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Making a Minecraft community for young people with additional needs using open working

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Creative Active Lives CIC is a non-profit organisation that invests profits into providing inclusive, accessible entertainment and educational activities to people of all ages and abilities who face barriers to accessing opportunities to improve physical and mental wellbeing.

Use this Guide if you want to create a safe, supportive online gaming community for young people with additional needs to play, learn, and make friends. This Guide shares how Creative Active Lives used open working practices to set up a custom Minecraft server for children with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities).

Jump to steps
Key software:
Zoom, Discord, Minecraft
How they set it up:
Developers built or adapted it for us
Setup costs:
A cloud hosted server can start from around £5-10 per month.
Ongoing costs:
Server hosting, software subscriptions, staff time.
Guide in use since:
October 2023

Steps to making a Minecraft community for young people with additional needs using open working

Multiplayer online games like Minecraft can be a great way for children and young people to:

  • learn digital skills

  • improve their confidence

  • form social networks.

This can be especially important for children who don’t often spend time with other young people in person.

However, mainstream gaming communities can be challenging or even harmful for neurodivergent children. Young people with additional needs may be excluded from popular games that other people their age can enjoy.

A custom gaming community can offer:

  • a safe, private space to build friendships

  • understanding, support, and encouragement

  • a chance to develop skills without a lot of pressure

  • adult oversight and safeguarding.

To understand your audience's needs:

  • talk to parents and carers

  • talk to children themselves about what they want and need

  • consult with educators and other professionals

  • observe children's different play styles and preferences

  • consider conducting surveys or focus groups.

Creative Active Lives CIC provides inclusive, accessible entertainment and education activities to people of all ages and abilities who face barriers to accessing opportunities to improve physical and mental wellbeing.

They found that many neurodivergent children, including those with autism, were socially isolated and struggled with traditional friendships. They saw that these children felt more confident online but needed a safe, monitored space to interact.

In mainstream online gaming communities young people often experienced in-game bullying (called ‘griefing’) and toxic views and behaviours. Creative Active Lives’ MineMania community aims to offer an alternative, nurturing environment.

When you have a clear idea of what young people want and need from your gaming community, you can find the right tools.

For example, the Minecraft server might be the main platform for gameplay, but young people might want to see and chat to each other in other ways too, for example using Zoom, Discord, WhatsApp, or Twitch.

You might also want to think about how you will:

  • communicate with parents and carers

  • manage data and measure impact

  • make sure your community is as accessible as possible for children with disabilities.

You can host a Minecraft server from a computer in your home, or pay a monthly fee for hosting on a remote server. Setting up a server takes time, and needs some technical knowledge, so you may want to work with a developer or someone experienced at setting up networks.

Creative Active Lives uses a custom Minecraft server, plus Zoom for live video sessions, and Discord for young people to chat with each other outside the game. They have also set up a bot to connect the Minecraft game chat to a Discord channel which parents can view.

Creative Active Lives also used open source software from a charity called SpecialEffect to make their Minecraft server more accessible. The software works with an eye gaze controller, which allows users to use a keyboard to play Minecraft by using their eyes.

Because the software was open source, Creative Active Lives were able to keep their costs down and include a whole new group of players.

One of the benefits of hosting your own gaming community, such as a Minecraft server, is that you can tailor it to suit your audience.

There may be aspects of the game you want to focus on, and behaviours that you want to encourage or discourage.

You may also want to enable different features to make your space easy to use for different:

  • types of play

  • communications styles

  • knowledge and confidence levels.

The MineMania server offers different play styles and areas to suit various needs, including solo play, collaborative building, and PvP (player versus player) zones.

They also use colour-coding, logos, and graphics to make moving around the server easier for children who struggle with reading.

This is an essential step to ensure a safe and supportive environment for children and young people.

Write a clear safeguarding policy and appoint a safeguarding lead. Ensure staff or volunteers working with players have up to date DBS checks and have been trained in safeguarding.

For everyone in the community:

  • share clear rules and behaviour guidelines

  • set up moderation tools and systems

  • manage invites and referrals

  • work out in advance how you will approach and resolve conflicts.

Data security and privacy are very important, especially if your community includes a forum like Discord where young people are sharing messages. Make sure to review your process against General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidance.

Players must agree to a Code of Conduct to be able to join MineMania. This sets out clear guidelines for how players should behave towards each other in the community. Creative Active Lives do a lot of moderation, mediate between players when they fall out, and aim to help children learn to handle their emotions and make up after arguments.

Start small and grow:

  • begin with a pilot program and test everything

  • gather feedback from players and parents

  • be flexible and willing to change your plans

  • gradually introduce new features and expand the community.

Creative Active Lives share ideas and gather feedback from parents and children through workshops, playtesting sessions, and social media.

The server and activities are co-designed with the children, giving them a role in shaping their experience. They try new ideas suggested by the children, like creating a Discord server. Where possible, they give young people the opportunity to develop, code, and test their own ‘mods’, plugins, and mini games.

Consider adopting an ‘open working’ approach to benefit the wider community. You can:

  • share your code on platforms like GitHub

  • document what you do and what you learn

  • collaborate with other organisations working in similar areas

There are many benefits of open working:

  • Saving time and resources by building on existing solutions

  • Getting help and feedback from a supportive community

  • Increasing the reach and impact of your work

  • Giving you a chance to help others.

Creative Active Lives used open source code, software, and knowledge to develop MineMania, including the eye-gaze interface software produced by SpecialEffect. They also share their own code on GitHub for others to use and adapt.

And this Guide talks about using eye gaze interface technology to make generative AI art software more accessible