The games are like you say, and there's some that are indeed the model of what I expected: games that kids and amateurs made with their tools. Car jump games. Simple platforming. Basic shooters. But then there are games that seem like they're some dark pattern mobile devs side projects lol Games where you do nothing but collect stuff or pets and there's lots of gratification devices happening and suddenly there's just a literal pay wall. Just the worst of f2p gambling addiction built right into player built roblox games over and over and over again.
But on to the adults, my favorite example was joining a 'shooter' game that was really just a shooting gallery of sorts but it had voice chat enabled and wtf there's some eastern european accent going off on gay people and talking about how the targets should have sombreros so 'we' can shoot "lazy" Mexicans.
That experience was replicated through a few games and I just wrote Roblox off completely as infested with people trying to help kids find hate based ideologies or get them addicted to gambling. I warned their mother, she didn't listen til she got her credit card stolen.
Sure you may miss the 5% of chat that is actually tactical and relevant to the game, but it's a very small price to pay in order to avoid edgelords and other toxic people.
Here's a chat log from a game I played yesterday: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7902208511/chat
Some wholesome banter and that's about it.
In fact most people in dota have maxed out behavior scores.
You have to try pretty hard to be muted in the game or have behavior or communication scores lowered significantly.
I can assure anyone that just because you're sitting at 12k doesn't mean your experience is going to be good or an "entirely different experience"
It could be more aggressive at lowering score tho, true. Used to be. They "buffed" the gain per 20 matches last December, but it was great before (And even lowered the scores of streamers that had it coming).
You get these people everywhere.
There's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which says that if you give normal people anonymity and an audience then they become (let's call them) assholes. I feel that, in order to buy this, you must accept that there are a surprisingly large number of assholes, much larger than I want to believe.
Are the number of racist idiots just much greater amongst Gamers™? (To be clear, I play a lot of video games myself. I prefer to believe I am not a racist.)
I'd love to say that there are a lot more young people playing video games, and they're just trying to be edgy, but I had a chat with some guy who was talking about getting his appliances repaired by "lazy [racial slur]" people. That's probably not a fourteen year old, right? I've seen that a lot.
I understand that it probably just takes one or two people per game to make the chat unbearable, but if I'm on a team with six or eight people, and I consistently get at least one of these fucking idiots per match, isn't that still an uncomfortably high percentage of the population?
With that said I think the percentage of assholes by percentage of population is always going to be higher in video games with voice chat simply because it becomes a outlet for a certain type of person.
- Other people watching (no social cost)
- No facial expressions or body language from others triggering mirror neurons that serve as empathy precursors.
- No risk (violence, loss of property, loss of status... etc.)
There are simply too many people that don't consciously monitor their own behavior for right and wrong. Absent those other layers and pressures, we all tend to make unconsciously selfish decisions. That many young people don't think about the morality involved in those behaviors is a failure of upbringing, not nature (IMHO).
Why? The theory is that they become assholes, not that they started that way. The microphone is corrupting.
An aspect of the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory is also the level of exposure behavior gets in an online context - so very many more people are present in a way that invites sharing and comment that just doesn't exist in a grocery store. Think about how unusual it would be for me to reply in depth to an offhand comment like this (that was not directed to me) at a bar. Or how many people you might socialize with in a tf2 or l4d lobby over the course of an hour compared to in a grocery.
There is also a component of self selection when it comes to the spaces you are comparing against; you probably wouldn't want to go to bars and groceries where that behavior was present well before you actually got to live examples.
In my experience individual communities can also have very different feels. For example I used to play League of Legends and eventually switched to Dota2 because it felt very consistent that at least one person would behave in an awful fashion in the league lobbies. Whereas when playing Dota that sort of behavior was the exception.
I knew he did some bad stuff and spent a long time behind bars, but I didn't see that coming.
Also, if you go to any YouTube video that involves a non-white person committing a crime, the comments are stuffed with thinly veiled, or outright, racist remarks. People are just garbage.
I'd blame Trump & crew, but I suspect his rise is as much a symptom as a cause.
The other day I got fed a mattress ad in my Facebook feed, and it featured a mixed race couple relaxing together on a bed. The comments were just full of some of the most outright vile content I'd ever seen, and I'm not young. Full-on neo-Nazi stuff. I made the mistake of calling someone on their crap, and got threatened, person went through my profile snapping public pics, etc. etc. it was just insane.
I just... despair :(
I think there's also a loop where extremes are pushed. Ie it's common to celebrate victories in games. This then tilts players. Players lean into that tilt, and teabag. Teabag eventually is mundane, so you spread verbal toxicity. Toxicity then isn't enough, and etcetc.
