Retrospective- ROBLOX

	ROBLOX. This game takes me back to my childhood days... yet those days I scarcely remember. I think I was around 8-9 around the time and I was hitting my level creator days. Any game that had one of these I would be trying my hardest to make a level, but most of the time I was playing other peoples' designs. One day I just stumbled on the site trying to find a 3D level creator... something my 8-9 year old mind couldn't comprehend. It was a place full of fun for me back then, but why? Why did something like this appeal to me? Let me explain it first.
	ROBLOX is an MMO type game where you can build your own place and have people join it. The modern day equivalent to this game would be VR Chat. Instead of placing pre made objects down that were coded by the designers of the site, YOU had to code it yourself. Anything was possible as long as you knew how to code... which I unfortunately didn’t. There were pre made objects that you could place coded by other people, so if you didn’t know how to code you still were in good hands. Among these places during my age, there were 2 I regularly played. Obstacle courses and RPGs (which looking back today some are still very primitive).
There was a 3rd one... that being RPs, but I hardly joined them in the first place. Fast forwarding to now... there are still obstacle courses and RPGs. This is one of the problems I had during my return to the site, nothing has really changed. There were still clickbaity games that were obstacle courses in disguise and there were still RPGs that you just mashed the button on. I was surprised to find that there were some newer genres coming in though. Specifically, First Person Shooters. You have a COD like game and you have what is essentially Counter Strike.
RPs were still back and they hold an iron grip on the servers. You could go practically anywhere on the front page and I bet there will be at least 2-3 servers that are RPs.
	Now there was a definitive reason why I didn’t go to RPs, and I had found the answer during a pretty fun game called Icebreaker. At its core, it is freeze tag but with teams. But enough about that. The community. Yes, this RP stuff lead up to the community. You let a 10-12 year old with the ability to type on the internet and you get chaos and destruction. It usually starts with “lol (any name is applicable here) is a nub haha” and then you get such vulgar words that just feel wrong. Very, very wrong. I know you are not to supposed to judge a game by its fanbase but I will tell you this. ROBLOX is a very toxic game, and I would recommend having the chat off 90% of the time.
	If you ever do decide on going on there, chat off, there are some really great games out there. So here’s a list of games today and some games from yesterday that I felt to be somewhat enjoyable today:

Super Check Point
	Yes, this is an obstacle type game but I want to get these out of the way first. Instead of having checkpoints with an infinite amount of lives every time you face an obstacle, you have a set amount of lives to beat 30 beautifully hand crafted levels which are all pretty great. Not to mention there are extra modes that increase playing time and had me returning again and again to beat the perfect run.
ROBLOX Wipeout
	Another obstacle game, but this time it’s a competition. Out of all of the games that did this, this one was most certainly my favorite. Only problem is is that it gets boring because of the repetitive stages.

Icebreakers
	I mentioned this before in the retrospective but this was a fun time. With your team you can freeze your opponents and unfreeze your teammates. The team that either freezes the entire team or has the most members alive and not frozen wins.

RoBEATS
A rhythm game, but instead of it being a player vs. game, this one is a player vs. player game. Most of the songs are either a. anime b. memes or c. hip songs of today. I of course only focused on two categories (cough cough a and b) and still had a fun time.

	It’s time to answer my own question. Why did I play ROBLOX so much? One reason and one reason alone... infinite games. I wanted a new game every now and then, and ROBLOX did just the trick. With infinite games, there were infinite possibilities. Practically anything was possible! I even made a map for a Splatoon clone, just so I could enjoy the experience with others. It was still a great time today without the chat, and I really loved the games for what they were. Games. If you plan to check it out one day, I recommend the games that I listed above, as well as finding new experiences out there. It’s a great game that I still find some value today, and while it isn’t for everyone... it’s still a great time.