The day ROBLOX Died

 The king is dead

Even those of us who have abstained from the Internet's favourite passtime has heard the stories of the ROBLOX supremacy. A online infrastructure that appears to have existed forever and, indeed, even surpasses Minecraft in it's legacy. I think it's fair to say that no one really knows where the game came from, but practically all have heard of it today, as the defacto raising tool for most children to teach them that the world is full of opportunities for their hard work to be exploited by lazier and smarter adults. I can't even say I recall the time in history when ROBLOX levelled up from being a game and into an empire, it slipped under my nose before I could even see it happening, one day it just became a fact of life that we all just laughed about and pretended we always knew it was there. And I, amazingly, never actually played the thing myself when I was a kid. I didn't know it existed. Thank god too; with the amount of 'free game' scouring I did all over the Internet back in my youth, ROBLOX would have swallowed me up and spit away the key.

ROBLOX began life all the way back in 2006, or 2005 for the beta, or 2004 for the founding of the company. It began with the name DYNABLOX, probably in reverence to the 'dynamic game engine' that the game was philosophically founded upon. And, to my utmost surprise, the original beta for the game looked utterly primitive compared to the game today. I mean visually. Yes, that visual palette which looks like it originated from the early 2000's is actually an updated look for the game over the years as it became what it is today! I know many long-running games get visual overhauls, but usually they endeavour to improve the palette of the game to make it more modern or chic, but I guess ROBLOX always valued it's ability to run on every chunk of hardware more than how it looked, and even in it's later years they never wanted to lose that avid ZX Spectrum fanbase. The game changed many development hands, got picked up by a few visionary corporations who sought a monopoly over the kids market and the rest is history.

Which is to say, the rest has been a history of fraught and questionable relationships between ROBLOX proper and the child labour it relies on to make it's user base happy. Because ROBLOX is very much an engine for minigame creation using their proprietary interactive game engine. Hop on the ingame tools and you can build anything into a game for others to form a community around. I would say "Anything within reason", but due to the utterly non-existent moderation by the ROBLOX owners, as well as the questionability of letting kids make anything without oversight, most of ROBLOX is decidedly unreasonable. I knew this all the way back in 2013 when my investigations uncovered an entire community dedicated to roleplaying key positions within British Parliament in their own facsimile of central London. Why? I can't say. But it was real. And, of course, if you searched deep enough there were less wholesome games too.

I can't pretend to know enough about ROBLOX to know the details about their seedier elements, all I can recount are anecdotal tales I've heard of NSFW themed games, which boggles the mind knowing the palate that creatives are working with on ROBLOX; but I guess that's the power of imagination, right? (Who am I kidding; there's some increadibly popular NSFW games nowadays that are totally text based browser games; I shouldn't be shocked.) These have caused some scandal over the years and even a few PR disasters when the ROBLOX main office have turned blind eyes to the sorts of environments frequented almost entirely by children. Seems they wanted the audience without the responsibilities. But no scandal has stuck with them enough to hurt the giant. But if there is one slap across the face that not even ROBLOX will withstand, it's the murder of their most iconic element; The 'Oof' sound.

Arguably even more famous than ROBLOX itself, the 'Oof' sound affect holds it's origins in the genesis of mankind. Ashurbanipal, king of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the 660's BC is recounted as having delivered the first Oof when locked in mortal hand-to-hand combat with a deathly lion. Of course, Ashurbanipal is also noticed as one of the very first recorded sources of propaganda, so it's very possible that such an 'Oof' may in reality have been uttered by someone else entirely, or mayhaps even the lion itself. Certain translations of the ancient Hebrew texts that make up the commonly recognised 'old testament' accredit such a sound, or something similar, being spoken by a dying Abel as Cain bashed his melon in with a rock. But studying the work of Milton's Paradise Lost has presented a recanonisation of the sound to an even earlier mythical event, as the sound made by Satan when he hit the ground after getting yeeted out of heaven. Perhaps the true origins will forever remain mysterious.

If you ask the plebs around the 'normal spheres' you'll be told that the noise actually originates from a former composer for the game, Tommy Tallarico, and that ROBLOX has run into issues with Tommy for years over the use of that sound byte. Apparently there was a kerfuffle quite some years back which rendered the sound a premium commodity that ROBLOX creators had to pay a little fee in order to licence use in their games. Such a fee was only a temporary solution, it would seem, because after all this time ROBLOX proper have come and pulled the plug entirely on that classic noise in order to replace it with the sound of a man sneezing caught on laughable bad audio equipment. At least that's my best guess on this replacement, it's almost terrible enough to become iconic all on it's own, to be honest.

And to think that this all happened because the ludicrously profitable people over at ROBLOX simply refused to pay the fee to buy the sounds rights; which were reportedly no more than $10,000. That's- criminally underpriced given how famous the sound byte in question is; and it really speaks to how desperately petty the ROBLOX team is that they didn't want to part from literally pocket change over this issue. They'd rather take the substantial hit to public perception than settle an infinitesimal amount over this. At this point it's pretty clear that it wouldn't matter to them if this was $1000, or $100, or 10 cents; they just didn't want to give anyone else the satisfaction of winning; because when you make a children's game for so very long I suppose the target demographic can start to rub off on you.

Oof is hardly the most serious scandal that ROBLOX has faced over the years. Afterall, they're well known for exploiting the talents of their children player base for profit and totally wiping their hands of the safe guarding jobs required to keep that player base safe from dubious and harmful entitles. They just can't be bothered to trouble themselves with literally anything that makes them look like a somewhat standup company; but they've been doing this for so long that they could literally be sacrificing their children audience to the devil and still be making a mint doing it. In the world of Ubisoft's and Call of Duty's; ROBLOX is the one demon titan even bigger than all that to be utterly scandal proof; except, of course, for the elimination of their very soul, just recently, when Oof died. They may carry on, and probably will; but the beating heart of the franchise is gone; and it's only a matter of time before the body starts to fester and rot. Poor sad, ROBLOX; doomed to moult and wither all alone in the world. Do not cry for them. DO NOT CRY!