It seems a loop without external pressures like in-person-reputation to inhibit how far it goes. A cycle of abuse that's all anonymous, fueled by the general competitive arousal of PvP/etc games.
Note that i'm mostly speaking to PvP games where that competitive environment also contributes to it. However i imagine "cycle of abuse" has it's place in most of these anonymous environments.
You have clearly never read the comments on newspaper websites back when they still had them. Sturgeon's Law applies to human beings in general.
This "gamer rage" is a more recent enabling by technological anonymity, as well as instantaneous, cheap global communication. Actions without consequences, but without needing millions to cover up the petty actions.
What consequence is there for saying crappy things online, in a video game, especially playing with kids? At best one would get banned? Then go to some other site/game and repeat the same bad behavior.
The truly nicest people are those who are nice even when there is no one around to watch them.
So there is a natural mechanism that tends people towards some level of civility when they're in meat space with each other.
Incivility towards the other not present is then about fitting in via tribalism. After all, those others could be dangerous so we had better make sure our tribe is all on the right page about mistrusting them.
Incivility towards the other who is present is then about an attempt at social dominance. "Don't mess with me because there are others like me who will avenge me." Perhaps.
Online there is only reputational harm and emotional harm. And when anonymous there is only emotional harm.
When the fear of an unexpected stabbing is truly removed we see the true heart of our fellows. Alas, not the most aesthetically pleasing view.
It helps to remember that for every college professor level person there is someone out there for whom tying his shoes is a significant cognitive challenge. For every really smart person out there, there is someone who is cognitively incapable of meaningfully participating in society.
The bell curve is a bitch.
The same reason that many on the internet are toxic.
I don't agree. HN is one of the best examples. We're as anonymous as we can be here and still this is one of the most friendly online environments I know. Clearly community culture plays a big role too. And it keeps offering refreshing content, I learn new stuff here daily, unlike in the commercial bubbles.
Same on Libera chat. Didn't turn into a cesspool. In fact the former freenode suddenly did but the community immediately turned their back on it en masse. It was beautiful to see.
Also, the early internet.
What defines a community is how it deals with them and as such as steers the sentiment of the entire community. The "they learned to restrain themselves" is exactly what should happen.
And I doubt getting banned is much of a deterrent. After all one can sign up without even as much as an email address. I know many people throw away accounts daily. Imagine doing that on Facebook or X. It would really go off the rails.
Yet the community here is still very pleasant.
Um....wow! Are you and I on the same site? There's a lot of ways I'd describe HN, "friendly" isn't one of them.
Genuine meanness and cruelty is WAY more common here than friendliness and there's an overall tone of reactionism, cynicalism, and negativity for the sake of it. People here are very cocky and confident talking about things they don't know anything about.
Considering how much you said your kid has spent, that money could’ve been spent on buying copies for all their friends and you’d still have plenty left over.
From the amount of money sunk into this one game it sounds like there are already weird money dynamics in his social bubble.
Couch co-op is the way to go.... but as the dad be prepared to lose control of your living room.
I mean, I'm fully grown and I still get together with friends and play Mario Party and Smash. I just bought extra controllers and boom, good to go.
If there's a paid game your kid really likes, perhaps you can talk to his friend's parents and buy the friend a copy of the game. ...I say talking to the friend's parents first, because just gifting a game to the friends would be creepy.
But buying friends copies of a game we want to play together is something my friend group routinely does and we're all adults with disposable income.
lol well this certainly depends on how it's done. Walking up to them in a trench coat and handing them a disc? Probably creepy. But you could also just, like, send them a gift key on Steam...
Some other, more expensive, activities (e.g., tennis lessons together, when the family of one of the BFFs isn't affluent) are harder for more people to do this, but video games are relatively inexpensive.
It'd be cheaper to buy games for his friends to play than to support his robux addiction.
I Do this for young relatives.
Ive been shown WhatsApp threads of the young teens who play the DRM-free games i upload - my google drive ID is effectively referenced as some kind of deity lol
Side benefit: No online play or interaction with the outside world, only with your own group (usually)
But I have to keep telling myself those kids or parents wouldn't have paid for them anyway.
Maybe consider buying a few copies at least in the future?
At least this example is limited to a neighborhood.
Now, if we're talking AAA titles from companies who will post record profits at the same time as record layoffs, while also giving the C suite a bonus bigger than the GDP of a small nation... Then yeah, sail the high seas. Those same companies thoroughly don't believe buying is owning, so I'm fine to call piracy polite borrowing.
I personally got a Miyoo for my kid but ended up getting one for myself. The fun and nostalgia are there.
