Roblox and Atmosphir: A Community Affair

For awhile, there has been an unseen war involving Atmosphir. It wasn’t until recently that this fight broke out into the open. Within the last few weeks, a thread was found on the popular building game Roblox’s forums. This thread stated that Atmosphir was rivaling their game and must be destroyed. Of course, we know that neither game will be destroyed. A few of our players joined Roblox and replied to this thread, defending Atmosphir.

Before joining Atmosphir, I was unaware of Roblox. Once the debate broke into the open, I did a little research. Roblox has been around since June 2005 and was designed, developed, and published by the Roblox Corporation. The concept of Roblox is similar to Atmosphir in that it allows you to design landscapes using block-like parts. Unlike Atmosphir, Roblox has an in-game currency, which can be earned by doing various things throughout the game. As I said, I have not had any personal experience with Roblox, and therefore do not have any solid information regarding it.

As Atmosphir began to enter into the Roblox community, the reverse also happened. Soon enough, we began to see Roblox enter the Atmosphir community. However, the types of entry differ. In the Roblox forums, we are not joining their game. Rather, we are attracting attention for Atmosphir. On the other hand, Roblox players are moving into Atmosphir. While players are expected to wait for a beta invite, they are able to communicate on the forums. And they’ve done just that.

With all of the Roblox and Atmosphir interaction happening, some players have reacted to it. There was a recent outbreak of Roblox-related threads on the Off-Topic board within the past two weeks. Off-Topic moderator Nuinethir swiftly put an end to it after the first few threads appeared. Within a few hours, a new topic was posted and stickied. This topic regarded the recent threads. Here is a quote from Nuinethir’s post:

“Having a "competition" between Atmosphir and Roblox is not constructive to either community, and creates what I could call an inter-forum war. Realize that while you think you are helping, you are actually damaging the potential relationships of people you have never met. By doing this, you are actually doing a disservice to Dave/Okaysamurai as well as Minor Studios.

I am drawing a line, right here, right now. There is to be NO negative discussion about Roblox, regardless if you are an Atmosphir native or coming from the Roblox community. I simply will NOT tolerate it. Threads operating in this manner are subject to getting locked. If you feel a topic is spiraling down, DON'T add fuel to the flame and contact a moderator with the thread link in question.”

Obviously things were getting out of hand. Thanks to Nuinethir, things have been stabilized and the community seems to be at peace. To summarize the above quote, please do not say negative things about Roblox, no matter who you are. At the moment, this applies to topics in the forum. Adz, newly appointed head moderator, says that as soon as he has full control over things such as player’s profiles, he will add more to this rule, adding things such as anti-Roblox avatars and signatures to the list. Therefore, if you have anything on your profile that somehow defaces the Roblox name, please change it as soon as possible, for the best of both communities.

We are not a community who puts others down. Embrace the similarities that Roblox has, and maybe we can learn a few things from them, and they can learn things from us. Welcome all Roblox players warmly, and don’t judge them based off of their previous adventures. We all were new at some point, and they deserve the same respect we show everyone else. Show it to them.

In other news, I don’t think I’ll be doing a MOD spotlight this week. There haven’t been any large mods on the forums lately, so I think I’ll give them some time to grow.

The interview with Dave Werner on Landor Industries Live has received some new information. The interview will be conducted at 5 PM (PST) on Tuesday, August 18^th. Be there if you can!

That’s it for today, everyone.