Who here remembers SOEmote? If you don’t, just know it was a feature added to EverQuest II in 2012 that let players use a webcam to track their real-life facial expressions and transmit them on to an avatar. It was eventually abandoned sometime around 2017, but a similar system is used by games like Star Citizen today. We bring this history lesson up because Roblox has decided to get in on this questionable feature with its own face-tracking functionality.
This new avatar animating ability has been opened to players 13 and up as a way to “drive deeper engagement with users” and let people “communicate and express themselves like never before.” Access to this new function is done through the communication section of the game settings UI, while games that take advantage of this feature will have a flag in the game’s details section.
Apparently, “engagement” and “expression” are most assuredly happening, as players of Roblox have flooded TikTok with videos that use the feature, either to recreate memes or to just generally be kind of creepy and weird online. It’s a feature we’re not sure anyone asked for, but it’s now most certainly a thing.
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