Roblox Safety Officer and Palestine Skating Game
Our interview with Roblox, plus the activism of an upcoming game inspired by Jet Set Radio
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 came out this week — one of NPR’s most anticipated games, made by Ukrainian developers during a literal war. Expect more coverage to come, but meanwhile, I’ve been back on the Roblox beat:
One month after short sellers tarred Roblox as a “pedophile hellscape,” the video game platform is taking new steps to safeguard the tens of millions of kids who log on every day.
“We're trying to minimize the exposure of some of our youngest users to content that might be more appropriate to teenagers,” says Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman. “For our users under 13, we’re limiting some of the communication channels that they have.”
Monday’s update also gives parents more tools to manage a child’s Roblox activity and comes amid longstanding criticism that predators can contact kids too easily on the platform. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported on more than two dozen cases where criminals were charged with abducting or abusing children they met through Roblox.
“Speaking as a parent and on behalf of Roblox, any time anything happens to a child that puts them at risk is one too many,” says Kaufman. “We will do everything we possibly can to stop that, but I think sometimes we're losing sight of the tens of millions of people where Roblox is an incredibly enriching part of their life.”
Read or listen to more of the Kaufman interview here, or read NPR’s recent coverage of Roblox here.
I also must pay due tribute to Ahmad Damen, a keen musician, indefatigable audio journalist, and RPG fanatic who I’ve come to call a friend over his time at Here & Now. This was his last week working for the program, which couldn’t extend his temp contract due to budget constraints and union rules. Since early this year, Damen’s guided our Middle East coverage and has edited many of my gaming stories to boot! Those two worlds intersected in a piece we published today:
Spray paint and roller skates are instruments of protest in an upcoming video game set in the Middle East.
Pro-Palestinian and overtly activist, a downloadable prototype for Palestine Skating Game has players roll around the occupied West Bank, blasting globs of paint at tanks and a massive separation wall.
“We have about two kilometers of the Israeli separation wall, along with like two kilometers of graffiti that is actually on the separation wall or has been on the separation wall,” says Justin, the main developer of the game. He spoke on the condition of using only his first name as his political views have sparked severe online harassment.
More than 50 mostly-volunteer developers have contributed to Palestine Skating Game since its bootstrapped beginnings three years ago. The project grew from Justin’s love of Arabic electronic music and a 2018 visit to the region.
“If absolutely nothing else, we will be recreating a lot of things that Palestinians are seeing and what they experience in an actual 3D space,” says Justin, “like the harassment at a checkpoint or an encounter with a gang of settlers.”
Should it reach crowdfunding goals, the team plans to build levels based on the past, present and future of the West Bank and Gaza to both preserve a place that’s been destroyed and to imagine possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“What would a good future for Palestine look like?” asks Justin. “What would any kind of just a peace settlement look like — could they truly get along in any way, especially at this hour?”
Read more or listen to the interview on WBUR.org.
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