Yeah, no. Nintendo, as the other poster said. Random stranger interaction == bad. Can’t verify age == bad.

Can only add your friends for chat? Is fine.

I feel like this same strategy is sane for adults also. Before the internet, we did fine making friends and playing games with people we actually know. So much of the awfulness of the modern online space comes from anonymous interactions with strangers. I don’t think human social connections are able to scale in the way the internet enables.

> Can only add your friends for chat? Is fine.

I'm not saying it's not fine (depending on the age), but you won't convince me it's safer then playing Sim City 3000. It is inherently less safe.

As the parent, I have complete control over who my children can connect with on Nintendo (not so with Roblox and others). That makes it safe, because I can double check with parent of said friend. It’s completely fine.

I beg your pardon! SimCity incipiently indoctrinates children to believe in crazy stuff like the 9-9-9 tax plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan

It can also indoctrinate them to becoming mass murderers by spawning huge zombie outbreaks.

It's not even that stranger interaction is inherently bad, Nintendos Splatoon series is very multiplayer with strangers centric but it manages to stay safe for kids because of the lack of chat and user generated content for the most part

nope, in many games there's no chat and any interaction between players is only within the rules of the game. it's very safe. you cannot stalk a kid or even know its a kid.

somebody mentioned nintendo platform, see that for example

Fair enough, but I think creativity can usually escape the box and make it possible to communicate within the limitations imposed by the game.

And if not, then what even is the value of playing online as opposed to locally with AIs?

If children want to play together with their friends, isn't it much better to spin them a Minecraft server or such for friends they know from real life instead of playing games limiting them by "very narrowly specific interactions" anyway?

No, there is no way. Yes it is hard to tell if it's ai. But humans play different. And also this is why anticheats exist.

> If children want to play together with their friends, isn't it much better to spin them a Minecraft server or such for friends they know from real life instead of playing games limiting them by "very narrowly specific interactions" anyway?

compared to roblox, sure. who would even argue against that?

but there are many games where it really don't matter. it's probably most games... car racing sim... football sim... strategy like civilization...

But most games have unrestricted chat, aside from maybe wordlist filters ...

Wow, runescape, call of duty, battlefield, ... Didn't and don't they still all have basically unrestricted chat? Sure they might not be expressly marketed to kids, but everyone I knew was playing wow and runescape in elementary school with no issues.

None of those games are made for children. Particularly not CoD and Battlefield.

That doesn't mean kids don't want to play them. But Roblox is pitching itself as a safe space for kids.