Harmful design in virtual worlds
An NSF-funded collaboration studies harmful design practices in user-generated virtual worlds and approaches to design moderation.
- Research area
- Play, communities, and governance
- Years
- 2023–present
- Status
- Ongoing
- Funding
- National Science Foundation #2326505 · $598,705 SaTC: CORE: Small: Investigating and Mitigating Harmful Design in User-Generated Virtual World through Design Moderation Award record
- Leadership
- PI: Yubo Kou. Co-PIs: Xinning Gui and Sunhye Bai.
User-generated virtual worlds such as Roblox let players, many of them children, both play games and build them. This NSF-funded project studies how harmful design emerges in these worlds, from predatory monetization and gambling-like mechanics to designs that expose young players to safety risks, and how design moderation by platforms and creators can mitigate it.
The project combines studies of players, children, and game creators, including co-design sessions with children, to inform safer design practices and platform governance.
Example papers
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Player Safety by Design: Co-Designing Child-Centered Safety Mechanisms with Children
Zinan Zhang, Qiurong Song, Rie Helene (Lindy) Hernandez, Yunhan Liu, Elena Koung, Junnan Yu, Sunhye Bai, Yubo Kou, and Xinning Gui
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Harmful Design in User-Generated Games and its Ethical and Governance Challenges: An Investigation of Design Co-Ideation of Game Creators on Roblox
Zinan Zhang, Sam Moradzadeh, Xinning Gui, and Yubo Kou
★ Best Paper Honorable Mention
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The Ecology of Harmful Design: Risk and Safety of Game Making on a Metaverse Platform
Yubo Kou, Yingfan Zhou, Zinan Zhang, and Xinning Gui