Leveling Up Together: Fostering Positive Growth and Safe Online Spaces for Teen Roblox Developers

TL;DR

This paper explores how online Roblox developer communities support teenage game creators' skills and social growth, highlighting benefits and challenges, and offers guidelines for fostering safe, positive online environments.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into teens' experiences in Roblox communities and proposes design principles for safer, more supportive online spaces for young developers.

Findings

Communities offer valuable technical and social resources.

Teens face conflicts and lack of structure in communities.

Safety concerns include financial scams and harassment.

Abstract

Creating games together is both a playful and effective way to develop skills in computational thinking, collaboration, and more. However, game development can be challenging for younger developers who lack formal training. While teenage developers frequently turn to online communities for peer support, their experiences may vary. To better understand the benefits and challenges teens face within online developer communities, we conducted interviews with 18 teenagers who created games or elements in Roblox and received peer support from one or more online Roblox developer communities. Our findings show that developer communities provide teens with valuable resources for technical, social, and career growth. However, teenagers also struggle with inter-user conflicts and a lack of community structure, leading to difficulties in handling complex issues that may arise, such as financial scams. Based on these insights, we propose takeaways for creating positive and safe online spaces for teenage game creators.