Family co-play of video games is common and linked to family closeness and positive intergenerational interaction. Mixed-age co-play exposes controller-skill gaps that cause frustration and exclusion, yet most party games lack ability-inclusive assists. We explore ability-inclusive co-play for unmodified party and family games: We contribute (1) an open-source controller-skills benchmark; (2) the first lifespan study combining both broad age and deep skill coverage (ages 6–90; n=80; six skills), showing that gaps between children and older adults are skill-specific rather than uniform; (3) we present PartyAssist, a real-time, computer-vision-to-input system that detects on-screen state and injects micro controller-input assistance without altering game code; (4) in a feasibility study with 16 mixed-skill dyads (n=32; assisted player <10 or >50), assistance improved children’s survival time and success rate while remaining largely unnoticed and was viewed positively, while older adults detected assistance and reported mixed views. Interviews surfaced socially-considerate design nuances and implications to inform future designs to support ability-inclusive co-play across the lifespan.
Disengagement from games is challenging for children, and can lead to family conflict. While parental mediation is well-understood, the role of game design in supporting children’s disengagement remains underexplored. Our work addresses this gap through a qualitative study with 39 participants (22 children aged 4-11 and 17 parents), in which children played Snarky’s Adventure, a prototype featuring disengagement-friendly mechanics supporting player understanding of progress, and the experience of satisfaction and closure at the end of play. Through Qualitative Content Analysis, we show that the features help children anticipate the end of play, but in some cases spark curiosity and the desire to re-engage. Additionally, while parents valued the mechanics to understand game progress, future work should explore how to actively engage them in children’s disengagement. Our work provides the first empirical exploration of disengagement-friendly game mechanics, and outlines challenges and opportunities for their future integration in children's games.
Teen participation in esports is rapidly expanding, raising concerns about how competitive gaming shapes adolescent mental well-being. Existing mental well-being initiatives often adopt adult-centered approaches that overlook teenagers’ lived realities. This study explores mental well-being from the perspective of teen esports players. Through nine participatory design sessions with 34 participants, including adolescent players, coaches, and program coordinators, we examined how teens conceptualize a “healthy player” and sustain mental well-being in gaming. Findings emphasize three key insights: (1) for teens, being “healthy” means winning together, where well-being is tied to collective outcomes and social responsibility; (2) most stressors stem from esports environments beyond their control, underscoring the need for emotional resilience; and (3) teens favor simple, everyday coping strategies, such as taking breaks, reframing losses, adjusting play environments, and drawing on peer encouragement, over formal programs. These patterns resonate with Cognitive Behavioral Theory, suggesting that cycles of thought, emotion, and behavior underpin resilience. We argue for youth-centered, culturally relevant mental well-being strategies and micro-interventions embedded in the daily practices of adolescent esports.
Gaming is a meaningful part of children’s lives, yet its safety has drawn increasing concerns from scholars and the public. On platforms like Roblox, children may encounter extremist roleplay, scams, or virtual rape. Prior research has emphasized technical interventions that address risks after they occur and ethical frameworks for game design, but children’s perspectives on safety design remain missing. To address this gap, we conducted a cooperative inquiry study to co-design safety mechanisms with 22 children aged 7–12. Children proposed designs emphasizing transparent information about games and purchases, community accountability through reporting and reviews, player empowerment to manage social boundaries and engagement, and age-appropriate game navigation. Our findings extend safety-by-design research by foregrounding children’s perspectives, showing how they envision safety mechanisms across both game and platform design, while enjoying safe play through risk exposure, allocating trust, and balancing platform support with agency.
Existing HCI literature on the benefits and risks of User-Generated Content (UGC) games for children often focuses on either parents' or child players' views. Bridging these perspectives is critical for identifying the alignment or divergence between children's and parents' concerns, which provides a more comprehensive image of challenges and opportunities children face in these games. Through a mixed-method content analysis of 2000 reviews about Roblox (one of the most popular UGC platforms) from both parents and children, we identify six key risks children face and investigate how parents’ and children’s focuses on different risks may shift across age groups. We also propose design recommendations for advancing trust and safety initiatives on UGC platforms by considering children, parents, and developers as key stakeholders. We contribute to rethinking more nuanced safety models for protecting children that are developmentally responsive and context-sensitive, rather than relying on age-based thresholds (e.g., under-13 vs. 13+).
Battery-free computer gaming offers a vision of sustainable interaction in which games run on hardware that does not require a battery, yet this approach introduces uncertainty due to frequent power failures. Rather than viewing these failures as limitations, this work examines how integrating energy harvesting with application design can encourage users to reimagine and work with such failures, thus shaping behaviour and supporting device use. We present TURNER, a state-of-the-art modular battery-free games console powered by a hand crank and solar cells, created as a research probe to study how energy harvesting mediates the relationship between power and interaction. In a mixed-methods study (N = 60), we explored the influence of energy harvesting on gameplay. Findings show significant variations in harvesting strategies, with interviews surfacing strategies for creating applications that respond to and build on the patterns of system power failure, the ergonomics of energy harvesting, and the value of embedding energy generation into play. Our work offers insights for interactive, sustainable battery-free computers.
Children are increasingly using augmented reality (AR) headsets in different contexts, such as education. However, it is unclear how children expect to interact with virtual objects in AR headsets; children's expectations for technology can significantly differ from adults. Therefore, we conducted an elicitation study with 20 children (ages 9-12), in which children proposed interactions for tasks with a virtual cube (e.g., moving, expanding, creating, etc.) in an AR headset. We constructed a conceptual model of children's expectations with virtual-object interactions in AR headsets and analyzed their proposed interactions. We found that children preferred gestures, expecting to utilize their whole body (e.g., pushing, kicking) and external objects (e.g., hammer, sword) to interact with the cube, and rarely considered speech, which differs from adults. Children also frequently added their own motivations, creating a narrative behind their interactions. We provide foundational insights into children's expectations for virtual-object interaction in AR headsets.