A traditional game review of Roblox is practically impossible to achieve as the base game stands as a platform for creators to curate and create their own experiences to be shared online. That being said, Roblox is quite popular and many people are wondering if themselves or their kids should be playing this game. I (SaintWaffles) have decided to take a look into the world of Roblox to give my thoughts on this titan of the gaming industry. Some of the CGR staff assisted with the planning and editing of this article, so the whole team is being credited today.
Now, a couple housekeeping items first!
1) I could not review every feature of the game because I was unwilling to send Roblox my government issued ID. And thus was restricted out of 18 plus only games and chat.
2) I did not spend any real money on this game, despite it asking multiple times for me to pay, I remained strong and never gave them a dollar.
3) We have always had a mission purpose to not just say certain games are sinful or wrong, outside of obvious games like those that are entirely sexual in nature. See our article here for more. But Roblox is a unique entity deserving of its own article, in my humble opinion.
So, onto my thoughts.
First we need to define what Roblox is. Roblox in itself is not a game in the traditional sense; Rather it is a platform and set of tools that gives other people the ability to make a game using said tools and sandbox. This means your Roblox experience can be way different than someone else’s. One person might enjoy first person shooters, and there are plenty of those, but there are also RPGs and strategy games for those with better taste (I joke, I promise). One of our staff eloquently stated: “Trying to review Roblox is like trying to review Steam”.
That being said, I played about two dozen different games to compile my thoughts and review here, but there is a very real chance that if you login you may play one of the thousands of other games that I did not. Here is my conclusion and what I learned.
The game is definitely not just for children but still has a very large child audience. The overwhelming majority of games that I played were thinly disguised gambling simulators, skinner boxes, and dopamine fixes all aimed at separating you from your money. Most experiences went something like this:
Log in.
Immediately assaulted with multiple menus asking for money, donations, VIP experiences, and purchases of loot boxes.
After closing all the popups you join a match.
Upon your first loss or game over, you would again be barraged with opportunities to purchase extra lives, respawns, cool weapon skins, or a VIP pass.
The most outrageous money sinks were games that ran like this:
You start with 100 coins. You buy an egg for 100 coins. You hatch the egg. The egg gives you a creature that gives you 5 coins a second. This is so you can buy a second egg, to get more coins to buy a third egg, so you can get more coins to buy a fourth egg…hopefully you see where this is going. However, every egg you get costs more, and the hatching time is longer and longer. But why wait? You can buy the egg with real money, and skip the hatching for real money, so that you can get more eggs to wait even longer, unless you fork over more cash.
There isn’t even a gameplay loop here. But with loud sounds, ultra mega uber epics to try and unlock, and the ever so popular internet clout on the line, I can see why some people, especially children, are feeling pressured to spend real money to have the best possible eggs.
And that is what the experiences seem to lean on. Pressure from others to buy so you can have cool things. Pressure from your team to buy revives because everyone is counting on you, and pressure to buy power to be stronger than everyone else.
Money, gambling, and abusive practices aside, my ultimate gripe with Roblox at the end of the day was… I didn’t feel there was a reason to play any of the games. Custom games and sandbox creation is amazing. One of my favorite games growing up was custom maps on Star Craft and Warcraft 3. This gave birth to entire genres like the MOBA and solidified the respectable tower defense genre. People’s creativity was endless and I loved getting to experience so many people’s vision for what a video game could be.
To me, Roblox lacked that depth, as every game was a means to an end, and that end was making money for the developers. There are a thousand shooter games, but you could also go play Apex or Warzone, also for free, and have a much better experience. You can go roleplay in Brookhaven, or have a better free experience in a TTRPG like Dungeons and Dragons or Monster of The Week. You can build an incremental zoo, or you could download a thousand clones for free from Facebook or the Google Play store.
I never felt like I was experiencing something new, cutting edge, or amazing. I always felt like I was playing the Temu version of a real game. Except, instead of being cheaper, was begging me to pay double the box price of a real AAA production.
As I was writing this article, I felt overly negative, millions of people play this game, surely I must the doing something wrong? So I went to the internet and asked people to send me their favorite games. Maybe Roblox’s “Recommended Games” feature was broken and you just had to comb through everything manually to get a better experience. I got a long list of the community’s favorite games as recommended to me via YouTube shorts and dove in again and found… more of the same.
Shooters with terrible graphics and physics that were begging for money. One game even allowed you to buy permanent buffs to make you stronger than the free to play players who can’t afford Roblox money.
A few of the games I couldn’t even try because you had to have an account for at least two weeks to play. What a terrible system that I was just flat out not allowed to play the game because I was new. That’s an automatic 0/10 for me, for those games. I will note this is possibly a mechanic to prevent ban evasion, so it may make logical sense, but it still left a bad experience for me, regardless of their intent.
I did play a few horror game experiences that were novel. They had cutscenes which were cool (even though I’ve seen better graphics on a PlayStation 1), and the jump scares were on par with Five Nights at Freddy’s.
So here’s the point where we would usually score the game, but as we stated earlier, there’s no way to give it a score as there are thousands of games, if not millions (a cursory Google search suggests over 8 Billion exist). This is honestly for the better, as I would probably give the game an honest 2 out of 10 for everything. The graphics are awful to look at, the stories feel like third grader writing, and the gameplay is reminiscent of a Las Vegas style casino experience.
Instead I want to focus on the bigger issues that lead me to my reccomendation that no one should play this game. Christians should avoid it and parents should guard their kids from it… here’s why:
There’s an ongoing investigation and controversy concerning pedophiles and the company protecting them. As this investigation is ongoing I want to avoid speculation and I want to avoid passing judgement until all the facts are laid bare. But I can state that the game gives adults every opportunity to be in close proximity to children and have power over them in the form of something they want dearly, which is the in-game currency ‘Robux’. This creates a very bad situation as I know there are kids willing to chat, and throw caution to the wind to obtain Robux.
The game is also copyright infringement incarnate. While the company has been sued over music use and they state they do not allow copyrighted music to be played, I am confident I heard many copyrighted songs being used most likely without permission. And every anime game is straight up stealing art and selling those arts, designs, and aspects to you the player. It seems uncharitable to support this situation.
18+ scenarios. There are games designed for adult only experiences. But I’ve seen quite a few TikToks of children beating the age verification quite easily, this means adults may knowingly or unknowingly be placed in an 18 plus space with a child. For very obvious reasons this is bad.
Gambling and abusive practices. If I didn’t harp on it enough, basically every game I played was trying desperately to get me addicted to spending money. This was worse than a Gacha Game, and that’s saying something! While we are free to spend our money on entertainment, I also question if we should support such a situation knowing there are adults and children with little self control that will bring themselves trouble on this platform.
Bullying. Maybe I’m weird for this, but I’m going to list this experience. A few of the shooters I tried, I knew I was the only adult in the lobby. One match ended with me in 1st place with 70 points and the next closest person was at 9 points.
It was obvious to me that my opponents were children… and I absolutely had no mercy and beat them. (God have mercy on me, it was for science!) But it is something to think about. There are a ton of young people on this platform that have no chance against someone older, with better reflexes and skills, and it almost feels like borderline bullying to be able to drop into an experience and just absolutely wreck them.
So adding all of these things together, I simply see no reason that anyone should ever touch this platform with a ten-foot pole. Again, it’s NOT to say that playing Roblox is inherently sinful, but why bother with it if there are better things out there?
The best case for Roblox I could think of is that it does seem to be a great way to get children interested in programing and making games themselves. However, there are many better and safer ways to learn how to code, so I don’t think that reason alone is justification.
