Roblox, Building Out the Metaverse, Looks To Bring Educational Videogames To Schools (wsj.com) 40
Roblox plans to help bring educational videogames to classrooms world-wide, part of its strategy to expand its mostly teen and preteen user base and play a role in the next evolution of the internet known as the metaverse. From a report: Roblox, based in San Mateo, Calif., is expected to announce Monday that it has invested $10 million to help develop three games for middle-school, high-school and college students. Roblox, which is on mobile devices, computers and Microsoft's Xbox system, had more than 47 million daily users in the third quarter, about half of whom are under the age of 13.
"It's been a vision since we started the company over 16 years ago to have these types of experiences," Roblox Chief Executive David Baszucki told The Wall Street Journal. "We've always had that educational background in mind." One of the games the company is funding will teach robotics, another will focus on space exploration, and the third will help students explore careers and concepts in computer science, engineering and biomedical science. They were developed by nonprofits including Boston's Museum of Science, and one was made in partnership with a small educational game studio. Roblox's platform already features millions of games and other activities, all of which are made by its own users, though only a few were designed for classrooms. The three games it is funding, due out next year, won't offer any virtual goods for sale.
"It's been a vision since we started the company over 16 years ago to have these types of experiences," Roblox Chief Executive David Baszucki told The Wall Street Journal. "We've always had that educational background in mind." One of the games the company is funding will teach robotics, another will focus on space exploration, and the third will help students explore careers and concepts in computer science, engineering and biomedical science. They were developed by nonprofits including Boston's Museum of Science, and one was made in partnership with a small educational game studio. Roblox's platform already features millions of games and other activities, all of which are made by its own users, though only a few were designed for classrooms. The three games it is funding, due out next year, won't offer any virtual goods for sale.
Wow.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The push around the word 'metaverse' is perhaps the fastest to be intolerably obnoxious to me.
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. We are living in an age of excessively repulsive bullshit.
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait till Slashdot goes meta.
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Hmm, metadot.org redirects to emacswiki.org.
If only emacs had a decent editor ... /s
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If only emacs had a decent editor ... /s
I'm pretty sure the same could be said about Slashdot...
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Personally, I love it.
Few of them realize they're borrowing the word from a dystopic parody.
It is deliciously hilarious.
In the meantime, Roblox has a great system for developers, and is a real tool for building virtual worlds now, using computers that people already own.
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Snow Crash was a dystopian novel, but not because of the Metaverse. The dystopian part was governments having collapsed and been replaced by corporations. The Metaverse wasn't dystopian, just really cool.
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Don't worry. When the real one comes along, it'll be dystopian in the extreme. It's the only way our reality allows anything to exist.
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Partially correct. Especially if you read the story as an adventure novel.
If you read it as a commentary on business, technology, and government, then perhaps the combination of being highly commercialized and unregulated creates a different lens. Many of the people using it are somewhere in between Wall-E and the Matrix. That isn't really explored in the plot of the story, but it is hinted at.
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Reminds me of the time circa-2000 when everything was 'cyber.'
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Just call it MetaStasi instead, taking the "Stasi" from the former GDR state surveillance ministry and the whole world from the festering cancer that it is.
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They just copypasted it from Snowcrash instead of actually inventing it.
I wonder if we can copy the laser screens as well, i bet you can make some sort of laser raster screen with the same advantages of the CRT tubes.
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Let's encourage its use then. The more people use "metaverse" and the more people screw it up, the more negative we can put on Meta/Facebook's offering.
Poisoning the well, so to speak - if we get people turned off metaverse, then Facebook's attempt at taking over the world could be stymied before it even starts.
Heck, maybe we can use it destroy Meta as well.
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I kept wondering what was gonna replace "cloud" as the most obnoxious techie bauble. I can't wait until our managers are all salivating over how to leverage the metaverse to increase our business. Argh.
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Don't worry, you still have the whole Blockchain/NFT cringe to go thru first
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Yeah, that one hasn't gotten to the woodworking industry yet. Not much appeal when you deal with physical items. Cloud was the last buzzfest the boss hopped on. I'm sure with our brand spankin' new marketing director that loves all tech we'll be rambling about the metaverse within a month or two.
