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I am an adult without children. I thought it would be nice if me and my cousins and their young kids could all play a video game together since it's hard to visit with each other. I found one that's really awesome, not too hard and is described as child-friendly and family-friendly.
The game itself is definitely child-friendly. But the online community is another story. While most people are ok, there are some players who I would describe as bullies or trolls. There is namecalling such as "noob" and "f**king f**got" and they laugh at players for making mistakes, even insulting them. Some players even stalked players across different servers. Maybe it was all playful fun to them, but I wouldn't describe it that way.
I don't think that behavior is suitable for children. I also don't think it's suitable for people with mental health disorders such as anxiety. Honestly, this behavior caused me to have an anxiety attack.
I attempted to discuss this with the game developer as he's very active in the game's Discord community. I was laughed at by him and several other "higher up" players. These "higher up" players own some of the game servers and moderate the Discord community.
I suggested that there should be a disclaimer on the website stating that the online community is not-moderated and is therefore not child-friendly. Again, I was laughed at.
As I don't have children and am not into gaming, I'm not sure if my concerns are justified. I would like to hear feedback from parents of young children.
I'll also add that I am working on creating my own private server for our family to play on. This would give us all the same features of the public servers while keeping everything child-friendly. It's not the most ideal way to do things though.
If comments on line from strangers cause you anxiety, you have a problem.
It is reasonable to expect that the online community for a child-oriented video game would refrain from using foul language. My adult son plays a racing game and was invited to join a "clean" gaming group because of this exact issue. It's not just the kids and their parents who don't want to deal with nastiness and name-calling online.
I am an adult without children. I thought it would be nice if me and my cousins and their young kids could all play a video game together since it's hard to visit with each other. I found one that's really awesome, not too hard and is described as child-friendly and family-friendly.
The game itself is definitely child-friendly. But the online community is another story. While most people are ok, there are some players who I would describe as bullies or trolls. There is namecalling such as "noob" and "f**king f**got" and they laugh at players for making mistakes, even insulting them. Some players even stalked players across different servers. Maybe it was all playful fun to them, but I wouldn't describe it that way.
I don't think that behavior is suitable for children. I also don't think it's suitable for people with mental health disorders such as anxiety. Honestly, this behavior caused me to have an anxiety attack.
I attempted to discuss this with the game developer as he's very active in the game's Discord community. I was laughed at by him and several other "higher up" players. These "higher up" players own some of the game servers and moderate the Discord community.
I suggested that there should be a disclaimer on the website stating that the online community is not-moderated and is therefore not child-friendly. Again, I was laughed at.
As I don't have children and am not into gaming, I'm not sure if my concerns are justified. I would like to hear feedback from parents of young children.
I'll also add that I am working on creating my own private server for our family to play on. This would give us all the same features of the public servers while keeping everything child-friendly. It's not the most ideal way to do things though.
To me the biggest part of parenting is not precluding your child from experiencing dangers, but instead giving them the tools to know how to deal with dangers. Some are easy, giving them the tool to know not to play with tigers or high explosives is not very difficult. But talking to them about online forum dangers is far more difficult. I have teens and these are things we discuss frequently. Lots of talking seems to work for me, but I am not sure it would work for everyone. Good to recognize the issues but I never think the isolation is the solution. Best to you.
So stay away from games that involve a wider community and stick to games that are only played by the people in the room.
Humans are not nice animals and online they are anonymous and can really show off their cruelty and perversions without repercussions . A lot of people aren't good winners, even when they are generally decent people. You either need to fully explain the situation to your kids or stay away from the situations.
TLDR; do NOT introduce your extended family to Roblox.
Need to know the ages of the children.
Like another poster said: online games are generally unfriendly for children as a rule.
You are pretty clearly talking about Roblox, which is basically a wild-west version of Minecraft. Roblox was supposed to be targeted toward children but it has become an online swamp of trolls, pedophiles, and just generally awful people. The platform was built without an underlying control structure, and "child-friendly" patches were later grudgingly applied after an entire ecosystem of online bullying and molestation had already evolved and corrupted the game. Of course the designers won't kick off the >30% of their troll/bad actor users, because they'd lose a LOT of revenue.
Even if you put up a private server, the players can still be messaged and bombed with bot-driven friend requests from people banned from your server. If they accept any of those requests, that person then has the ability to communicate freely with them. I will never allow my children to play Roblox until they are old enough to participate in general social media without me monitoring them.
Minecraft is the only net-connected game I would consider, but I would not allow them to play online without first checking out the environment myself. It has more controls, as I understand it, but they must be properly configured. I would let my kids play offline minecraft.
A "child friendly" online game would be one with NO talk/messaging features at all and default player names. I don't think anything like this exists. Maybe a console game for the wii?
Like many other things especially the internet they can not only attract a certain type of individual they can validate what children want to do. Sounds like you have taught your children well so far. Sooner or later they'll find out about those sites so basically I'd focus on teaching them it's a game not reality, bad language is never acceptable and a good thing and they can get bullied online just like in the school yard. Focus on simple basics rather than try to preview every little thing they might encounter. Also tell them if they see something that looks bad to tell you.
My son used to play Pirates of the Caribbean online, but Disney took it down several years ago. It was very child friendly and heavily monitored. My son was even suspended once for violating rules. My kids are young adults now, but I'm sure there must be still some heavily monitored online games for kids.
It is reasonable to expect that the online community for a child-oriented video game would refrain from using foul language. My adult son plays a racing game and was invited to join a "clean" gaming group because of this exact issue. It's not just the kids and their parents who don't want to deal with nastiness and name-calling online.
People can have their expectations - reasonable or otherwise. If those expectations don't conform to reality however, move along. For example...as one solution, someone I know who has an adult son and he joined a "clean" gaming group.
Getting upset will not change it. And getting anxiey over strangers on line is something that needs to be addressed and corrected.
If kids and parents don't want to deal with nastiness, then don't. It's not complicated. I must be missing something here.
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