Moderation used to work well, because relatively small communities (forums and game servers) included moderators, who were users that also actively participated in discussion. That model is incredibly rare today. Instead, we have a tiny coalition of corporate giants who own (monopolize via copyright) the overwhelming majority of discussion content and interaction platforms. On these platforms, traditional moderation has been replaced with corporate censorship and automation, which in turn are driven by corporate goals (advertising) instead of genuine participation by moderators.
It's my assertion that this is a natural outcome of copyright itself. Copyright demands that content be exclusively owned and profited upon; therefore interaction must be siloed and incentivized accordingly. Even free (as in beer) interaction must bow to this pattern eventually.
kids haven't been able to buy mature games from brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child decades ago
kids used to be able to smoke cigarettes too
Considering this evidence was produced during a time when the public opinion was looking for any excuse to blame social media companies and that the field of research producing those studies has an accuracy of a coin flip I'm unconvinced. I'd need to see a lot more than out of contact quotes from Facebook research or these questionable "we asked kids to taste xyz, they're totally more depressed and it's totally social media's fault."
>kids haven't been able to buy mature games from brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child decades ago
They pirated them instead because kids don't have money.
That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet another watered down place.
> They pirated them instead because kids don't have money.
I mean sure, a kid can break a window and rob a gun store too... we're not talking about creating rules that are impossible to circumvent, the answer to imperfect regulation isn't no regulation.
> That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet another watered down place.
Content filters have come a long way, this isn't what anyone is suggesting.
This is one of the reasons why I have difficulty taking this rewatch seriously, because that is not what the internal research at Facebook said. That was a media headline that misrepresented the results.
They measured 12 different indicators problematic use of Instagram, body image issues, sadness etc. For teen girls 32% of respondents said that IG made their body image issues worse, what the media didn't say however, is that 45% thought Instagram had no impact and 22% said it made their body image issues better.
And that was basically the worst indicator out of all 12 of them. For example, the same research said that on the question of loneliness 12% of teen girls said that IG made it worse, 36% said it had no impact and 51% said that IG made it better.
On every issue Instagram eat mainly either neutral or positive. And that's the internal research that places like WSJ used to say Facebook causes negative mental health effects in teen girls.
>Content filters have come a long way, this isn't what anyone is suggesting.
No they haven't. It's still the same garbage it always was just dressed up in fancier words. You can look at AI and see how well censoring it works. It's crude and ultimately doesn't work, just makes for a worse experience.
When I was a kid, everyone was absolutely riddled with self-doubt and insecurity. Jealousy and bullying was the norm. There wasn't a soul in my middle school who didn't deeply, deeply hate themselves.
This was before social media. Imagine that, but now kids ALSO get to form unrealistic expectations and envy at home on their devices.
> no video games for kids?
What are you talking about? You can still get your friends together and play mario party or super smash or kirby or whatever. That never went away, we still have co-op games where it's free to play for the other kids.
We just shouldn't have gambling for the kids. Probably.
Yeah, they don't add those free to play mechanics because they force you to buy an extra piece of hardware for $400 to play those games. It works great when you're rich, I guess, but then these f2p games shouldn't matter in the first place.
You only need one (1) switch. I can play smash with 8 people, on my couch, and 7/8 DO NOT have a switch. You need at least one (1) switch because the game cartridge cannot magically be projected onto my TV.
This is how it's always been and, in nintendo land at least, has only gotten better. I mean, I certainly couldn't play 8 player anything on the NES.
Because if you held game companies responsible for deliberately fostering addiction in their customers to earn a profit, we'd have scores of industries behind them in line to be brought to heel the same way and the stocks for tech companies, game companies, tobacco companies, casino companies, alcohol companies, etc. etc. would all implode.
There's no danger of that of course because we long ago decided as a society that we're fine with vulnerable populations being put through an economic woodchipper to fuel our retirement funds, and that's been status quo for so long that I sincerely doubt there's any way to actually change it.
The state "gets" tobacco tax revenue to help pay for the burden of medical treatment for those with smoking related illnesses. Lung cancer isn't free to treat.
If you've read it, then please provide the citation.
Smoking not only has its own direct impacts (lung cancer, emphysema), but it also makes many other conditions far worse than they would be without smoking, and therefore more expensive to treat.
So it's all about tax revenue to defer this cost.
This is not judgement, to be clear. I enjoy the occasional smokable like anyone else, but I do that with full understanding of the health risks associated with it.
That doesn’t make sense as a concept. The point of the slap on the wrist is that it’s ineffective/insufficient punishment to change behaviour. You’re essentially saying they got a big small penalty.
