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For everyone saying OP should let their kid play Roblox and just ban spending money... just no.
Roblox exploits child labor for profit and they have terrible scummy business practices. If you have even marginal ethical qualms about child labor and/or capitalistic exploitation of vulnerable people, you should be keeping yourself and your family away from Roblox. In your mind they should be in the same category as multilevel marketing, crypto scams and door-to-door religion peddlers.
Roblox really is the lowest of the low.
I actually think it's fair to call them child predators. They're exploiting kids for money instead of sexual gratification, but it's the same power dynamic. Child exploitation is their business model.
Terraria, for something crafty-buildy with combat and very cartoony/2d blood and gore. 1-8 players.
Don't Starve Together, survival crafting in a hand-drawn Tim Burton-esque style. 2-6 players.
Awesomenauts, 3v3 fast paced competitive game in the style of Saturday morning cartoons. 3-6 players.
Deep Rock Galactic, coop shooter where you play space dwarves and shoot bugs while doing missions together. Gore may be a bit strong for your liking, but it's very stylized and only against bugs and robots. 1-4 players.
Risk of Rain 2, shooter where you try and escape a planet together with lots of different ways to play. 1-4 players.
Age of Empires 2, old school fast-paced medieval strategy game modernized with new graphics and such. 1-8 players.
Valheim, viking survival crafty buildy game in which you explore and conquer a dangerous world together. 1-10 players.
Cassette Beasts, technically not multi-player yet but they're adding it as a free update January. It's a Pokémon-esque game where you'll all be trainers in the same overworld together capturing beasts and taking down challenges together. 1-8 players when it comes out.
All of these games are rated T for teen, but it sounds more like you're opposed to M rated violence and language than T levels. They're all also insular in that this friend group doesn't need to involve other people to play together and can either play with or against each other or the computer.
Some really solid recommendations here. Thanks a ton. I've heard of Deep Rock Galactic but it didn't pop into mind. And Risk of Rain 2 looks great.
DRG does have a touch of profanity if you're concerned about that, btw.
I just want to avoid the porn games on steam, and any super-gory shit like dead space. I thought Diablo would be fun for him but it is a bit too much right now. It was different when super pixelated back in the D2 days.
Self hosted Minecraft server for socializing. Mod the shit out of it
Factorio if you want your kid to have a severe addiction.
Red Alert 2 because I want the world to play it.
Ace Combat because it's hype and plays well with a controller.
Bloons tower defense
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.
I banned my kid from Roblox.... what next?
I would just talk to your kid and listen to his feelings and wants. What does he enjoy about Roblox? Can he find that enjoyment with some other games? Does he understand that its not a punishment, e.g. it's not anything that he did and that you aren't blaming him? Sure, you can suggest a few alternatives and they might take and be fun, but you'll need to be attuned to his feelings around what he might see as a punishment for something that he did so that he doesn't internalize it and hurt the relationship you have with him.
yeah this should be the immediate next step. The kid shouldn't feel punished. It shouldn't be a "you're not allowed because I said so." Kids can be smart and might be able to understand why Roblox is exploitative.
At least this is a better reason to take a way a kid's video game. My parents banned me from certain games/movies because they had positive depictions of black people.
You could try Dungeons and dragons. It could be fun for his friend group.
I wish someone had taught my friends and me how to play D&D when I was 10, but my parents were part of the "satanic panic" generation, and had zero interest in anything to do with fantasy or improv. Once you get out of highschool, finding a night that everyone can meet up for D&D gets exponentially harder, let alone finding someone who wants to put in the time to DM.
Minecraft seems like the obvious choice for kids who liked Roblox. Terraria is another. If they can only play on a server that one of them hosts, then no need to worry about outside users.
Good on you and the other parents for getting that shit out of there, kids don't need addiction machines trying to pressure them into spending money.
yeah java minecraft (NOT BEDROCK) is great, you can mod the shit out of it too on a pc.
Minecraft Java. Minecraft bedrock is full of microtransactions, and we both dislike those.
