Roblox

 If you have children, the internet and the need for ten consecutive uninterrupted minutes to yourself; there is a good chance that you are familiar with Roblox. For the uninitiated, Roblox is an online gaming platform launched in 2004 with the sole purpose of separating parents from their money. The graphics are robust enough to support discernable customization while remaining blocky enough to allow most games to run on anything above a TI-36 graphing calculator.

The first step is to create a platform-wide avatar which follows you throughout the various gaming experiences. The default version of this avatar is referred to as a “bacon hair” and is a dead giveaway for being a “noob.” From there you can customize your character to your heart (and wallet’s) content.

Since the game concepts and design are essentially crowd-sourced, they vary wildly in content, function and quality. Roblox also bills itself as a “free” gaming experience but this is misleading at best. 

Most experiences require you to spend in-game currency called “Robux” to produce an outcome other than instantaneous failure and community ridicule.

The purchase of “Robux” is a process whereby you hand a corporation the legal tender of a sovereign nation and they, in turn, issue you a platform-wide digital currency you can use for “game enhancements.” The current exchange rate is $1 US Dollar = 100 Robux and- I cannot stress this enough- you will never see that money again. It cannot be refunded, exchanged, refurbished, transferred to another account or used to fund international terrorism. It is the equivalent of an online money-laundering machine where nothing comes out the other side.

Speaking of laundry, there is literally a game called “Laundry Simulator” whereby you walk around with a basket and gather dirty clothes to be laundered. As you progress, you are able to purchase larger and more efficient washing machines and, if you are fortunate, you might come across some “golden underwear” for bonus points. I was made aware of this game’s existence one Saturday when telling my kids to put up their actual laundry. 

They asked for five more minutes so that they could get the “upgraded laundry basket” in the game and I could not help but feel like the moment was some sort of cosmic joke. As if that title was not insulting enough, there are multiple “Room Cleaning Simulators” your child can play in lieu of cleaning their actual room. 

The themes are not limited to household chores. My daughter was visibly distraught one evening and, upon cross-examination, we discovered the source of her distress was the unrelenting pressure of managing a fictitious Roblox pizza restaurant during lunch rush. With an incredulous look on her face, she declared, “You know this is my busy time!!” I feared that after a few more days she would need to utilize the pretend employee assistance program.

For the more discerning gamer, there is an impressive selection of “pooping simulators” Some bill themselves as community pursuits (Pooping with Friends and its unironically-named sequel Pooping with Friends 2) while other offerings simply position the player’s avatar over the toilet and one is expected to tap the screen in order to produce larger excrement. As with all titles, spending Robux “enhances” your gaming experience which, in this case, would be something akin to IBS.

Disturbingly, all of my children really enjoyed the game where they ran a private prison complex. The goal was to generate revenue while keeping “inmate satisfaction” at a high level to prevent riots and a subsequent PR disaster. I was discouraged to discover that the inmate satisfaction rating was tied to the number of snack machines per capita rather than a reduction in the recidivism rate.

While I do not wish to disparage anyone who has dedicated their career to “excellence in the incarceration arts”, but who gets home after a long day and unwinds by tossing the mattresses in Cell Block C?

I cannot wait for:

• Black Market Human Organ Tycoon 

• Ultimate IRS Audit

• Chronic Childhood Anemia Simulator

• Verizon Signal Hide and Seek

• Weaponized Anthrax Role-Play

• Health Insurance Billing Obby

• Witness for the Prosecution Avatar 

• Survive the PTO Creeper

• 5 Nights at Fairfield Inn (Mattress-Stain Expansion Pass)

• Legislative Deadlock Mini-Games

• Septic Tank Water Polo

• College Benefactor Tower Defense