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_Boss Fight Group 0

Player One Player Two Player Three Player Four

Abbie Thacher Erin Andreassi Pavel Batalov Sydney Peterson

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Goal of the Project

VGMS STAKEHOLDERS: gamers, youth gamers, gaming scholars, librarians, archivists, game developers, primary guardians of youth gamers, etc.

FOCUS: Primary guardians of youth gamers.

RQ: How might the VGMS be modified in order to support the concerns of youth gamers’ primary guardians?

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Key Terms

Youth Gamer: A child under the age of 18 who plays video games, up to and including PC games, console games, mobile games, and handheld games.

Primary Guardian: A parent or primary caregiver of a child under the age of 18 who will be making decisions on what gaming content the child has access to.

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Project Outcomes

4-page iConference report on the concerns of youth gamers’ primary guardians based on collected survey data.
Modified VGMS that better supports the concerns of youth gamers’ primary guardians based on the data that we collect.

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Background and Literature Review

All research literature is less than 4 years old.
Research conducted in Japan, Italy, U.S.
Research methodology: Questionnaires distributed to primary guardians.

Range of participants: 87, 254, 361, 6,799

Games lead to family bonding experiences.

Parents prioritize multiplayer games and games that are fun.

Primary Guardians still concerned about safety, the merits of educational games, and screen time.
However, time spent playing video games correlated to youth having experienced poorer relationships with their peers and caregivers.

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Research Gaps

RQ: How might the VGMS be modified in order to support the concerns of youth gamers’ primary guardians?

Which games are considered “fun?”
What types of control are primary guardians interested in implementing?

Game communication?
Screen time?

Concerns about educational games?
Age-specific concerns?

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Design of Study/Method

What factors exist in parents’ decision to purchase video games for their child?

Pieces of metadata both included and not included in the VGMS
Violence, Nudity, Profanity (ESRB) | Ideology, Online Communications
Age and Import

Where they get their information currently

ESRB, Friends/Family, Online Communities, Review Sites

Ask them what we missed

Intellectual stimulation
Addiction

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Collection Methods

Qualtrics
Pyramid Scheme Snowball Sampling

Friends, Family, Coworkers
Community Organizations
Schools
Mailing Lists

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

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Range of Responses

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Findings and Discussion

At what age would you consider allowing your children to play a video game with each of the following elements?

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How useful is having accurate information about each of the following elements when deciding whether or not to allow your children to play a video game?

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How useful is having accurate information about each of the following elements when deciding whether or not to allow your children to play a video game?

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Identified Concerns

92.31% of caregivers believe the age of their child is an important factor in the decision to purchase a video game for them
A large majority of caregivers control who their child plays games with online, such as whether they can play with strangers or people they already know

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Responses that could inform VGMS

The majority (75%) of caregivers look at ESRB for information
These caregivers would like to see the rating system improve/provide more detail
Specifications- gender representation, portrayal of women, type of violence, in-game messaging, in-app purchases, information on ads within game, triggers, how addicting the algorithm is, reading level for games for younger children

Even if it is not their main source of information, caregivers still do look to the ESRB for information on the game they are purchasing. Through the survey results, we found what kind of improvements caregivers would like to see in rating systems.They would like to see information pertaining to gender representation, portrayal of women, type of violence, in-game messaging, in-app purchases, information on ads within game, triggers, how addicting the algorithm is, reading level for games for younger children. Some of these responses were anticipated like messaging and in app purchases. Differentiating violence into more helpful categories like hate violence and sexual violence would make it easier for people to make an informed decision about the game they are buying and its potential triggers. How addicting the algorithm is would be an interesting one but I do not know how it would be consistently measured.

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We asked what games their children play the most

We can use these types of games as a starting point for creating better metadata for primary guardians who purchase video games

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Where ESRB is lacking, parents fill in information by turning to friends or the internet
Looking at online reviews and forums like common sense media could help us improve the VGMS for caregivers

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Conclusion

RQ: How might the VGMS be modified in order to support the concerns of youth gamers’ primary guardians?

In Game Communication

Networked Features

Content

Rating

Extras

Distribution Package Entity

How does the data answer our question?

Conclusion

As you saw within the data, and as discussed there are many areas of concern for parents. There is an overwhelming concern for communication in the online realm. As well as deep interest in the content and influencers their children are exposed to. Based off the data so far, we have isolated three areas within the VGMS that can be modified to accommodate parents’ concerns.

Regarding in game communication, we felt the network features section was the most fitting based on its current purpose. The VGMS currently has no in game communication specific option and feel that the VGMS based off parents’ concerns would benefit from adding more fine-tuned options, that can be beneficial to others besides parents.

