What is Roblox? Well, it’s honestly millions of things packed into one tiny little video game. More specifically, Roblox is an Imagination Platform that allows millions of players to come together online and develop and play tons of 3D games online. In fact, the game is so large that there are millions of players online who can each interact and work together with one another – this is actually one of the things that we’ll be going over in this article. A brief overview of the things we’ll touch on are:
- The game’s history
- Parental Advice concerning child safety
- Fun facts about the game
Without further ado, let’s get into what exactly makes Roblox the game that it is today.
Video of Roblox game gameplay
*let’s also not forget that this game was made well after the initial arcade game era – it’s more so a participant in another gaming era.
History
*To switch things up for this article we’ve decided to take another approach to lay out the history of the game. Let us know if this works well for you in the comments.
The utter beginning
Before we go into the bullet points behind Roblox’s creation and uprising it’s best for us to give a brief overview of the game. In 1989, the company Knowledge Revolution was founded – a company that focused very heavily on the creation of mechanical and physics simulation technology – by David Baszucki. This was also the same period when the creation of Interactive Physics, a basic physics simulator was created. This company was held by Baszucki for roughly 9 years (1998) and had grown to also hold Erik Cassel and Keith Lucas.
10 years later, in 1999, Knowledge Revolution was acquired for 20$ million by MSC Software Corp.
In 2004, the then VP of MSC David Baszucki and Erik Cassel left to begin Roblox. In the interim (or in 2003, they had begun to build the game’s platform by purchasing GoBlocks.com and renaming it to DynaBlocks.com). That’s where the journey of Roblox officially started.
The brief, updated version
1989 Interactive Physics: This was the year when the popular game Roblox was first originated. Interactive Physics, a platform created by Knowledge Revolution was a major influence behind the creation of Roblox.
2003 Dynablocks: In 2003 Dynablocks, the original name of Roblox was registered.
2005 Dynablocks transformation: On June 24th 2005 the game Dynablocks was changed to Roblox and was released to the public – this was also the version with minigames where players could earn points from. The name change occurred because they found that the name Dynablocks was a bit of a challenge to remember.
2006 Roblox upgrade: Roblox was upgraded to allow for multiplayer gaming and for private messaging between other players.
2007 Walking Roblox: This update allowed Robloxians (the inhabitants of the game) to look like they were walking – it also allowed them to customize their clothing.
2008 Roblox events: This update basically introduced events to the game (such as olympics and easter egg hunts).
2011 Roblox commercial: In 2011 the first commercial for Roblox was introduced. This was also the year that made it so that Google Chrome supported the game.
2012 100,000 players!: This was the first year when you could find more than 100,000 players on the servers at a single time – meaning that the game had gotten very popular by this time period.
2016 New Avatars: This one was kind of funny actually. In 2016 new avatar concepts were released but quickly withdrawn when Roblox realized that people didn’t like them.
2017 Popular gaming page: This update basically showed that the four popular games on the site – Jailbreak, MEEP CITY, Whatever float your boat, and Phantom Forces – were altered.
How do you play Roblox?
Roblox goes over all of the same things that other standard games go over. When you first sign up for Roblox you’re told to create a username that really isn’t your real name. You’re also asked the standard things such as your birth date and your gender as well as to create a password.
The game is very much like a social network in that you’re able to create a feed as well have friends and view the games you play. You are also able to join groups and view the badges you win during gameplay.
After you create your account and answer the standard questions (such as gender, username, age, etc.) you’ll be asked to visit the game’s forums, join groups, and invite others to the game by Builderman or the CEO of Roblox.
After you do this you’ll be able to select a game to play. In the game, you’ll be able to see the other players involved in the game in the right corner of the screen.
You will also have access to the chat box in the left-hand corner of the screen (you’ll also be able to Private message other characters).
Parental Advice
Even though Roblox is meant for people 18+ it is still accessible to children (you’ll actually see kids as young as the age of 9 enjoying the game, which makes sense considering the nature of it). With that in mind, you still want to make sure that you pay attention to a few things to make sure that your kids (and your wallet are safe during gameplay).
If you’re a parent and you know that your child will be playing Roblox you have the option of restricting your child’s social restrictions. You do this by following the steps below:
- Log into your child’s account
- Go into the account settings (it’s going to look like a gear icon)
- Choose privacy settings
- Look at the choices the account has for contact settings as well as at other settings on the account. The next choice would be to choose between No One, Friends, or Account Restrictions (to control who your child can connect with on the account).
