My daughter have asked me several times if I can spend at least something because other children somehow see she is not a paying user and segregate on that basis
This is a well known occurrence on Fortnite. If you were online wearing a "default" you were mocked by your friends and sometimes targeted for griefing. And not just online, because kids are using the game as a virtual hangout space, this bullying would play out IRL too.
If I were into competitive Fortnite I would never leave the default skin and get extra gratification from stunting on "gamers" who don't know better than to pre-judge skills based on cosmetics...
I play Roblox with my son and his friends a lot. Some kids use how much Robux you have as a status thing, but I've been surprised how little griefing and bullying I've seen. I do get called "bacon hair" because my avatar has the default skin (which has hair that looks like strips of bacon).
Wow, if it's true then that's such a vile design, particularly for a game designed for children. However, I'm more inclined to believe that it's just something your daughter may have said to convince you to buy something.
No evil intent is needed. You think an 8 year old won't point out that they're "better" all on their own just because they have something another child hasn't?
How would you expect children to spend money in game if not by convincing parents to buy something? Of course she received a series of 40 second lectures on how that works in life in general, and why I don't want to enclose her in virtual fraud simulation - she'll have much better ways to do that.
I understand what you have said here. If lies happen, that likely mean things are much much worse than they look. You don't teach children how to properly intake drugs, you teach them how to properly avoid toxic things in general.
The devil's advocate may be that, given the parallels to regular social challenges (and that 'digital' challenges may actually become more important in the future), Roblox offers a decently monitored, low-risk space to explore.
The game itself doesn't and doesn't have to incentivize social buying pressure. I believe it's just the natural order of things that can be considered signs of status. Because you have complete control over the avatar unlike your body, perhaps the condition is worse. As VR or 'microverses' evolve it's something to observe.
I suppose I was interested in having a powerful status symbol. I can't imagine why else I took so much time as a kid to learn the Roblox 'economy', how to trade, and then get scammed out of it in the end (the greatest lesson). I don't know if this what you meant by toxic or not, but it seems I've been drawn to that same experience with our fun little stonk market this past year.
More of, it depends who kids in her class etc are. If majority of parents in peer group don't buy, all is OK.
If peer group is snoby or normalized paying, issues like this happen. It is very naive to think that kids don't bully other kids because of issues like this.
