A Story about Roblox, 13 Years Ago…
I’m nostalgic for a simpler time.
The summer of 2008 — Katy Perry had just topped the charts with her hit single I Kissed a Girl, and a ten-year-old me listened to a pirated torrent of it straight off LimeWire.
It’s no wonder my computer had viruses.
While my family might have preferred spending their time out by the pool, basking in the warmth and hiking around Pennsylvania like maniacs — I spent my time with my butt positioned firmly in a computer chair.
Blizzard Entertainment’s hugely successful World of Warcraft had taken the world by storm. I wanted nothing more than to get in on the action, but I was too young to afford my own subscription. That would involve the help of parents, and mine hated the internet. My mom and dad would sooner buy me a Lamborghini than anything on the mysterious world wide web…
Cutting my losses, I scoured Google in a desperate attempt to find any game that could hold my attention longer than a few moments — and that’s when I stumbled across a little known gem called ROBLOX.
Colorful banners of what looked like virtual LEGO men greeted me as I browsed the front page. The site boasted over how you could create your own fully three-dimensional world, visit thousands of others, customize your own avatar with limitless possibilities — and to top it off — everything was FREE.
If there was one thing I learned very quickly growing up with the internet, it was that nothing on this hellscape is free. What’s the catch here?
Skeptical but still yearning for a game to rival Warcraft, I created an account and navigated over to the games tab. I hovered my mouse over one titled Resident Evil: Build to Survive, and clicked play.
I had expected a pop-up to appear asking me for credit card information — or perhaps even to sacrifice my first born child to gain entry. What I didn’t anticipate on happening… was actually opening the game!
A few minutes later (loading times weren’t so great with 52 kb/s internet) I found myself in a green field with nothing around me save for a small makeshift village.
In the middle sat building supplies where players scrambled towards, and then hurried back out into the open field ahead. With a look of curiosity on my face, I walked up to one of the more authoritative players in the hopes of finding out what was going on.
“What’re you guys doing?” I asked. Above his head sat the nameplate Commander13cnc3, a title I thought fit him well as he directed everyone else on how to build.
“It won’t be long now,” he said sounding rather serious despite looking like a knock-off LEGO man. “You see that wall over there?”
Commander pointed ahead. He was quite right, there was indeed a wall at the very end of the field with three garage doors attached to it.
“Every five minutes we’re assaulted by hordes of zombies. We almost didn’t survive the last round.”
“Let me help!” I begged, and at once we started building a wall which would span across the entire map — but before I could finish — the garage doors separating the undead from the living opened, and a battle for our lives unfolded in bloody chaos.
Well, alright the graphics weren’t that good. We had to use our imaginations for a lot of it.
Regardless, it was incredible.
It didn’t take long for me to consider ROBLOX one of mankind’s greatest inventions — perhaps even surpassing World of Warcraft.
As it turned out, Commander13cnc3 was also new to the site. Eager to make a new friend, I invited him to join me as I traveled across all of the other games this new platform had to offer.
We spent our evening together playing classics like Tippy Ship on Lava Lake, Survive the Drako-Bloxxers, and even Sword Fights on the Heights.
“Add me, will you?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said before leaving Drive Down the 10,000-Foot RAMP. “I’ll be on tomorrow, I promise!”
Nervous of anyone in my family finding out that I — a sophisticated and grown-up ten-year-old had started playing a kid’s game, I kept this discovery a closely guarded secret. When my mom asked me what I had done on the computer all day, I merely shrugged.
“Nothing exciting, but it sure as heck beat stepping outside.”
I might not play ROBLOX like I used to, but there’s a magical sense of nostalgia behind it. After spending a significant portion of my childhood on this site, I can’t help but be thankful for the memories it gave me.
I’ll always be caught wearing those rose-tinted goggles.