Everything that a business of that size does is legal because if the authorities actually wanted it stopped, it would be stopped.
Not if they have good lobbyists. In the US we still have beer ads on TV though tobacco commercials have been gone long enough to barely be remembered.
And on some level I agree. We shouldn't hold companies accountable for raising our children. Simply mitigate their ways to target them And exploit their data (something Fortnite got dinged hard for).
"We" did? Who's "we"? I certainly never agreed to this. Citation needed.
I have been using some of similar messaging to smoking and saying things like that playing too many video games will destroy the health. Of course, I am not a good role model when it comes to living healthy lifestyle. And kids probably don't even understand what health really means.
How does one protect their kids against these predatory practices?
Like strict zero money after buying the game. Not on custom skins not on early access characters. We just don’t .
Just don’t give the money and don’t argue about details.
Alternatively, that one custom skill gets unlocked after getting a good grade at the end of the year or for birthday/Christmas/whatever.
Maybe fix that?
Given the current state of gaming and where it’s heading I would love to ban gaming altogether but I feel social pressure from other kids makes it very hard.
The way I was raised we understood that most kids do things that come back to bite them later and we could choose to be better than that.
I don't feel guilty for teaching my kids to avoid drugs and alcohol—the friend groups that would actually fully exclude them from aren't worth their time anyway. I feel the same about Roblox. It's a dangerous drug produced by an intentionally exploitative company.
If refusing to participate causes a particular friend group to become inaccessible, that says something about the amount of time that friend group spends on the drug and therefore says something about the utility of the time my kid would have spent with them anyway.
I've gotten into various sports mostly done in mountains and some additional filler training like weightlifting and running, my quality of life and satisfaction from it skyrocketed. Obviously you get much more healthier, attractive and happier as side effect, but over time your mindset also changes a lot.
These days, displays in our home are kept to the minimum since content is mostly toxic and made as addictive as possible (as mentioned all over this thread). As time progresses we will gradually ease it off, but games will be last thing on a long list. There is not much skill to learn so they are not missing out, clicking all around can be done by infants.
It helps that we are surrounded by people where such approach is the norm and mark of good invested parenthood, and letting kids get addicted to various dark patterns online or in gaming is seen as on cca same level as being absent alcoholic parent or similar fail. Not that I don't see it often ie when traveling, kids glued to screen to me looks very sad while their parents often look like epitome of laziness. Physically and mentally weak, socially awkward, stuck in eternal dopamine kick chase, largely defenseless from sophisticated actors milking their parents credit cards.
(and speaking of parents: who the hell is letting a kid use their credit card? I bought an extra $.75 butterfingers one time and it was probably the most mad my mom ever got at me. More than when I dinged the car while learning to drive. I NEVER spent her money again without asking).
Games help motivate me to read (being into RPGs with little/no voice acting will do that), they arguably enhaced my logic puzzle ability and reaction time, they gave me something to bind over with like minded acquaintances.
I think it really comes down to a case by case basis.
The type/quality of the games definitely matters IMO. My six year old really enjoys DCS World and Kerbel Space program. Roblox is a total no go in my house, but I rarely deny my kid from wanting to land a jet or build a rocket.
Also, buy a Nintendo console. It solves 99% of all problems. I haven't seen these dark patterns in any Nintendo title and personally I think it's the best gaming environment for kids.
Beyond limiting infinite amount of paying by not giving the kid infinite amount of money, you can limit their time in the app or on tablet by rules like "max X hours per week".
Right around the time of the mobile phone gaming took a very, very sharp turn to pure sociopathy. It had always been flirting with it, but now the mbas are full on putting as much sociopathic addiction rigging, social bullying, and manufactured demand as possible.
That started at a certain moment in history, when paying online became trivial, so everyone who didn't produce pay-to-win was leaving a lot of money on the table. You need to find games that are older than that.
Some of the good old games are free, for example Starcraft or Wesnoth. There are many cheap games on Steam, but you need to review them first, or maybe find a review on YouTube. If the game is sufficiently cheap, for example up to $5, you could simply buy 5 copies and tell your kid to give donate 4 of them to his best friends.
Who gave to your kid the money to spend on Roblox?
I can't stand that almost all of the games seem to have a pay to win aspect, or are heavily advertising every chance they get.
As a gamer dad, I try to show my kid better games to play, but because they aren't free, his friends can't play. Just drives him to keep playing and wanting more Robux. It's compounded when his favorite Youtubers play...
Seriously don't understand how Roblox isn't being investigated for predatory practices. I imagine they can hide behind the fact users are making most of the mini games, and they are just providing a platform.