Examples:

Voice chat vs text
Free chat vs controlled
Censored vs uncensored
Strangers vs friends
In person vs. Online
Privacy Practices (Are chats stored?)
Outside communication helpful? (Among Us, Dead by Daylight, Rocket League)

In the case of the rating system section, it largely relies on the ESRB, and as we’ve touched on it is lacking to a lot of parents. ESRB was created in 1994 in a response to a Senate committee meeting in the late 1993 on violence in Video games.

Background: Nintendo and Sega were called before the committee to discuss Mortal Combat and Night Trap, two games both violent in different ways. It was largely the two companies throwing each other under the bus, but ultimately because of the pressure and the concern surrounding violence in video games the ESRB came into existence to keep government out of censorship. The limitations should make a little more sense now.

It created before the ability to connect with people the way we do today.

More refinement on types of violence in games is a major concern to parents, and that is something that ESRB is not very good at. The VGMS has the opportunity to provide more granularity with the rating system to provide parents with a better understanding/breakdown of what they can expect their child to be exposed to. Differentiating between physical violence vs. sexual violence being the top of the list.

On the flip side as kids get older parents seem to care less about things like language, and M rated games solely for language are overkill for most parents. Which can lead them to distrust or disregard the system where they might need it.

Last but not least the Distribution Package Entity with regard to the in game influences, such as In-app purchasing and to more specific mobile and tablet games Advertising. The DPE is the section that generally makes the most sense. It handles the distribution including pricing, in-app options would fit well within this section. Advertising would also generally fit as there might be extra cost to have the ads removed, or parental controls that allow for the advertising to be turned off.

Parents need information to make informed decisions about the games their children play. The modern parents are generally more tech savvy than their parental counterparts, but their concerns largely remain the same; they don’t want to expose their children to violence before they’re able to fully understand, be influenced by outside entities, or chat with strangers. The data we gathered supports this and shows there is a need for the VGMS and rating systems to be updated to reflect their concerns.

Definitions:

Networked Features

The ways in which the video game can be experienced through connection(s) to other entities (e.g., companies, third-party organizations, other players)

Rating

The classification of the content in the video game used to inform decision making about the video game, provided by organizations such as professional associations, video game distributors, or creators.

Distribution Package Entity

A superclass of two disjoint sub-entity types: Physical Distribution Package and Digital Distribution Package. These two entity types model all of the properties necessary to describe the media through which individual copies of a game are distributed.

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Future Work

Larger more Diverse Population

Greater ability to refine data

Survey Question Maintenance

Ability to rank by importance
Educational skill levels

Interviews

Provide more context and gain insight

As of 11/29/2021 there are 77 participants

If we were to write a research paper what would we need to do to improve the process?

Future Work

The survey we conducted was a broad look at parents’ concerns collected from across the country and helped us understand many things, including the need for refinement. The next step would be to refine the survey and provide it to larger more diverse population. While introducing interviews to provide more context to binary answers. 

Diversity: Age of children and age of parent, type of console/system they play…

To provide more reliable results we need to collect from a larger more diverse data set. This allows for the ability allowing us to refine our search and look at target groups. For example if we wanted to see a specific data set of 10 year old girls who play games with their parents, for whatever reason, a larger data set with more diversity would allow for a more reliable inferences from the data.

Refine questions; ranking importance, adding information in about skill sets and educational information that was brought to our attention in the survey in aspects we missed. Reading level. We can see this survey as a good beta test. Every good video game has beta testers. (Skill Sets by age range).

Adding interviews to the process provides more context to the more binary data.

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Bibliography

Carissoli, C., Di Natale, A., Caputo, M., Triberti, S., La Paglia, F., La Barbera, D., & Villani, D. (2019). Parental Attitudes toward

Videogames at School. Computers in the Schools, 36(3),

188-204.https://www-tandfonline-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/full/10.1080/07380569.2019.1643277

Doi, S., Isumi, A., & Fujiwara, T. (2021). Association between adverse childhood experiences and time spent playing video games in

adolescents: Results from A-CHILD study. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(19), 10377,

https://doi-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.3390/ijerph181910377

Sobel, K., Bhattacharya, A., Hiniker, A., Lee, J.H., Kientz, J., & Yip, J.C. (2017). “It wasn’t really about the Pokémon”: Parental

perspectives on a location-based mobile game. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI 2017.

Wang, B., Taylor, L., & Sun, G. (2018). Families that play together stay together: Investigating family bonding through video games.

New Media & Society, 20(11), 4074-4094. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818767667

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