Other considerations
When your child first starts playing Roblox it’s advised that you stay near them to monitor their behavior. This is the only way that you can make sure that you know exactly what kind of games your child is playing and how they’re interacting with the other users.
Actually play Roblox with your child to see exactly what kind of experiences your child has during gameplay.
You also want to know exactly what rules Roblox has in regards to player interactions (or the guiding principles). Going over these with your child will probably help them gain an understanding of what they should and shouldn’t do during gameplay. The best way to handle this is to frame it like a discussion – as that will help keep your child receptive of the information you’re giving him/her. Yo also want to make your child aware of the responsibilities that come with the freedom of playing the game. Along with this it helps to lay out the consequences that come with breaking these rules.
Understand that you can also block anyone on the game manually if the moderators aren’t able to be aware of the violations that are going on during gameplay. If you aren’t able to see everything that’s going on while your child is playing the game another option would be to ask your child o make you aware of any issues they experience while playing the game.
To block:
In-game blocking os one by finding the user on the leader/player list that’s located in the upper right corner of the screen and clicking block user.
Website or mobile app blocking is done by visiting the problem players’ profile and pressing the 3 dots in the upper rightmost corner of the screen and choosing to block the user.
To report:
To report in game you want to click on the menu button located in the upper left-hand side of the screen. To report, the next step would be to click on the flag in the left-hand side of the screen (or clicking on the report tab) and filling out the form.
To report on the website you want to click on the “Report Abuse” link found near the bottom of the description box and filling out the form.
Parental Controls are also available on the game and come in the form of a 4 digit code that must be entered before players are allowed to make any changes to an account. To find these controls you would have to click on the gear in the upper right-hand corner of the site. When you’re using these you want to make sure that you’re using them in a way that would allow them to do certain things.
Make sure you understand that Hacking is another thing that can/ not often but can happen when you’re playing Roblox. There are actually times where hacking can occur via bad code that’s injected into games. Make sure that your kid is aware that they can definitely run into things like this and that they should be wary and report any suspicious activity to Roblox officials.
Protect your personal information and passwords. As with anything you want to make sure that your child is aware of the fact that they shouldn’t be giving away any private information or any type of password as they don’t’ usually know who or what it is that they’re interacting with on the platform. Even when they do know who they’re interacting with they still want to make sure that they’re keeping things that should be private, private. Why? Well, they can get their Robux (Roblox cash) stolen from their account. Also, make sure that your kids don’t fall for the common “Free Robux” scam where they will basically be tricked into giving away personal information. Also, note that all chats and posts are filtered to keep personal information from being spread.
Make sure that your child is aware of the fact that they shouldn’t be answering any overly personal questions or taking “free” Robux. Why? Well, certain types of online people will encourage your child to “meet” with them or speak with them on other more socially friendly platforms. Let your child know that they should speak to you about any weird requests like this. *often times we think that most “weird” requests come from adults but, there are also times when your child’s peers will contact, harass, and bother your child (*this also goes for bullying).
To play this game online you can go here
https://www.roblox.com/?v=rc&rbx_source=22&rbx_medium=cpa&rbx_campaign=26674
Fun Facts about Roblox
- 90 Million people play Roblox monthly
- People play a cumulative amount of 1 billion hours of Roblox monthly
- There have 175 million downloads
- There are 4 million Roblox creators
- Roblox has 400 employees
- The average number of user visits by players 13 and under is 25.5 VPM
- The Average number of visits by players ages 13-17 is 26.9 VPM
- The peak activity levels for Roblox 1.7 million players
- Roblox has paid roughly $41 million to community creators to this date
- The revenue Roblox has received from mobile to this date $486 Million
- Roblox has managed to receive $185 Million in funding to this date
- Roblox is valued at 2.5 M billion dollars
- There were 552 million dollars worth of items obtained in 2018
- There were 34.3 billion games played in 2018
- 10 billion hours of Roblox were played in 2018
- There are 600 Roblox Moderators
- Roblox projected to pay out $30 million to creators in 2017
- There were 40 million games created by the ROblox community
Conclusion
That’s pretty much it for Roblox. If you have any questions or information you feel can be included in the review feel free to either message it to us or leave a comment under the post. We’ll be sure to add it if it’s relevant.
This information was taken from Wikipedia
Resources:
https://roblox.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_Roblox