Robloxfor so long a platform for games (I’m sorry, Experiences), which is aimed at and played by children, is trying to expand its offerings as many of these children grow into young adults. However, they encounter some problems in doing so.
As Patrick Klepek explains his excellent new work to us cross play, Roblox– who say that “38% of their daily users are 17 years and older” – recently announced plans to start rolling it out games experiences for this market that would allow them to “intense violence, lots of realistic gore, moderately gritty humor, romantic themes, non-playable gambling content, and/or the presence of alcohol.”
That’s all well and good, but raises two key concerns. One of them is like Roblox plans You can verify that a user is actually over 17 (currently you have to provide government issued ID), but the other thing is that it works now Roblox in the difficult situation of being a full-fledged content moderator and having to decide which experiences land on which side of the 17+ line, something that even some state classification organizations with decades of experience (like my own here in Australia!) To have problems with.
For the funniest possible example of the line Roblox Here you have to make an effort and take the new guidelines on feces, and then imagine the boardroom discussions and whiteboard illustrations that would have resulted necessary to set them in stone:
For example, if you depict or reference gas, vomiting, and/or unrealistic-looking feces such as poop coils or the poop emoji, your experience meets the mild criteria. If you depict or refer to urine, urination, or realistic-looking feces, your experience meets the medium criteria.
If you want to read Roblox’s full announcement, you can check it out here. and PPlease note that this is all new content and rules it does not matter to address one of the greatest moderations Problems on the platform that is spreading game mechanics in games aimed directly at very young children.