The dystopia is not so "meta" (Score:2)
We are turning into blobs
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It's inevitable, ever seen wally?
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No, but I did read this [cuny.edu] (caution, pdf)
Budget (Score:2)
That budget it $10 million higher then the budget for the typical Roblox game.
roblox (Score:4, Interesting)
Roblox creates addiction issues for kids. Most of their massive revenue comes from children. My kids beg for robux so they can get the latest outfit or digital gear for their avatar.
Why would we want this in schools? This is just an attempt by roblox to cement themselves into our kids lives.
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When I was a kid I got a certain amount of allowance, and begging didn't work so I didn't do it.
Stop blaming Roblox.
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Your parents were always on the same page, lucky you.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Roblox designed their 'game' to addictive to children, this is a decision by Roblox and its fine if I'm against that.
Other than trying to call me out, maybe you could try to explain why it would be a good idea to put an addictive products in schools for children to use. Should we give kids slot machines too?
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Are you even a parent? Probably just a smug asshole, otherwise definitely a helicopter parent.
Its important for kids to have unsupervised time and learn some things on their own. We cannot constantly be there to help and guide them, and its unhealthy if we do that. My kids are doing just fine. Saying 'Roblox drives addiction issues in kids' is clearly not the same as saying 'my kids are addicted to roblox'. That I say No to robux should show you that I care and I that I do help guide my kids - I'm not
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>>> Are you even a parent? Probably just a smug asshole, otherwise definitely a helicopter parent.
I am a parent. I play Roblox with my kids and with others. My wife teaches robotics at middle school, and her students would love to use Roblox instead of microbits or something else. We give our kids Robux for things like chores. You don't need to be a helicopter parent to spend time with your kids and participate in their reality, and Roblox is kinda fun. There are addictive and bad games out there,
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There is a difference between simply being a commercial product and being a commercial product specifically built to keep children engaged as much as possible and get kids excited about buying digital goods based on artificial scarcity. If Roblox is the key to 21st century skills then humanity is doomed. Roblox is free in the same way your first hit of crack is free. Its only an opportunity for Roblox, its an opportunity to waste time or get an easy A for kids. You pay for those 'free' things in one way
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Roblox: cesspool of fraud & bad parental contr (Score:2)
The problem is Roblox is marketed heavily towards children and there's no
You can learn a lot from Roblox (Score:2)
Mostly how to work around crappy security and weakly enforced rules, and how to manipulate a system to benefit yourself the most. A valuable skill for future leaders.
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You can also learn persistence:
1) Your kid buys Robux on Android, but doesn't get them.
2) Notify the Play Store, then find out your kid's Roblox account was banned for wanting to get what he paid for.
3) Spend the next week arguing with the dipshits on the Roblox Customer Disservice Line that their response was absurd.
4) Finally get your kid's account restored.
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Initially I was skeptical that Robolox could really teach anything of use. It sounds like they are preparing children for future IT service desk jobs.
Did he get a ServiceNow ticket?
This is just great (Score:2)
that roblox is helping kids get sucked into facebooks metaverse. No better way to get kids hooked on a new product than introducing it at school. Facebook is scared that they will lose kids, because nobody likes their platform right now.
Re: This is just great (Score:2)
Think of it as the guy smashing parking meters, and always chanting racist propaganda while walking down the street, then deciding to hold a bake sale.
Facebook fucked up royally, the bad press about them seems neverending, and right now even their attempts at do gooding is seen as having an ulterior motive.
Again... (Score:2)
Re: Again... (Score:2)
Minecraft seems to be doing well as a LOGO replacement for schools.
Let's face it, LOGO and the green "turtle", which had us Gen-X'ers enthralled in the early 80s would be more boring than watching paint dry for Gen-Z and beyond.
I just hope we don't see a bunch of Mee Too products flood this market, confusing teachers and students alike. Roblox getting in on this market is the start of it.
Mee too (Score:2)
Obviously Roblox wants to get in on the Minecraft education edition racket.
So brace for a bunch of "Mee Too!"s from other companies.