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.
Minecraft is pretty good for this kind of stuff, especially Java Edition (has mods, and loooooads of servers, some of which also use mods to drastically alter the gameplay. You can also host your own, free of charge).
Grounded is the game I wish I had when I was 10. Basically "Honey I shrunk the kids" as a multiplayer survival-builder.
My oldest kid (6yo) is currently having fun with Goat Simulator ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and yes, I bought the expansions.
He doesn't play online yet, but I have Minecraft on the PS4 so that may be an option later on.
Other options I can think of that would be appropriate and multiplayer
Try Minetest - https://www.minetest.net/
It's a FOSS voxel engine, so they can play multiplayer with their friends for free. MineClone2 is a Minecraft clone on Minetest, so even if their friends don't have Minecraft, they can still play with friends.
For paid games, consider indie games, as they're less likely to be micro-transaction bullshit. Raft, Stardew Valley, Two Point Hospital are good options. Not so much multiplayer, but Stardew supports it. Multiplayer wise, maybe Among Us if the parents are comfortable with that.
Some games you could consider -
Couple of issues with this list:
Can't speak for Dorfromantik, because I haven't played it, but the rest seem like great choices.
I haven't seen Splatoon being recommended here, it's a ton of fun and has no microtransactions. You can but your kid a Switch for cheap nowadays.
fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money.
Honest question, if the money is the issue, then why not let him play the free stuff and not spend money on it?
I'm crumudgeony enough to remember when buying a game was buying a game. I disliked it when mobile games slowly changed into monitization via microtransactions. Heck, I remember buying games for full price and then they got changed to ftp overnight with mtx. That kind of stuff drove me nuts and I am firmly anti-mtx. That said, I let my kid earn money he can use on mtx for cosmetics and stuff on Fortnite. But it is a dedicated pool of money for mtx, his actual money kept separate so he can buy ice cream or save for bigger purchases without worry. Roblox on the other hand, is a company that exploits children for their labor to create the games and it hires psychologists to ensure kids dump as much money into it as possible all while having no moderation. Roblox is awful. Microtransactions in children's games are harmful and exploitive. I'm letting my kid get a drip feed so he can get the little benefit from having non-stock costumes in fortnite while also having the learning experience that in games with mtx, you can never have enough - without him becoming a whale.
I've recently banned my kid from playing it too. I had only just unlocked it for the first time. I had previously blocked it because it was, IMHO, terrible. As a professional gamedev I find it offensively bad. But I relented, because lots of his friends were playing it. However, and this may be the experiences he was playing, it seems to be almost exclusively training kids up for gambling. Pretty much everything is dopamine based rewards. It's like a casino. It's worst than I ever imagined. I'm this close to banning online play in Minecraft because he is similarly gravitating to the same sort of experiences. In our case it's not about money, he hasn't spent a cent on these things. But the content is very problematic, I have concerns that it is encouraging developing minds that gambling is the norm.
It's also just an extremely dangerous platform. They have a stock market, game mode development with children employing children (clearly neither one understands employment laws), and unsurprisingly a ton of pedophiles
Besides the obvious Minecraft recommendation, maybe Terraria, Satisfactory, and if you're willing to allow it, something like Smite would be another good option for him to play with his friends.
Buy him a cheap PC and introduce Factorio.
It would teach them logical thinking and teamwork. Could be a nice platform for programming also.
One pick that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet is Overcooked 2. No profanity or anything. The only disadvantage is that the game is rather short.
Oh, I'm sure we're all great parents here. I applaud you for admitting a mistake and having the humility to ask for advice, both excellent parenting skills in my opinion.
I believe the answer is always culture. Once better videogames are discovered it's likely that they will hardly go back to the bad ones (so that the problem of prohibitionism - which is only a temporary solution - can be solved).
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)
No Man's Sky is fantastic now.
Space engineers. Great game for cooperation amd if they work well enough they can get a working spaceship going together and explore the universe.