Understanding Children's Avatar Making in Social Online Games
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2025
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| author | Fu, Yue Schwamm, Samuel Baughan, Amanda Powell, Nicole M Kronberg, Zoe Owens, Alicia Izenman, Emily Renee Alsabeh, Dania Hunt, Elizabeth Rich, Michael Bickham, David Radesky, Jenny Hiniker, Alexis |
| author_facet | Fu, Yue Schwamm, Samuel Baughan, Amanda Powell, Nicole M Kronberg, Zoe Owens, Alicia Izenman, Emily Renee Alsabeh, Dania Hunt, Elizabeth Rich, Michael Bickham, David Radesky, Jenny Hiniker, Alexis |
| contents | Social online games like Minecraft and Roblox have become increasingly integral to children's daily lives. Our study explores how children aged 8 to 13 create and customize avatars in these virtual environments. Through semi-structured interviews and gameplay observations with 48 participants, we investigate the motivations behind children's avatar-making. Our findings show that children's avatar creation is motivated by self-representation, experimenting with alter ego identities, fulfilling social needs, and improving in-game performance. In addition, designed monetization strategies play a role in shaping children's avatars. We identify the ''wardrobe effect,'' where children create multiple avatars but typically use only one favorite consistently. We discuss the impact of cultural consumerism and how social games can support children's identity exploration while balancing self-expression and social conformity. This work contributes to understanding how avatar shapes children's identity growth in social online games. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_18705 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Understanding Children's Avatar Making in Social Online Games Fu, Yue Schwamm, Samuel Baughan, Amanda Powell, Nicole M Kronberg, Zoe Owens, Alicia Izenman, Emily Renee Alsabeh, Dania Hunt, Elizabeth Rich, Michael Bickham, David Radesky, Jenny Hiniker, Alexis Human-Computer Interaction Social online games like Minecraft and Roblox have become increasingly integral to children's daily lives. Our study explores how children aged 8 to 13 create and customize avatars in these virtual environments. Through semi-structured interviews and gameplay observations with 48 participants, we investigate the motivations behind children's avatar-making. Our findings show that children's avatar creation is motivated by self-representation, experimenting with alter ego identities, fulfilling social needs, and improving in-game performance. In addition, designed monetization strategies play a role in shaping children's avatars. We identify the ''wardrobe effect,'' where children create multiple avatars but typically use only one favorite consistently. We discuss the impact of cultural consumerism and how social games can support children's identity exploration while balancing self-expression and social conformity. This work contributes to understanding how avatar shapes children's identity growth in social online games. |
| title | Understanding Children's Avatar Making in Social Online Games |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18705 |