For trusted family brands, launching virtual worlds for children and young adults – while upholding values and ethical responsibilities – can feel like a formidable task. Ultimately every player who enters your virtual environment is your responsibility, making the balance of innovation, with ethical practice critical. 

This is a collective challenge and responsibility, and one which we’re deeply committed to at PRELOADED. As a result, we’ve developed an evolving playbook for ‘Responsible Design in Virtual Worlds’, focussed on creating healthy, inclusive environments that protect and empower children. 

In this post, we explore the pillars of responsible design, sharing key insights to help brands prioritise safety, inclusivity, and ethical engagement at every stage of development.

Building Safe & Inclusive Spaces for Children

Prioritising the safety and inclusion of children is an ethical responsibility for any creator building virtual worlds, as well as for platform providers. Here are some of the foundations we consider up-front, and throughout, design:

  • Age-Appropriate Content – Protect children by ensuring your game content avoids violence, explicit language, and inappropriate themes. Use platform age guidelines to set proper ratings.
  • Diversity & Inclusion – Reflect the real world by promoting diverse avatars and in-game characters. Avoid gendered, and ableist language and stereotypes, and spread acceptance through the game itself.
  • Accessibility – Prioritise and test the equitability of your experience in terms of usability and sensibility considerations, as well as game specific features such as the ability to control the pace of play, access guidance (controls / tutorials) when needed, and non punishing failure states.
  • Social Behaviour & Safety – The responsibility to foster a safe community sits with us all. Alongside tools for community moderation, reporting, and filters for custom text inputs – go further to define, encourage and reward the pro-social behaviours expected.
  • Data Capture & Compliance – Last but by no means least, safety means safeguarding player privacy by not collecting personally identifiable information, and anonymising any necessary data – as well as ensuring you are fully compliant with COPPA, GDPR-K and local data laws incl. data records.

The responsibility to foster a safe community sits with us all”

Designing Healthy Play Patterns

However brands need to go further than the fundamentals of safety and inclusion outlined above in order to ensure truly ‘Healthy Play’ for children. This requires a thoughtful design approach that promotes the healthy behavioural patterns essential for creating meaningful and positive social experiences for children. 

  • Healthy Game Loop – Games should empower players, not strip them of control. Think about providing natural breaks in play and avoiding compulsion mechanisms and appointment mechanics that may promote addictive behaviours, and incentivise or reward time-specific logins.
  • Emotional regulation – Often overlooked in games, it’s crucial to provide opportunities for players to relax and process their emotions. This could be by removing stressful game mechanics, such as time pressure elements, and calmer areas where they can take time out from fast paced play.
  • Prosocial behaviours – Design games to promote responsible decision-making and positive social interactions through collaborative play and reduced opportunities for toxicity. Where competition is a factor, encourage role modelling, and healthy fair play. Make rules for your game that encourage inclusivity and state what is and isn’t allowed.
  • Ethical Monetisation – Healthy, safe play is dependent on clear, transparent and non-manipulative approaches to monetisation. We dig into this further in the following section.

Games should empower players, not strip them of control”

Designing Ethical Monetisation Approaches

Opportunities for monetisation differ depending on the platform. What is central to our approach is ensuring that any monetisation strategy is thoughtful, ethical, and safe for players. Here is a – by no means exhaustive – list of some of our Dos and Don’ts:

  • Avoid Aggressive Time Pressures – Skip scarcity tactics like timers, countdowns, and frequent reminders to push purchases, or appointment mechanics that incentivise or reward time-specific logins.
  • Avoid Overly Incentivised Advertising – Say no to ads for acquiring items or flashy discount graphics. Keep it simple and honest.
  • Avoid Dark UX Patterns – Avoid tricky designs like greyed-out cancel buttons or multiple currencies in one store. Keep it clear and straightforward.
  • Avoid Emotional Manipulation – Don’t make characters look sad to encourage spending or pressure players to return to purchase.
  • Do focus on cosmetic-based economies – Emphasising non-gameplay items like avatar cosmetics for personalisation and customisation.
  • Do focus on equitable social play – If purchases around gameplay are required they only provide a temporary boost in ranking but no lasting competitive advantage (i.e. no pay-to-win).
  • Do create a clear distinction between Store vs Shop fronts – Children mustn’t be manipulated with premium storefront content (which requires items to be purchased with Robux for example) alongside or within an in-game shop front (e.g. NPC vendors).
  • Do let kids play at their own pace – In the instance appointed play is essential to gameplay, ensure players can receive rewards for any day they login, regardless of gaps between logins.
  • Do use clear and transparent purchasing – Any purchasing Calls To Action should not interrupt core gameplay, and be fully clear and transparent to the child.

Healthy, safe play is dependent on clear, transparent and non-manipulative approaches to monetisation”

Co-Designing Ethically with Children

Finally, but most importantly – designing responsibly requires the active participation and meaningful involvement of the end audience. This isn’t just about supporting children’s rights; it’s about creating better products for those they are designed for! 

  • Co-create don’t just validate – It can be tempting to wait until you have a clear direction before getting input. Co-creation up front allows children to influence the outcomes earlier on at a point when you have the space to pivot. Play with different techniques and formats of co-creating, to allow children to communicate their creative needs in ways that suit them best.
  • Find the fun! – Co-design allows you to find where the REAL fun and value is for different players within your experience early on. It’s a nuanced and emergent process that – more likely than not – won’t have been anticipated, even by the greatest of teams.
  • Understand your audience & recruit inclusively – It can be hard to edge test and understand the true accessibility or inclusivity of your product until it’s with the audience, and that audience needs to be reflective of the real needs and barriers of children and their parents.
  • Kids know best! – Our job is to create and facilitate the environment for children to feel confident in sharing their most honest responses. Think carefully about the recruitment, moderation, environment, and dynamics of testing, particularly with multiplayer, to support comfort and true-to-life play styles.
  • Set clear safeguarding – Involving children in the making process requires clear and transparent terms of engagement. Have clear safeguarding processes in place that outline what’s expected, what consent is required to make sure everyone feels safe and confident to contribute.

Create and facilitate the environment for children to feel confident in sharing their most honest responses”

A collective responsibility

Building responsible virtual worlds is a collective responsibility. At PRELOADED, we’re committed to sharing insights and collaborating with creators, industry experts, and advocates to develop healthier, safer digital spaces for children. 

Follow us to stay connected, join the conversation, and contribute to shaping the future of responsible design.


Hattie Foster

Hattie is Strategy Director at PRELOADED. She explores the meaningful application of technology and games for engagement within arts, culture and beyond.