Minecraft / Terraria, 100%. Both games have available co-op, so they can play with their friends, and allow quite a bit of creative expression. Terraria is made by some of the best indie devs ever, if it helps, having been getting free updates for years, even though the devs said they had finished the game years ago.
For a more socially open experience, I could also recommend Sea of Thieves. It’s a game about manning a pirateship and collecting loot, where you can sometimes run into real people on their own adventures (or get your ship sunk by them, after all, they’re also pirates). There is co-op, too. A cash shop is available, but all items are strictly cosmetic, with many items available through gameplay alone.
The method to it’s madness is fairly underhanded to adults, much more so for its’ intended audience.
I wish I could find the video that did a basic deep dive on all (negative) aspects of the roblox community, from the robux, to the game makers potential for being exploited, and the oddly nft/stock market of cosmetics which are a massive fomo money sink. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t aimed at children, but because it is, that only makes the handful of bad/fringe cases even more unsettling.
It’s no big secret that kids are dumb enough to try and get robux for free from almost any link saying they can online. But the incentive is there for them to try.
Removing roblox from a kids library is a good thing for peace of mind. Plus there are plenty of other games out there to play with friends and depending on how they spent their time on roblox, it likely wouldn’t be terribly hard to match to another game within whatever genre they were playing.
Given that you’ve got some great answers already, there seems to be very few guides on how to deal with this sort of shit as a parent.
Gaming today is very different to what we grew up with, particularly microtransactions, and I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many kids spend insane amounts of money on things like FUT packs, VBucks, etc. Much of this is down to peer pressure, so saying shit like “my kid will never pay money on microtransactions” is wishful thinking.
Kids also have different attitudes on what constitutes value to them. So while parents see robux as total ripoff, kids don’t have the experience of playing a game and receiving the whole thing and not being expected to pay real money to skip the hard parts.
Kids aren’t the only ones who waste their money on frivolous gaming transactions though. Millions of adults by battlepasses for games or we wouldn’t have that crap in games either.
Yeah that’s why I let my kid do specific chores to earn money for mtx. So he has his dripfeed to support whatever costumes or other mtx he sees - but not enough to get truly addicted. Plus I have been very forward with him that the money he spends on mtx is literally worthless the moment he buys it - so I give him normal allowance at a higher rate than his small mtx earnings. My goal is to balance it out so he can have non-standard skins and not feel made fun of for it, but also not grow psychologically dependent on them like some kids.
Idk, on Android you can run Pojav Launcher, but I don’t really know much about x boxes. Probably a mistake to buy such a closed ecosystem in the first place, from the little I have heard.
At ten I was coding basic stuff and figuring out lan networks to play multiplayer games in the early 90’s. An average 10 year old is very capable of figuring out tech stuff.
Eh… Like I said, I was doing a bit more just to play with friends. I guess these days it would depend. If you did the install and introduced it as the method for launching the game I don’t think they’d even question it.
He could play minecraft with his friends on a personal server. I think making servers is easy on Minecraft Bedrock (The minecraft version available on Xbox)
Minecraft is definitely fun. I have a whole lab setup for my kids and neighbors to play minecraft and they are using Java version with curse forge so they can make endless modpacks. I think you mentioned xbox, so bedrock is definitely an option as well, but it won’t have the free flexibility that Java has.
I personally don’t think that a little gore is the end of the world, especially if you play with them. My daughter picked up D3 when she was probably 9, but I played with her and the gore just wasn’t a focus. Every kid is different though and bunch of boys probably not gonna gloss over that.
One you might consider is Fallout 76. It got a bad rap at launch, but it’s a great game and surprisingly has one of the most wholesome gaming communities ever (probably because most of the trolls gave up early on the game when pvp was mostly removed). There are options to turn down blood as well if that’s a concern.
Factorio is a great idea if you’re ok with school going to sh*t. I called factorio the „time machine“ since it could zap 12 hrs in one second. Cant remember any other game that I played till dawn in the last 20 yrs.
Roblox is an abusive platform that pressures kids into wasting real money - and that’s before mentioning how there have been MULTIPLE pedo scandals related to it.
Not constructive dude. Roblox is a bit of a cesspool, so completely understandable he wouldn’t want his kids to play. I remeber one of my kids watching what is normally a wholesome youtube streamer playing roblox and someone else came on and was like “I’m gonna show you my penis”. Roblox streams banned then an there. And you know what, my kids were slightly upset but since they were equally shocked as well after our convo they understood why. We had a talk about why roblox is different than minecraft in that respect and that was it. I still allow my kids to play “violent and bloody” games if they like because they are able to focus past that aspect. If they couldn’t, it might be a different conversation. And it would be just thst, a conversation not an ultimatum.
Sea of thieves is great, but only plays 4 at any given time. It also has alcohol and some T rated violence, but it depends on what your boundaries are for the kids.
Hello, fellow pirate! I would argue nobody could actually take the violence on Sea of Thieves as being T-rated - it’s a bunch of goofy, heavily deformed people fighting with swords that don’t draw blood.
This is a good suggestion. I like this game as well. There’s a lot of customization that can be done without paying extra for it, but I am an old fart and don’t care to have all that crap in my game. Give everyone the same pair of pants and lets go. Time to go change the onion on my belt.
Pokemon? Despite many of its flaws, it encourages honest trading amongst friends, it is a classic JRPG, and has no microtransaction. You can play it on emulator if you don’t have a switch
bin.pol.social
Gorące