Fair play: making games that respect players

Games are made by people, and people make choices. Some choices make a game fun. Others decide whether it is safe, fair and honest. When you design for younger children, those choices matter even more.

Privacy

Anything you put online can be copied and shared. So your game should never include your full name, your photo, your school's name or where you live. The Scratch Community Guidelines ask everyone to keep personal information private. The same goes for players: a game for five-year-olds should not ask for their names or details.

Copyright and credit

Someone owns every picture, song and character, even ones you find on the internet. Using them without permission is not fair to the person who made them. Draw your own sprites, record your own sounds, use the Scratch library, or use work that is openly licensed, and always say who made it.

Design tricks

Some games are designed to keep you playing longer than you meant to: endless levels, rewards that pop up at random, messages like 'Just one more go!', or pressure to buy extras. Designers call these tricks 'dark patterns'. A fair game has a clear goal and a clear ending, and losing doesn't feel like a punishment.

Games from Aotearoa

New Zealand game studios make games played all over the world. In 2025 the industry reported earning about 760 million dollars, almost all of it from players overseas. Designers here think hard about who will play their games and how to keep players coming back for good reasons.

Your choice

In your design journal, write about one ethical choice you made. Did you drop an idea because it wasn't fair? Did you credit someone's work? Choices like these are part of being a good technologist.