Roblox as Community Composition: Tracing Literacies and Digital Play Among Brazilian Multilingual Youth

• In Event: Learning From Transnational Immigrant Literacies

Abstract

Roblox is a free, online “sandbox” gaming platform in which players use digital tools to create customized worlds. This paper is part of a one-year digital micro-ethnography that examines how five young Brazilian immigrant children leverage digital literacies to play, collaborate, and compose communities on Roblox. We followed these participants across three virtual contexts: 1) their everyday play on Roblox, 2) their enrollment in a week-long Roblox coding certification program, and 3) their subsequent implementation of game design literacies on Roblox. Our findings highlight how “sandbox” games are storied and value-laden in their constraints, and how participants demonstrated innovative modes of composing, remix, and remediation to center their identities and speculative worlds.

Authors

• Alexander Power Corbitt, Boston College

• Mariana Lima Becker, Boston College