It is encouraging that the staff at Roblox are promoting the ‘Learn and Explore’ listing once again. Speaking as an educator, I fully endorse the use of child-friendly platforms (such as Roblox) to support and develop the educational progress of young children. This is especially true in this digital age, especially as more learning has been moved online since the start of the Covid pandemic. Thank you to the Roblox staff for promoting this feature again.
However, there is one issue that the staff of Roblox really need to review and address: the application of retention criteria for any appropriate games to remain in the listing, once their submission has been deemed to be successful. Some developers may not be aware that Roblox will remove appropriate games from the ‘Look and Learn’ category, if their traffic figures do not meet specified predetermined targets. (I can give one example where a historical game1867 Historical Role Play - Roblox was included within the ‘Look and Learn’ category since it ideally met every criteria for inclusion but, sadly, it was withdrawn just four weeks later, with an explanation from the Roblox staff that it was removed as the traffic figures were not sufficient to warrant its retention.)
Although I appreciate that the use of traffic figures may be of use in the evaluation of listing games in popularity categories, there ought to be an exception to all educational submissions to the ‘Look and Learn’ category. If a game is ideally suited to be included in this category, it ought not to be removed a few weeks later, due to the fact that the overall traffic to that particular game did not meet specified predetermined targets. The reason is very simple: many youngsters are naturally bound to prefer games that involve action, first-person shooting activities, adventure and so on. Games that are seen to be too academic or ‘too similar’ to a school-based activity may not be deemed as exciting as other games that can be found upon the Roblox platform. Roblox staff should really accept that many educational games may never reach the same traffic ratings as popular games found elsewhere upon Roblox. If any game is assessed by Roblox staff and found to be ideally suited for inclusion in the ‘Look and Learn’ category – it ought be appreciated that its subsequent traffic may often be lower than other popular games and this fact should not be a deciding factor in subsequently removing that game from the listing. This should be applied for all submissions to the ‘Look and Learn’ category.
FINALLY, AN IMPROVEMENT TO GAME DISCOVERY! WAY TO GO ROBLOX!!!
THANK YOU for finally cracking down on pay to win games! These monetization strategies are destroying the platform and you need to make more improvements to your algorithm to prevent these games from becoming popular.
You can do donations. This is what I see a lot of educational games do.
Applicants (and their teams) must have a clean moderation check.
you should remove this criteria, most people have stupid warnings from a few months/years ago
This is amazing. I’m very happy Roblox is doing this. It really allows Roblox developers to get their game out there and allow for the possibility for their game to get on the front page for educators.
Does clean me nothing on it? Or does to it mean its minor (such as less than 5 warnings and are from uploading decals and images?
So we actually look at each applicant individually, it’s not an automated response. So in that case, if one person in a team has an issue in moderation, we’ll just be taking a further look and talk about that openly with the team. We don’t want to discourage anyone from submitting.
Question regarding this, will the old applications sent in be checked? Our group has been applying for Learn and Explore for about a year now, our user base has applied and our creator has applied as well. Though we never got a response back on any of the applications. Our game which is Pinewood Computer Core fits into all the requirements so we think.
The experience is primarily based on scientific ideology.
Our gamepasses don’t seem overly aggressive in our opinion.
Our game is appropriate for all ages and is moderated by our moderation team.
Our creator has a clean moderation history and has been involved in other Roblox sections, (The game was on the rthro section when that existed and was also in the Metaverse Champions)
Our experience has a like ratio above 50% and has a usual 100-150 to even 200 players daily.
Should we reapply since the rules have changed? We recently sent in another application.
I can highly agree. Especially with the game you mentioned, it looked like a lot of effort was poured into it all just to be taken down from the list weeks later.
I believe Roblox should keep the games that make it onto the list, and show the most popular, most liked, or officially featured by Roblox ones on the front page. Similar to how the Popular list works, with the “See All” button providing a somewhat endless results of games, tiered in (as the name suggests) popularity. I don’t see how doing so will cause problems in the Learn & Explore category, as I’d suggest it would do the total opposite.
Make Roblox education edition, where district admins can approve certain experiences from the millions on Roblox.
This is what is done with the Chrome Webstore and the chrome suit. Instead of disproving the many extensions, admins can just approve the ones they think are useful.
Just an idea… this would get Roblox used more, because schools are strict on moderation. No school is going to allow anyone to install classic Roblox where students can play Arsenal and Adopt me all day…
in true roblox fashion you failed to actually answer that question…
will teams with members who have had a day or two ban be forced into exile?
moderation history on roblox can go back literal decades at this point
We’re always glad to talk individually with developers about any issues like this when it comes to reviewing. For instance, we’ve seen games get disliked just because they might mention “math” and people don’t like math :P. We always take it on a case-by-case basis. Our Education team is actually a mix of Roblox veterans and teachers who understand the culture of Roblox.
This criteria is a bit vague on purpose since we do want to take it on a case-by-case basis. We do understand that developers need to have some compensation. That being said, the main take-away here would be to avoid overly aggressive methods. For instance, a student shouldn’t be instantly greeted with pop-ups for in-game passes, but if there’s an in-game shop somewhere, that would be more appropriate.