indie game dev burnout glitchless any% WR speedrun

August 19, 2021 11:34 AM

Quintin Smith takes a look at how Roblox works.
posted by theodolite (35 comments total)

This is a really eye-opening piece. I knew that Roblox existed, but not that its valuation was based primarily on child labor paid in company script.

The poor kid developer sounding like a jaded industry veteran broke me a little.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:14 PM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

Users creating content that mostly make the platform money? Power law attention economy? "Company town" governance and economic model? Yep, sounds like the Internet.

And yet: Minecraft and many other games showed that there is a profitable business model that both encourages creativity and community without exploitation. Perhaps the key is not trying to turn 11 year olds into capitalists?
posted by gwint at 12:19 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

It's interesting because my 12 year old son is a committed Roblox developer. And, yes, it's like YouTube, TikTok or virality on the Internet in general as far as getting attention and audiences for his games. He's actually made a small amount of money, to the order of hundreds of dollars, but not enough to actually cash out yet.

On the other hand, he's making games. He's learned Lua and is doing advanced scripting. When I was his age, I was programming low res Tic Tac Toe games in BASIC. He's doing far more advanced stuff, and his friends can all come and play it.

Plus, because all the young kids play Roblox, it's cool that he's making games rather than it being nerdy and uncool.

Yes, the executives at Roblox are making money on child labor, but the children laboring really are doing something out of fun, excitement and love, and it can potentially lead to a lifelong interest in development, which I think is a good thing.
posted by MythMaker at 12:32 PM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]

Yes, the executives at Roblox are making money on child labor, but

Imma stop you right there
posted by biogeo at 1:05 PM on August 19, 2021 [43 favorites]

This was very interesting. Of course I've heard of Roblox, and seen kids in public spaces playing it on their phones, but I didn't really know much about it. The video talked about this being exploitative in terms of illegal practices like child labor and payment in company scrip, but another theoretically-illegal business model that some of the things made me think of, which I don't think was explicitly called out, was the pyramid scheme / multi-level marketing scam. MLMs like Amway or Herbalife typically use a few "celebrity" top-earners as a key part of their marketing strategy to pull people in and keep people engaged even once they start losing money. The company and the top-earners jointly have a mutualistic relationship that allows them to more effectively parasitize the majority of the victims of the scam: they point to the top-earners' success as evidence that the scheme actually works and it's possible to make money working for the MLM, while hiding the fact that the top-earners actually earn most or all of their income from mechanisms not available to the majority of the MLM participants. The really successful top-earners help advance the scam by giving motivational speeches describing how they had to persevere through a long period of struggle before finally achieving success. Thus, the majority of individuals, the victims of the scam, can be convinced when they lose money that they just need to wait it out and keep investing in the scam, and eventually they too will find success. Of course, in many cases, the bulk of the income from these supposed top-earners actually comes from the speaking fees that the MLM pays them at these events.

While it's not clear that Roblox actually constitutes an MLM scam, it certainly seems to share this particular feature with them in how it showcases its young top developers at conferences and such.
posted by biogeo at 1:24 PM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was also trying to code games with my friends when I was that age (Atari 800!) and we probably did genuinely think we were gonna get rich from it (or at the very least, get some sweet box cover art) so I agree the line between having fun and being exploited is kind of blurry here. I think where the line seems to have been crossed with Roblox is how front and center kids seem to be pushed towards what amounts to the ponzi scheme elements of the platform's economic model.

(on preview, also what biogeo said)
posted by gwint at 1:27 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I mean, what nerdy, computery kid doesn't want to make games for themselves and their friends, and harbor a secret or not-that-secret desire to make money from it? The difference of course is that when I was 12 and started my "software company" selling AppleScript and HyperCard (I was a Mac kid) games to my friends on floppy disks, no one was telling me I could get rich doing it if I just gave them a bunch of my own money first.

