scholarly journals ESRB and PEGI’s Flawed ‘Includes Random Items’ Label- Self-Regulation of Random Reward Mechanisms (e.g. Loot Boxes) Alone Fails to Ensure Consumer Protection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Y. Xiao

This is a pre-print of an article accepted for publication in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. The final authenticated version will be available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00329-6. The three flaws of the ESRB and PEGI's introduction of the 'Includes Random Items' label are identified. This self-regulatory measure fails to provide sufficient information about the randomised in-game purchase mechanics; does not appropriately identify gambling as gambling and fails to guarantee minimum age ratings to protect young children; and can be circumvented with a separate line of products. Self-regulation alone is insufficient at protecting consumers from loot box-related harms. Legal restrictions on the sale of loot boxes in the short-term and the adoption of ethical game design by the industry in the long term are necessary to ensure consumer protection.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 559-559
Author(s):  
Sara Freed ◽  
Briana Sprague ◽  
Lesley Ross

Abstract Interventions using exercise video games, or exergames, have shown short-term cognitive and physical benefits to older adults, though long-term effects are less promising. Enjoyment of exergames may promote exergame use after the intervention period, though little work has examined older adults’ views of exergames before and after gameplay experience. We invited 20 older adults between 65 and 84 years of age (M=73.30, SD=5.95) to play two Xbox Kinect games, Just Dance and Kinect Sports Rivals, for twenty minutes. In our presentation, we will present qualitative and quantitative findings of this pilot study, including findings that older adults reported that they were not likely to play similar exergames in the future and that they did not find the exergames to be more fun compared to other ways of exercising. We will discuss implications for game design and research relevant to game developers, manufacturers, and researchers. Part of a symposium sponsored by Technology and Aging Interest Group.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Y. Xiao

Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetisation innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays a set amount of money for each attempt, the opportunity to obtain randomised virtual rewards of uncertain in-game and real-world value. Loot boxes have been and continue to be scrutinised by regulators and policymakers because their randomised nature is akin to gambling. The regulation of loot boxes is a current and challenging international public policy and consumer protection issue. This paper reviews the psychology literature on the potential harms of loot boxes and applies the behavioural economics literature in order to identify the potentially abusive nature and harmful effects of loot boxes, which justify their regulation. This paper calls on the industry to publish loot box spending data and cooperate with independent empirical research to avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this paper identifies the flaws of the ‘regulate loot boxes as gambling’ approach and critiques the alternative consumer protection approach of adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing the probabilities of obtaining randomised rewards and setting maximum spending limits. This paper recommends a combined legal and self-regulatory approach: the law should set out minimal acceptable standards of consumer protection and industry self-regulation should thrive to achieve an even higher standard.


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Petit ◽  
Charles Spence

AbstractHealth messages designed to address obesity are typically focused on the long-term benefits of eating healthy food. However, according to the insurance hypothesis, obese people are food insecure, and this causes them to be overly concerned about short-term consumption. As such, it is necessary to rethink public health messaging and consider how to reduce short-term insecurity by eating healthy food.


Author(s):  
Minjing Dong ◽  
Chang Xu

Deep recurrent neural networks have achieved impressive success in forecasting human motion with a sequence to sequence architecture. However, forecasting in longer time horizons often leads to implausible human poses or converges to mean poses, because of error accumulation and difficulties in keeping track of longerterm information. To address these challenges, we propose to retrospect human dynamics with attention. A retrospection module is designed upon RNN to regularly retrospect past frames and correct mistakes in time. This significantly improves the memory of RNN and provides sufficient information for the decoder networks to generate longer term prediction. Moreover, we present a spatial attention module to explore and exploit cooperation among joints in performing a particular motion. Residual connections are also included to guarantee the performance of short term prediction. We evaluate the proposed algorithm on the largest and most challenging Human 3.6M dataset in the field. Experimental results demonstrate the necessity of investigating motion prediction in a self audit manner and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in both short term and long term predictions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (91) ◽  
pp. 74-78
Author(s):  
I. Svidruk

The decisive feature of creative management is the creation of conditions for self-realization, which determines the relevance of the study of the transformational vector of creative motivation for the development of creative capabilities of staff. A significant problem of psychological management approaches to creative motivation is the awareness of the need for continuously updated material incentives for staff. A reward received as a deserved prize may cause its unjustified expectation in the future, and its absence begins to be perceived as an unfair incentive system. Monetary motivation is also not an effective tool for stimulating the creative development of staff, because its positive-motivating effect only manifests itself in the first 48 hours. The introduction of a bonus system as a short-term incentive usually indicates the desire of managers to mechanically control the motivation of employees. The use of bonuses is based on the incorrect assumption that an employee does not fully utilize his own potential, and this leads to a motivated inconsistency between the actual and the possible volume of work. Thus, the system of bonus incentives, not taking into account the complex interweaving of market factors, market conditions, prices, products, competition, can destroy the employee's responsibility for achieving the resultant results. Motivated systems that directly rely on quantitative results of work often target workers to achieve short-term success, ignoring long-term development prospects. The effect of displacement of internal motivation with external motivation is manifested: interest in remuneration displaces interest in creative work. Material incentives appear to be incapable of motivating most of them to a long-term desire for self-improvement, development and achievement of creative results. Job satisfaction, diverse activities that require dedication, self-planning goals, education and training, and participation in management are often more important than attractive wages and bonuses in the form of a bonus. The psychological danger to the head is also the use of established non-material methods of stimulating creativity, which often provoke material expectations from the staff. The newest managerial approaches to creative motivation must mutually coordinate the nonlinear combination of different directions of material and immaterial stimulation, despite their certain contradictory nature. Thus, the motivation of creativity focuses on the psychological self-regulation of the individual, integrating the intellectual, motivational, volitional and emotional components of creative activity.


Author(s):  
Pāvels Jurs ◽  
Alīda Samuseviča

The new basic school curriculum provides an opportunity to promote the development of student value system and responsibility in the pedagogical process. The emphasized requirements for Grade 9 graduates are: self-regulation, positive attitude, tolerance, personal responsibility, civic engagement, patriotism, and understanding of the important values of the society, ensuring the transfer and application of knowledge to the existing reality. Summarizing the empirical research data, it can be concluded that the predominant values for Grade 9 pupils are family, friends, peers and concern about education. Some students find it difficult to name their own values and the values of Latvia. The students involved in the study can be described as responsible only in those areas that affect the respondents themselves on a short term basis. Research highlights the lack of responsibility particularly in such categories as students` ability to take responsibility for their country, their future and their education. This means that in the pedagogical process, during the implementation of the conceptual framework of the new basic education curriculum, it is necessary to promote students' understanding in order to develop a long-term perspective.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Y. Xiao

Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetisation innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays a set amount of money for each attempt, the opportunity to obtain randomised virtual rewards of uncertain in-game and real-world value. Loot boxes have been and continue to be scrutinised by regulators and policymakers because their randomised nature is akin to gambling. The regulation of loot boxes is a current and challenging international public policy and consumer protection issue. This paper reviews the psychology literature on the potential harms of loot boxes and applies the behavioural economics literature in order to identify the potentially abusive nature and harmful effects of loot boxes, which justify their regulation. This paper calls on the industry to publish loot box spending data and cooperate with independent empirical research to avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this paper identifies the flaws of the ‘regulate loot boxes as gambling’ approach and critiques the alternative consumer protection approach of adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing the probabilities of obtaining randomised rewards and setting maximum spending limits. This paper recommends a combined legal and self-regulatory approach: the law should set out minimal acceptable standards of consumer protection and industry self-regulation should thrive to achieve an even higher standard.


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