Building a Social Game Safely

Nobody warns you that the hardest part of making a social game isn't the game.

Keeping people safe was on my mind from the very first conversation, the one where I was unknowingly describing The Commons. It's a place where strangers talk to each other, and some of those strangers will be teenagers. I went looking for age verification I'd be comfortable with and didn't find any. The UK had just started enforcing face and document scanning for 18+ content, and it honestly gave me the ick. So I started sketching my own idea, a privacy-first way to verify age and identity. It's a separate project (Central ID is a placeholder name), I'm still exploring it, and it isn't part of The Commons yet.

So here's the honest version: I haven't solved it. What I've done is build layers.

What taking it seriously actually means

Taking a project like this seriously means taking on a tremendous amount of work that has nothing to do with sprites. Risk assessments. A data protection impact assessment. Incident procedures, breach logs, audits, and admin tools that are actually reasonable to use at the end of a long day. And a privacy policy. Ever read a privacy policy? Try writing one. Oh my lord. So far that has meant: • A full reporting system, so anyone can flag a problem in a couple of clicks • Mutes, bans and a chat filter for slurs • A moderator dashboard I'd actually want to use • Community guidelines I'm still polishing, with numbered rules so every decision can point back to the one it came from

Then there are the edge cases. What happens to an invite to someone's flat when the person invited gets banned? What should a moderator see when a report comes in, and what should they never see? How long do you keep a chat log, and why? Every one of those has a small, boring answer that matters a lot.

Why I'm telling you this

I'm self taught, with an art degree and a career in security rather than software, so I've learned most of this as I've gone. The one bit of luck is that security trains you to think about how things go wrong. I'm one person, not a legal team, and I will get things wrong sometimes. When I do, I'd much rather hear about it, so if you spot a problem, tell me at hello@thecommons.lol or on the Discord.

If people are going to spend their evenings somewhere I built, the least I can do is be careful with it. The Commons is intended for ages 13 and up, and alpha will open up gradually. Come and follow along: Click Here