Kids need the freedom to experiment with all kinds of things, including bad ideas like capitalism, without adults trying to exploit their youthful explorations.
posted by biogeo at 1:34 PM on August 19, 2021 [7 favorites]

Here for all Quinns content. My experience with Roblox is mostly just going to any library with computers and seeing the horde of children who have taken them over to play.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:04 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

And Quintin has a sweet set of game shelves. Clearly a Knizia fan!
posted by Windopaene at 3:34 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Quintin is also The Anchor over at Blaseball Roundup! That was actually the first place I saw him!
posted by JHarris at 3:52 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yes, the executives at Roblox are making money on child labor, but the children laboring really are doing something out of fun, excitement and love, and it can potentially lead to a lifelong interest in development, which I think is a good thing.

It also teaches them a lesson about exploitation.
posted by JHarris at 3:53 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

He's actually made a small amount of money, to the order of hundreds of dollars, but not enough to actually cash out yet.

It's pretty nuts that they're allowed to owe a kid even like ten bucks and not be required to send it out worthwith. When I delivered newspapers, I got a check every couple weeks, even if the amounts were small.
posted by StarkRoads at 3:54 PM on August 19, 2021 [7 favorites]

Well, he has the Robux. He can spend them inside the Roblox ecosystem to his heart's content. It's cashing out that's tricky. You have to have the $5/month subscription, plus you need to have made essentially $1000 over time.

It's high, but YouTube ads, for example, only pay out once you've made over $100. So the idea that there's a threshold that must be crossed is hardly original.

I think the issue is that this is being thought of as money being paid to children. It probably would be simpler if it were impossible for minors to cash out at all. It's more like getting tokens at the arcade that can be traded in for prizes. It's closer to that, in practice, for the kids.
posted by MythMaker at 4:01 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm all in favor of kids developing games, learning to program and just play but holy shit that business model is something very obviously game theoried and designed to death to make money off of false promises in exchanged for real work from kids.

One of the most difficult or depressing things I've had to deal with in my life is the weltschmerz of seeing the amazing promises of the early internet and computers and reconciling what people have actually done with it in the 30-40+ years since then, and addressing the blind spot that came with it or caused the cognitive dissonance.

I never was able to imagine something like this where a game platform uses so many dark patterns to use concepts like game theory, UI/UX design and economic design to do this sort of thing while playing with the definitions of "profitable company" using funny Hollywood accounting to double or triple-dip in the wholly designed economy and platfotm

I've made a lot of "jokes" and comments over the years about being in a second Gilded Age based on silicon instead of steam power but WTF.

This isn't kids playing with Lego. This looks like adults playing kids, to use slang and vernacular for getting ripped off.
posted by loquacious at 4:29 PM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

There's a difference between YouTube's $100 minimum payout and Roblox's $1,000. I have done some very involved analysis for you, and determined that the difference is $900.

Thing is, that difference makes it predatory because getting to 100,000 points is impossibly harder, especially for an 11 year old child, as it locks the money in Roblox, enriching the billionaire CEO. This isn't a system where you'll reach that $1,000 with just a bit more work, like clocking hours at an hourly job, but that going viral and earning points is essentially random for lone developers. It's a nefarious scheme by the company, and should be lower. Even $100 is too high, imo.
posted by fragmede at 5:10 PM on August 19, 2021 [10 favorites]

Roblox? You mean that Roblox? I can't imagine why we'd trust them with money.
posted by prismatic7 at 6:20 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

wow this just keeps getting better and by that i mean fuck this company another one for the bonfire
posted by glonous keming at 6:39 PM on August 19, 2021

>And Quintin has a sweet set of game shelves. Clearly a Knizia fan!

Oh yes, he very much is -- his channel Shut Up & Sit Down is the best boardgame review channel on youtube, for my money.
posted by rifflesby at 10:05 PM on August 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

Ah, have heard of SU&SD, but I don't watch boardgame reviews on youtube, so was unaware it was the same dude.
posted by Windopaene at 10:33 PM on August 19, 2021

Also, as the video notes, the minimum threshold to cash out is $1000, but the actual MONEY you get after cashing out at the minimum is $350 due to rapacious exchange rates. So you have to make $1000 in revenue before you get the privilege of cashing out $350, and you will never, ever see the remaining $650.

