Raising Good Gamers

ENVISIONING THE FUTURE OF ONLINE PLAY

Raising Good Gamers (RGG) is a cross-sector initiative working toward a future full of positive, inclusive, fair online game communities for youth. Supported by a partnership between the Connected Learning Lab and Games for Change, RGG aims to better understand the design of the systems and components that surround youth playing games online and participating in online gaming communities. RGG is powered, in part, through a set of research-practice partnerships that connect researchers with game developers, children’s media platforms, and youth-serving organizations.

CORE PROJECTS

  • Youth, Mental Health and The Metaverse: The project, commissioned by The Jed Foundation in collaboration with Raising Good Gamers, represents a substantial review of research related to youth, digital media, and mental health and was focused on understanding existing knowledge and predictions about the potential impact of the metaverse on youth mental health. The project led to the publication of a report by The Jed Foundation—Can the Metaverse Be Good for Youth Mental Health? Youth-Centered Strategies for Ensuring and Enhancing the Mental Health and Safety of Young People in the Metaverse—describing the potential risks and opportunities of the metaverse on youth mental health, and specific recommendations for actions that metaverse platforms and developers, users, parents/caregivers, and regulators can take to help lower risks and help ensure the metaverse is responsive to the mental health needs of adolescents. It also produced a rigorous peer reviewed literature review, published by the Connected Learning Alliance.
  • Cartoon Network’s Stop Bullying: Speak Up campaign: RGG has partnered with Cartoon Network to support their initiative called Stop Bullying: Speak Up. The anti-bullying PSA and campaign were created to inspire kids to help make online games positive spaces for everyone. In addition to the PSA, Cartoon Network has launched a site that has resources co-developed by RGG for both kids and adults that will help them navigate situations experienced in online game communities.
  • Playforce: RGG is working with a group of middle school teachers to create a toolkit to enable youth in any school to launch an afterschool game club that celebrates digital citizenship, fosters pro-social behavior in online communities, and has students in the driver’s seat.
  • Kid-Friendly Minecraft servers: We are working to identify and understand best practices guiding the design and moderation of Minecraft servers tailored for youth
  • From Stranger to Friend: A research-practice partnership with a AAA game developer focused on understanding how to design for positive social dynamics in games. The work explores social onboarding, social cueing, and approaches to reframing conflict in games as strategies for increasing social connection between players and groups.

RELATED WRITING

Salen Tekinbaş, Katie, Madison E. Taylor, Andre Adame, Stephen M. Schueller, and F. Ria Khan. 2023. Youth, Mental Health, and the Metaverse: Reviewing the Literature. Irvine, CA: Connected Learning Alliance.

Thomas D Grace, Christie Abel, and Katie Salen. 2023. Child-Centered Design in the Digital World: Investigating the Implications of the Age-Appropriate Design Code for Interactive Digital Media. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 289–297. https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589370

Thomas D. Grace, Ian Larson, and Katie Salen. 2022. Policies of Misconduct: A Content Analysis of Codes of Conduct for Online Multiplayer Games. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CHI PLAY, Article 250 (October 2022), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3549513 

Krithika Jagannath and Katie Salen. 2022. Beyond Just Rules: Server Rules for Shaping Positive Experiences in an Online Play Community for Youth. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact, 6, CHI PLAY, Article 222 (October 2022), 28 pages (forthcoming publication https://doi.org/10.1145/3549485) 

Katie Salen Tekinbaş, 2020. “Raising Good Gamers: Envisioning an Agenda for Diversity, Inclusion, and Fair Play.” Irvine, CA: Connected Learning Alliance, 2020.

Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Krithika Jagannath, Ulrik Lyngs, and Petr Slovák. 2021. Designing for Youth-Centered 19 Moderation and Community Governance in Minecraft. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 28, 4, Article 24 20 (May 2021), 40 pages.

Du, Yao; Grace, Thomas D.; Jagannath, Krithika; Salen-Tekinbas, Katie. 2021. “Connected Play in Virtual Worlds: Communication and Control Mechanisms in Virtual Worlds for Children and Adolescents” Multimodal Technol. Interact. 5, no. 5: 27.

Krithika Jagannath, Katie Salen Tekinbas, Petr Slovak. “(We) Can Talk It Out…”: Designing for Promoting Conflict-Resolution Skills in Youth on a Moderated Minecraft Server. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2020).

Katie Salen Tekinbaş. “Afraid to roam: The unlevel playing field of Pokémon Go,”  in Mobile Media & Communication. Larissa Hjorth, editor. Sage Journals. December 2016.

Katie Salen Tekinbaş. “Are You Raising a Good Gamer?” Family Online Safety Institute, December 2, 2020.