust? Sure, but I don’t think that gained trust is proportional to the amount of lost revenue. (Also, this would likely lead kids to use a different service when the time limit runs out)

2 Likes
#5

Or just let your kid play?

3 Likes
#6

I wasn’t looking at just how the media directly talk about Roblox. I also look at what parents talk about the platform. Many do say it’s positive but also negative as well.

Moderation is great but features like

I believe would give more power to parents and maybe even players. When parents talk about the negative of Roblox, it’s always the language and content that they see. The stuff I talk in the OP will try and swing that back by showing that Roblox does care. Yes, I’m aware it’s a PR thing. Moderation is a very complex thing and the way it’s gone at the moment isn’t the best in my opinion. It’s from the pressure from the outside world that has caused this and I want players to be safe and free at the same time.

Pocket money is not inherently daily money like BC. Yes you gain money every month, or you gain money though doing tasks. So it can work both ways. It’s good to throw in an example (numbers may be off, it’s an example), let’s say there’s a child called Jimmy, he’s a big fan of Roblox and wants to be a big dev when he’s older, he gets paid 1000 R$ per month when he’s good and sticks to the time limits. He also gets 50R$ if he does the dishes twice a week, As a result of this, Jimmy loves to help do the dishes and behave and stick to the time limit. As a result, Jimmy brings more money into the platform as a result.

In terms of the time restrictions, it can be hard or soft restrictions. See the Nintendo Switch’s parental controls for more of what I mean (links in the OP). Maybe create or integrate an app to monitor what games the child plays, this increases interactivity between parents and the child and allows to foster a healthy relationship between families and video games. Video games should be done in moderation to help foster a healthy education/improvement.

In terms of addiction, there are places which say Roblox is addicting

I let him try playing Roblox and create a free account and it’s proven so addictive I now have to fight him for the laptop. I’ve kept a close eye on it, and to be honest, the jury is still out. I haven’t come accross solid enough evidence to ban him from playing, but I wish he didn’t love it so much. It seems to cause lots of arguments between him and I, not just over who wants the laptop, but over when and how much he plays. When it’s bedtime, getting dressed time or leaving the house time (the bane of any parent’s life), he seems to find excuses, always wants to wait one more second, achieve the next level, it’s endless. A lot of the minigames you can’t save progress so when we turn it off it’s lost.

_source: https://midwifeandlife.com/is-roblox-safe-for-my-child-to-play/_

In terms of the balance, it goes back to the question

Do you prefer risking your income as a result of a few bad apples ruining the platform or would you rather see something extra on top to help show that things aren’t as bad as they seem and give peace of mind to developers and parents alike.

3 Likes
#7

Or they could both play and improve parent relation as a result.

#8

It won’t make a difference if you add parent relation to roblox or any other game. Roblox has already has been criticized by many news sources and parents for being “unchild friendly” (Which has yet to affect Roblox), and thinking from a kids point of view this would make Roblox unenjoyable overall.Making them not want to play

1 Like
#9

Then why not try and change things to improve the rep of Roblox? A bit of security for developers and as a player it really could damage you but it’s moderation that’s important. It most certainly be the difference between some players leaving and joining but I believe it’ll be better as a whole. For some it won’t cause any effect but for some it will involve parent intervention. The system would always be an opt-in and fester a positive moderation between over playing games and spending time out of games.

#10

So how will age restricting titles work?
Will players ages >13 know a game by a different title from those ages 13< ?

#11

I do support most of the things you said in the OP, I just meant that some of them may not be realistic.

sorry for the short reply, I did read your whole post

#12

Genre restrictions and the integration of age restrictions on games. Similar to that of @dragonfrosting’s idea Game Genre and Type and that of https://devforum.roblox.com/t/if-age-restrictions-on-games-would-be-implemented/19170

#13

Of course, I wanted to see more of your opinion and reasoning behind why you felt negative about some of it.
It’s fine for the short reply

#14

I think the real problem here is that we’re trying to fix the wrong thing. We can add restrictions till the sun goes down, but things are still going to slip by. Why don’t we just recommend that the parent keeps an eye on their child why they play? They’re the parent, it’s their job to watch the kid.

3 Likes
#15

Maybe a parent app? What about those parents who for whatever reason just can’t restrict their child and needs something different.

#16

It’s just like in real life–when a parent is unable to watch a kid, then they would be assuming the risk of their child running into something unpleasant. As for the app, that sounds like a good idea, but maybe it should only show the chat log and title/thumbnail of the game they’re playing.

1 Like
#17

Remove such a doubt by giving them control and the ability to know. Chat logs can work.

#18

I agree.
You can censor the content, but not what players do.

Games like MeepCity for example could bypass the ‘age restricted rule’, but remember they did not fix the naming of parties for the longest time.

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3 Likes
#19

Typically it’s the larger games on the platform such as PF, Jailbreak, MeepCity who are the attention of some places and yes it’s very true that

But this sort of thing would give powers to the parents to control what the players do an extent. As well as it’s important for developers like the creator of Meepcity (and smaller developers) and the Roblox platform as a team to create a standard where this sort of behaviour is actively discouraged (not censorship just discouraging bad behaviour) and as developers we foster healthy usage of our work.

Great counter point btw

#20

I don’t have the time to read the whole thread, but I didn’t see that option in OP.

Basically to allow parents to choose which specific games their kids are allowes to play.