Child Safety in Online Gaming
Building game safety solutions around children’s experiences, informed by gender dynamics in online spaces
Why online gaming?
Online games build meaningful experiences for children and youth. They enable play, learning, experimentation, and identity-building. They also open spaces where children find community and learn important skills.
That makes game developers and companies essential players in promoting child safety and digital wellbeing.
Our Approach
We bring decades of child protection expertise into designing for child safety within online gaming environments. We partner directly with gaming companies, trust & safety teams, developers and creators to:
- Design age- and gender-responsive solutions to online safety challenges;
- Enhance help-seeking pathways for children such as support channels and reporting flows;
- Shift narratives around gender and masculinities in games;
- Strengthen teams’ capacity to detect, escalate, and respond to harm;
- Gather perspectives of children and youth players themselves
What safety-by-design means for us
Creating safe and inclusive games doesn’t have to mean limiting the unique qualities that make games fun. Our wide range of initiatives allows us to tailor solutions based on what our partners and their platforms need.
Designing safety and wellbeing tools, policies, and flows
Training community leaders, moderators, developers, and teams
Developing and piloting learning resources
Researching online communities and gaming experiences
Curating high-impact cross-sector events
Organising game jams, workshops, and webinars
Roads to Rivdese
Ever wondered what small changes you can make to your game to make it safer and more gender-inclusive?
‘Roads to Rivdese: Play your way to gender sensitive game design’ is a short and simple quiz game created by ECPAT International (with support from the Down to Zero Project) and Cadre Creative Labs. It is based on our practical guide for game developers on building games that challenge rigid gender norms and promote child safety by design.
How it works
- Dive into the project blueprint of a hypothetical game called “Rivdese”
- Meet Inspo, the adorable little helper guiding the developer team on important design decisions
- Explore 7 questions with Inspo and recommend an answer by clicking on the options
- Reach the end and see how well you score