And again, the biggest problem is that if you're an adult, you can at least make informed decisions about all of these policies and decide if it's worth it to participate in the platform or not. But we're talking about children. As the game design prof/labour organizer in the video mentions, he's introducing young adults to the concept that your boss may have interests that diverge from your own as a worker, and that's mind-blowing to some of them. Why would we expect ten-year-olds to have a fully-formed consciousness of labour dynamics, and to make healthy choices accordingly?

"The question of whether or not it's possible to do labour organizing with children is a really bizarre question."
posted by chrominance at 8:57 AM on August 20, 2021 [8 favorites]

In the 80s we became ungovernable by pirating every floppy we could get our hands during middle school Computer Club (gotta get there early to snag the 128K machine) but we ended up causing independent creators to ragequit the industry after their first game, since our emergent method of distribution was an order of magnitude more efficient than existing retail networks. We were getting high on our own supply, but we were also doing unpaid promotion for the computer manufacturers, because a ready supply of five-finger-discounted software was good for their bottom line. So it goes.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:08 AM on August 20, 2021

John Carmack retweeted the video, saying he was "impressed with the number of economic and business issues" Roblox was introducing his young son to, without seeming to realize that the issues that were the point of the video were bad.
posted by JHarris at 9:27 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

"The question of whether or not it's possible to do labour organizing with children is a really bizarre question."

We have an answer... in musical form! (The World Will Know - Newsies)
posted by persona at 9:43 AM on August 20, 2021

John Carmack also has a response to people who think he missed the point of the video. Basically, he disagrees and thinks it's better for his children to be grappling with all of this bullshit because of the opportunities.
posted by chrominance at 10:06 AM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: The weltschmerz of seeing the amazing promises of the early internet and computers and reconciling what people have actually done with it in the 30-40+ years since then

No, the real Metafilter...

Metafilter: One of the most difficult or depressing things I've had to deal with in my life

Perfection.
posted by swr at 10:10 AM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

It’s a different angle on the industry, but Alex Pareene’s review at The Nation (paywalled, good luck) of Jason Scheier’s Press Reset is a fine overview of many of the systematic labor issues in the games industry.

Man, I do wish there were more reporting on Roblox and the labor angle! Thanks, Quinns. The last time I saw it mentioned in mass media, it was Gene Park discussing how video game reportage needs to be better because you still got articles about how “Oh no, kids are playing video games too much!” and “Oh no, the violence!” The real story -“Oh no! The child labor!” has just been sitting out there the entire time.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:17 AM on August 20, 2021

Such a bunch of negative nellies. I think it's great these kids are developing skills and abilities and experience. Maybe 10-15 years from now when they're working for a AAA developer and are abruptly fired (While the CEO pockets millions) or the VFX house they work for collapses they'll feel a sweet glow of nostalgia as they get fucked over
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:33 AM on August 20, 2021 [4 favorites]

Agreed. I think it's an amazing opportunity for the kids. It's no different from TikTok making billions off of unpaid labor of video creators or Twitter making billions off of unpaid labor of folks typing away.

It's a social platform.
posted by MythMaker at 1:49 PM on August 20, 2021

I think it is valuable for people to learn early on about the realities of capitalism, and that your interests often do not align with the interests of people who might be doing business with, and how to figure out if you're getting a decent deal. It can be valuable for people to learn useful skills, particularly if those skills are transferable and are in sufficient demand by the market. But surely there's a better way to teach these lessons than having a for-profit corporation exploit children by pitching them the dream of making it big as an indie dev within their predatory online company town.

