I’ve been a gamer for nearly 50 years. My love for video games goes all the way back to the late ’70s when my dad, in one of the rare moments he actually brought joy into my childhood, bought us an Atari for Christmas. It was so early in the console’s lifespan that it wasn’t even called the 2600 yet, it was the Atari VCS, short for Video Computer System. Ours didn’t even say ‘Atari’ on it. Back then, Sears used to slap their own name on popular electronics, so technically, I had a Sears and not an Atari.

I bring that up to say that I’m not some clueless outsider when it comes to video games or their more controversial corners. But even with that background, I’ll admit I’m a bit out of my depth here because this story revolves around Roblox, a game I’m not too familiar with.

From what I’ve gathered, Roblox is a platform where users create and play games built within Roblox itself. It’s a game inside a game, and some of these creations can even be monetized. Roblox ranks right up there with Minecraft and Fortnite in terms of popularity among kids.

On paper, Roblox sounds like a great creative outlet. It teaches design, development, and other skills that could carry over into real-world careers. But as is always the case with open platforms, someone will eventually twist it into something grotesque.

According to Kotaku, Roblox is dealing with a disturbing trend in a subcommunity of users creating school shooting simulators. Uh oh. I said the triple-S word—somewhere, Jack Thompson just got a nosebleed.

This community, who I will not name, have allegedly created maps of Columbine, Parkland, And Uvalde. One Uvalde-inspired game reportedly includes child NPCs that hide under desks and play dead when gunfire starts. The game ends when your character is either taken down by police or chooses to ‘end it’.

I normally avoid highlighting this kind of trash because it gives attention to the exact type of edgelords who thrive on it. But if it was serious enough to get the Anti-Defamation League involved, it’s serious enough for me to say something.

Here’s the thing, though, I’m finding my basket of fucks to give to be almost completely barren. These communities have been around since the Columbine killers were idolizing DOOM. Back then, their fans made Columbine maps for DOOM mods. Then came the infamous Super Columbine Massacre RPG, which tried to pass itself off as a conversation starter, but was clearly just another shrine to the killers.

The trend didn’t stop there. In the 2000s, we saw crude Flash games about Virginia Tech. In 2013, the same creator of the Virginia Tech game made one based on Sandy Hook. Each time, the goal was the same, offend, provoke, get noticed.

Stories like this bother me because they give a completely warped impression of the gaming community. These twisted creators make up a fraction of a fraction, yet it’s their work that gets noticed by the general public and moral panic machines like Jack Thompson. Most gamers don’t make school shooting games. Most don’t want them. But outsiders often don’t see the distinction.

Almost none of these games are sold through legitimate channels. You had to dig through shady forums to find the Columbine DOOM mods, and the others were downloadable from obscure sites. The same goes for Roblox. These aren’t games being promoted by the company, they’re buried in user-generated content, and Roblox is working to shut them down.

To their credit, Roblox is removing these games when they’re discovered. The problem is, it’s like playing whack-a-mole with the world’s tiniest hammer. Every time one game gets axed, another pops up with a slightly different name or code. Moderators are overwhelmed, and the trolls are always adapting. Roblox was designed to encourage limitless creativity, but that same strength makes it easy for sick content to slip through the cracks.

Here’s the bottom line. We don’t need to lose our minds every time some socially stunted basement dwelling neckbeard whips up another offensive game about school shootings. That’s exactly the reaction they want. These people get off on being seen as dangerous provocateurs, when in reality, they’re just sad, attention-starved nobodies trying to make noise. That doesn’t mean we ignore them, but it does mean we stop feeding their egos with headlines and hysteria. Call it out, report it, move on.

(Source)

• Roblox Has A Community Of Players Who Recreate School Shootings