Can someone tell me how the kids are being forced to make video games. I have read several of these articles and can’t understand the logic. My kids played Roblox and created games on the platform they were never forced or coerced to make anything. Maybe it’s our messed up capitalistic society that expects everybody to monetize anything that’s fun.

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Not coerced, but tricked into thinking they would get money for it while roblox or some other adult creator takes 90% of it.

At least in my day when we made some small rpg maker 2000 thing for free there wasn't anyone above me getting rich while I got zilch.

[–] ObsidianNebula@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

I watched a video a while back about this, but the details are fuzzy. I think it was the one I linked below if you want to look more into it. In essence, there aren't a ton of cases where kids are actually being forced to work. However, there are strong incentives for kids to work on Roblox projects that the developers themselves push. The devs want a constant stream of content and money coming in, but they don't want to pay adult workers at adult wages, so they offer Robux to players who make games. It is difficult for people to convert Robux to actual cash, and the money they receive is often significantly less than they would if they put the effort into any other form of work, so many of these kids are essentially making content for the developers for free or significantly less than they should earn. If there was no payout for content creators and the kids were doing that development just because they had passion for the game, it might be a different situation, but there are quite a few kids that believe they can make serious money doing this and don't understand that the developers are exploiting them and paying very little. Adults can probably do more research and better understand the situation they are getting into, but kids often don't have the same critical thinking skills as adults and will accept the lie being pushed by the developers and community that they can get rich by contributing to the game they love.

Video: https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ

Follow-up: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY

[–] Denjin@lemmings.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The details are too much to go into here in a simple comment. For a full investigation into Roblox check out this video by People Make Games, a games journalism site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ

Essentially, Roox makes billions off the free labour of children. The entire eco system is set up to funnel kids into a cycle of consuming others content and producing their own. It's also completely unregulated which has allowed some shady people, some of whom are, or directly work for, the owners of the platform to set up quasi developer studios where children are subjected to the same appealing treatment and exploitation of the regular games industry, while earning none of the revenue.

[–] mx_smith@lemmy.world -3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well none of these sources tell me how the kids are forced into this. All these services are free, so I still don’t see the exploitation. Are you saying the kids are tricked into making games for Roblox, if so then maybe that’s on the parents. As a software engineer and having kids who played Roblox their entire lives, I still can’t make the leap of exploitive practices over just capitalism. Maybe show me another platform that kids can learn how the basics of game design while hosting the game at the same time.

[–] FrowingFostek@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

More perfect union did a really great video about the exploitation. From what I can remember the crux of the argument goes roughly like this:

Kid plays game, kid is encouraged through game to create content for game. This content created by kid is sold through game to other kids. Kid who put the work into creating this gamemode is not compensated fairly.

The video goes on to explain a lot of other exploitative practices of roblox.