Roblox Squid game

Feel free to screenshot

I don't really take the time to talk about one of the biggest video games of our precious generation, for the simple fact that I don't really care for it. Yes, whereas once upon time I was all about the Runescape and the other browser based games, (Not that Runescape was browser based, but it was so accessible it might as well have been) I had a big break off from those sorts of games a long while back and haven't picked up one since. (Except, of course, for Friday Night Funkin', but I prefer to download that one anyway) We've moved onto the point where browser based games are no longer really an option due to girth of even kid-based games, but the spirit of them lives on in the video game platform known as Roblox. A creative engine large enough for people to come together and throw assets together in some random order. The consequences are... unique. Sometimes cool. Mostly a mess. Oh, and somehow this led to that "I love it" song video which might have been Kanye's last masterpiece before he lost his mind. (Actually, watching the video again; I'm pretty sure he was mid-losing it during this stage)

And my reticence to sign up with this enduring powerhouse has been entirely to my own detriment, because this is game that has lasted past all those fad years and genre titles, Roblox is the Minecraft of the next generation. Or the last generation. It's been around for a while. But I'll be honest and say that the most I ever got into the game was when I was scouring the various different servers looking at how many where RP worlds for the most mundane positions of UK parliament imaginable. (Yeah, the get up to pretty much everything over on Roblox) Oh, and then there was a time not so long ago when I discovered that there's an actually rather comprehensive Jojo's Bizarre adventure MMO-style game on their servers. But as for actually logging on myself and getting into the trends; not for me apparently.

That means there are swathes of trends that I miss out on, as does anyone who can't be bothered with the Roblox hassle; unless of course that trend leaks far out of the Roblox eco-structure and floods into everyone's sphere of influence. But the only way that would happen would be if we were looking at a trend that was both supremely weird and mildly concerning and- oh wait, that's what is happening right now. Who'd have thunk? So now I have to go slightly out of left field and throw a question at you: Have you heard of 'Squid Game'? It's a South Korean drama show that has blown up on Netflix, and it's about, and I haven't watched it either so forgive me if I mess up this description, a sort of 'deadly game-show' premise where people are put up against a series of games that are similar to children's playground games, but with deadly consequences for the losers. That show, is the basis for Roblox's current trend.

Now you might initially think of that and find the combination incompatible in your head, (a death-based game show and a children's gaming platform for minigames?) but mull it around for a little bit and it'll all slide into place. Essentially the entire show sells the premise of minigames wherein failure is death: it's basically Fall Guys. They made Fall Guys into a TV show and now Roblox is here to turn it back into a game again. Only with a lot more hacking because Roblox is so bare bones that it's susceptible to freakin' cheat engine! (Good god, how hard it is to hire a single security expert for your stupid game?) But I'm sure you're wondering how this plays out in a manner different to Fall Guys in order to fit the 'Squid game' skin better. I'll tell you right know it's not for quality.

Whereas Fall Guys maintains this cutesy persona to it, both in the colourful design of it's tabular participants and in the just-as-colourful layout of it's stages and tasks, Roblox Squid Game adopts the far more dystopian, muted, and sometimes bloody direction from the show. Take for example, the red light green light game, a lot of which depict a narrow open-roofed corridor with fake outside scenery painted on the walls, highlighting the sense of captivity by drawing attention to the freedom you're deprived of. The game itself involves walking towards a young Korean girl who turns around and sings a particularly creepy-sounding nursey rhyme before swinging around and catching anyone out who is moving. Oh, and the people who are caught get shot. Instantly. Brutally gunned down. It's a lot for what should be a kids game. (and again, sometimes it's really bloody as well.)

Another game has players sat down in front of the cult-looking organisers of these games (each of which wearing a mask that depicts one of the face buttons of a PlayStation controller) and tasks them with cutting a shape from the material in front of them within a time limit. Should they err in the shape, or run out of time, the organiser shoots them point blank in the face with a revolver. Real kid friendly stuff here, huh? But that's what Roblox is about, I guess, creating games for kids out of things that would otherwise not exist. Like a game based on a show about killing people. Where else would that exist but in Roblox? On a positive note, the whole popularity of this trend has worked to make this show even more well known then it already was. Heck, I'd have never heard of it without all of this craziness.

What tickles me is just the amount of servers that have sprung up around this premise, and all of them being so very popular too. It's as though Roblox players are really desperate to rush to anything that might be considered a little risqué for their age group, even when the thing that they're imitating really loses a lot of it's horror when inflicted on squarish block-people. That's just the natural leaning of children afterall, to seek that which isn't meant for them. But then again, I'll bet a lot of them don't even know about the existence of the show at all and just seek to play the popular thing of the day. Maybe not even noticing how bizarre it is that the punishment for failure always seems to link back to a swift and brutal death.

Within time this will just be another trend that fades and Roblox fans will go back to RPing as members of the UK transport ministry, or slaying 1v1's as Za Warudo in order to unlock Za Warudo AU. That's the beauty of Roblox, being a platform for minigames it can literally morph and evolve itself to be whatever it's players want it to be at anytime, in a way that no other similar game creation platform has quite nailed the rhythm of. Who knows, maybe the next fad will be RPing as members of house Arterides and figuring out how to best cut up the spice production of DUNE in order to win a monopoly stake of the intergalactic trade commission; I find it absolutely feasible to imagine Roblox kids playing out a session as space-spice messiah in the near future. Maybe after their done killing each other at Squid game first.