I am Sophia Emma Beaugendre, an 11 years old game creator on the most famous game platform, Roblox. In 2020, during the first lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I discovered Roblox. My mother bought a second-hand laptop for my online classes. During my free time (there was a lot!), I wanted to try something new on Roblox, which I knew for some months. So, I went on Roblox Studio – the app that lets you create games – and tried some. I tried to create Parkour and Roleplay games but none of them worked until I started to create “Island of move”. I followed hours of tutorials on YouTube to learn basic coding and to better understand how Roblox Studio works. I am so grateful for my then best friends, Rania and Madison, because without them “Island of move” would not have been like this. They helped me to find a name and gave me ideas for the different trajectories I can put in the game. The most important support from them was that they gave me hope and encouraged me when the first trials failed. Finally, when “Island of move” was out, my friends and I always played it and we told other people and class friends about my game. And surprisingly it slowly became popular. There were millions of gamers!
This year my dream finally came true. Roblox gave me back the game, with now more than 50 million gamers !
Virtual celebrity
At that time, it was quite difficult to tell my mother how popular was my game as she was so stressed with online work and trying not to catch Covid while going to the supermarket. But the day the game reached 30 million gamers, I told her that I’m a virtual celebrity. She debated for hours on the dangers of the metaverse and she set important parameters on my laptop. Then my mom created a Roblox account for parents and she checked all the games that I was allowed to play and blocked those that were suspicious according to her. Yes, there are ‘dark rooms’ in some games!
One day in 2021 while I was playing, someone named “Unhappy” begged me to be his friend. I don’t like making online friends because you never know who’s behind the screen. He kept on begging me but then he said: “Fine, I guess I have to hack you”. I was 9 years old at that time, I was scared and I left the game and turned off my computer.
according to her.”
When I came back, I was shocked! I was logged off from my account and my password had changed. I was in tears for days. We were (again!) in lockdown and I lost the thing that was giving me joy. I had a long conversation with my mother about the dangers (again!) of being online. But at the end, she understood that it was important for me to recover my account. So, I decided to create a new account. With this new account, I emailed Roblox and told them about my game and how I got hacked. After some weeks, they realised it and took my game and put their name on it. At that point, I had mixed feelings. For sure, my game was safe but all the credits/robux were going to the platform!
Goal: have my game back!
In 2022, I finally could log in my old account but I still didn’t have “Island of move” back. But I didn’t give up, I learned how to make YouTube videos while playing Roblox and get famous as I thought that it was the best way for the Roblox admins to notice me. 
This year my dream finally came true. Roblox gave me back the game, with now more than 50 million gamers! In fact, they kept it safe for me as they wanted to be sure that I am the creator of “Island of move”. I never felt so happy in my entire life! What I’ve learned since 2020, creating and playing online games is something that I will not forget. First, you need to know how to travel in the metaverse as you only see avatars and not the real persons. Hackers do exist and you need to know how to protect yourself and your game. I hope that you have parents like mine who let you explore things that they themselves don’t know. The most important thing that I’ve learned is that what’s yours is yours and you need to fight to keep it. This story is to tell everyone who’s reading that every bad situation can have a good ending, you just need to have hope and never give up.
Sophia Emma Beaugendre