Another perspective: there's probably a hazy line for where you can say "child labour". Like, suppose a kid (or anyone really) starts playing an MMO. Maybe initially they're having fun from the moment-to-moment experience of playing the game. If their mindset becomes "i want to get the best gear", "i want to be higher level than my friends", the actual activity of playing the game can become very goal focused and not actually fun. Closer to a job, but a job where you get paid in virtual items or in-game status that have no value outside of the game. But maybe you're still paying a monthly subscription & providing content for other players. If the player is a child, would this be termed child labour? Many attention / addiction / "grind" based games seem pretty gross, I would not be particularly bothered if many such addictive but often genuinely unfun games were classified as "soliciting child labour" or so on and regulated away.

As a kid/teenager, I spent a lot of time trying to make games, with no interest in making money or idea how to monetize what I was doing. I spent time learning how to use proprietary level editors for quake or unreal & so-on -- in some sense I was doing unpaid labour generating free content that potentially could help the game developers sell more copies of their game. But I wasn't doing that because the game developer had sold me on the bullshit dream of "make custom unreal levels and you too can be a successful rich gamedev", I was just doing it for fun. So there's probably some pretty hard lines that could be drawn -- and then regulated.

For me, the time spent trying to make games that really paid off in terms of actual career value later in life was learning how to write code and build stuff in hard non-proprietary programming languages -- instead of physics classes and trig classes in highshcool being full of boring unrelatable nonsense, physics and trig classes were very interesting to me and useful -- knowing the math is necessary if you're trying to build your own collision detection logic in C++ or java or whatever for your hobby 2D action game. One of the other issues with viewing something like roblox as an educational way for young people to learn useful skills while creating games is that the platform has already solved and productised a lot of the hard problems, so it's not like you're going to have 13 year olds accidentally learning to build physics engines or write multiplayer netcode by investing a bunch of time and money in roblox.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:49 PM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Agreed. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for the kids. It's no different from TikTok making billions off of unpaid labor of video creators or Twitter making billions off of unpaid labor of folks typing away.

It’s a social platform.

Is this sarcasm? I can’t tell. Either way, it seems kind of wrong on the face. I can’t really speak to TikTok, but as a Twitter user I can’t say it’s been sold to me as a way to directly make money from my garbage tweets. (If anything, the problem for these companies is that influencers develop independent revenue streams via merchandising/patreon/substack/whatever, thus limiting the platform’s control.) Roblox appears to be directly telling people to make games because it can earn them some cash bucks. Further, the developers in the video are explicitly saying they don’t think kids should make games - something that goes against what Roblox the company is telling kids to do. Nobody ever tells people to not make garbage teets because it’s going to make them feel discouraged abut making money from their tweets.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:12 PM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Agreed. I think it's an amazing opportunity for the kid

Indeed. "It's time our children got the wake-up call that's been coming to them," Weldon continued. "It's time they cried their precious little eyes out."
posted by Pyrogenesis at 4:40 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the thing about Carmack's statement is, he's saying it's fine if this company exploits his kid, because it'll teach him something about companies. Which, I mean, most parents want to teach their kids by giving them wisdom rather than hard experience. They haven't exploited me, and they won't, because I've read about what they're doing.

Maybe Carmack is remembering the years he spent selling his work on a for-hire basis for Softdisk Publishing? (I mean, I did that once too, but on more of a freelance basis? He was an employee.)
posted by JHarris at 3:46 PM on August 21, 2021

Y'know, Unity is free for low-revenue use and itch.io will let you pick the size of their cut. The learning curve is higher but the odds are way, way better.
posted by suetanvil at 9:36 AM on August 23, 2021

Yes, but the learning curve is significantly higher. Part of it is that Unity is much more flexible, but it is also a lot more obtuse, and the fact that Roblox has so much many more users suggests a huge untapped market for easy-to-use game development tools.
posted by JHarris at 9:36 AM on August 24, 2021

The video makes a good point that roblox devs don’t get transferable skills, but in complaining about how bad Roblox is at paying out there isn’t really a detailed discussion of the benefits/ease of developing for Roblox relative to making a game distributed via Steam or Epic. (It’s touched on, but not really broken down.) I’m not saying that Roblox shouldn’t be paying out more, but rather that It’s definitely providing something of value to novice developers and that value should be discussed.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:17 AM on August 25, 2021 [2 favorites]