Currently in Roblox, it is impossible to make different age groups play on the same experience if it contains mature content.
If you decide to make a fighting game that has extreme violence, dark themes, or shows even a single beer bottle, it must be set to 17+
but this naturally also means that any player who is <17 and is not ID verified, cannot play it.
This has a lot of negative effects on how accessible and profitable an experience is, since a HUGE chunk of Roblox’ player base will be completely locked out of your experience.
The current inconvenient solution
The only current solution to this is to maintain 2 experiences at the same time, and having to write a script that removes/tunes down extreme violence for the non-age-restricted experience.
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Having 2 experiences just adds more clutter to Roblox’ content page and search results.
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You have to monitor statistics and performance for 2 identical experiences.
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Having 2 experiences is confusing for users, users might think one experience is a clone/stolen.
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Selling gamepasses and products and having badges for 2 identical experiences is awkward, you either have to make duplicate developer products or enable third-party sales in one of the experiences.
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One experience has to act as a “main” while the other has to be a “sub-experience”, not ideal.
A censoring / content management service?
With the use of some method such as a content managing/censoring service, experiences can allow various age groups to play together while also keeping experiences more safe for younger users.
I think artistic intend is very important here.
A game may have extreme violence, dark/serious themes, beer bottles / wine glasses, etc because it was an artistic choice.
Especially for a story-driven game or for games to be lore-accurate, I think even the smallest details matter.
But a experience may also have excellent gameplay of which one may not wish to exclude an audience from being able to experience it.
What can a censoring service do?
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Check if an user is 17+ verified.
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Use scripts / automated methods to tune down violence / replace beer bottles with apple juice for <17 users.
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Allow more age groups to enjoy an experience together safely, such as an older brother playing together with their younger brother.
No longer exclude a major part of the player base from your experience. -
Removes the inconvenience of having to maintain 2 experiences and add badges / gamepasses for both.
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More profitable.
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No longer sacrifice artistic intend for the 17+ users / target audience.
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Service only tells you if an user can or cannot see mature content, does not give private information such as age as a number, etc.
Private information is hidden from the developer.
Of course experiences that abuse this feature or do the wrong thing will still face moderation and consequences for their actions.
A feature like this can majorly improve development experience and also make experiences accessible to more users without having to sacrifice the intended vision.
Experiences are more than just games or places to be social.
I think that an experience with world and story crafting should also be recognized as art and as such we should have more creative freedom without sacrificing profits and who can enjoy such creations while still providing a safe user experience and keeping development fun.