Politics, Policy and Video Games

[Music] good afternoon my name is Ben greenstone and I'm going to talk about politics policy and video games so a very quick bit of background on me and why I'm speaking about this I'm the director of Tesla advisory we're a public policy and public affairs consultancy for businesses primarily in the creative industries with a particular specialism in video games we work with businesses to help them manage their policy political and regulatory risk and to find and exploit opportunities before I did this I was a chief adviser to government ministers with a particular responsible for digital and the creative

industries so I've seen them worked on this process from both sides I'm gonna start by giving a bit of a summary on the history and the present of the relationship between video games politics and policy and then I'll run through some of the current issues and why they should matter to video games businesses and I'll finish briefly by talking about what businesses can do so let's begin with let's begin with Space Invaders in 1978 the game hit arcades in Japan and soon spread across the rest of the world it was a huge hit people love to play it happily spending their pocket money or their paper around earnings on another go at the high score but it wasn't popular with everyone in 1981 the Member of Parliament for South Asia Georg Fuchs introduced the control of Space Invaders bill to the House of Commons he was convinced that gained the game made to many young people in his words played

truant missed meals and give up other normal activities even worse he said children were taking money out of their parents purses to have another go again in his words it was blood money extracted from children's weakness and he wanted to use licensing and planning rules to make it harder to operate the machines in the United Kingdom he was unsuccessful but if he was successful that would clearly have dented the ability of the product to make money in the UK and indeed to bring joy to the players who liked getting a high score George Fuchs wasn't alone in that ambition a year later in 1982 city officials in Boston took matters into their own hands they started by refusing to grant licenses to stores in residential areas that wanted to operate an arcade machines an arcade machine they called them electric lights parents were complaining about their children skipping school and stealing money to go

and have a game at the arcade or the local laundromat we're also arcade machines were operating so that was this political incentive to concede to the moral panic from parents ignoring the lack of any real evidence that arcade games were to blame for anything at all the relationship between video games and politics started off Rocky and despite a couple of outliers it hasn't really got a whole lot better last year President Trump referred to several popular games as having influenced the perpetrators of tragic school shootings despite no evidence that that was the case closer to home a group of MPs in our Parliament have released a report on what they called immersive and addictive technologies they singled out the games industry for particular criticism saying that they had struggled to get clear and useful information on how the industry was protecting its players and users from harms so what who cares of a few people

who probably don't play games don't enjoy them or understand them our or think they're bad for society the problem is that these people who think those things are also the people who get to make the rules and the regulations that this industry has to operate in happily like I said George Fuchs is attempt to limit the number of space invaders arcade machines in the UK was unsuccessful but Parliament and policy makers can damage reputations and bottom lines if they set their sights on an industry or practice so it's really important to know what government and policy makers are thinking so I'll now run through some of the big current issues that affect the games industry so governments and politicians generally and particularly in the UK are thinking in terms of three broad categories of harm that relate to video games these are social harms financial harms and data harms they're really within those three broad categories

three other bits of work that are ongoing that relate to them the first is that Select Committee I just mentioned this group of MPs hold representatives of games businesses to Parliament and ask them questions about how they prevented players from spending too much or playing for too long confronted with the entirely reasonable response that reality is more shades of grey than black or white and that for example some people's too much with other people's perfectly easily expendable income the committee released a damning report with some pretty tough recommendations for government these recommendations included things like regulating loot boxes as gambling and requiring companies to share their aggregated player data with researchers and to then pay for any ensuing research that those researchers wanted to do the committee and their reports are broadly concerned with all three types of those harms the second big bit of work that is the government's online harms white paper online harms is government

shorthand for anything bad that happens online but for the purposes of this white paper financial harms are excluded the white paper proposes new regulations around user-generated content and harm prevention for context that will include games with chat functions and we'll have fines for failure to comply these fines could well be in line with GDP are so for context if Facebook were to break the rules they'd be looking at a maximum fine in the region of 2.2 billion dollars and even for Mark Zuckerberg that might sting a bit the third big bit of work going on in the UK at the moment is the Information Commissioner's age appropriate design code the Information Commissioner's Office is the UK's independent data regulator and the code that they've provided is a set of standards that developers of information society services must follow if the service is likely to be accessed by children controversially it calls for things like mandatory age verification

of on all online users to check if they are children or not and then to age gates on that basis that of course has major implications for any game that's available in the UK let's say you make a free-to-play mobile game that is mostly intended for adults but which children might reasonably access the code would require you to either age verify all users when they play all and deny access below a certain age or to make your games suitable for a three-year-old or potentially to release a different version of the game in the UK market so in the context of these three big pieces of work Mr Gatley interact with the three broad categories of harm that we mentioned so social harms by social harms politicians and government are interested in how we interact with others and how we live our lives particularly in ways that aren't related to our financial well-being when it comes to games governments and politicians are especially interested in ideas of addiction abuse playtime and

bullying society has always worried about technology it's not new there once upon a time articles about the negative impact of radio on children most parents today would be delighted if their children spent their Sunday mornings listening to Desert Island Discs and I'm sure I wasn't the only person in this room who was told that their eyes would turn square if they watch too much television what we're seeing is the same with videogames the DCMS Select Committee quizzed companies on why they did not set standard limits for the amount of time children could play the World Health Organization has a gaming disorder into its international classification of diseases and the Children's Commissioner has reported on the alleged bullying that children suffer if they don't have the right skin on fortnight so the very real risk if politicians perceive games to be a bad thing both for individuals and society as a whole that it could lead to badly informed regulation that damages the

functioning of the industry like mandated maximum play times or age gating of services all of these at administrative administrative and as a result financial burdens onto businesses in this industry with no obvious benefit to the user or society someone's financial harms when we talk about financial harms politicians and governments are interested in how something impacts our financial and monetary well-being are we spending too much and are we prioritizing the right things particularly when it comes to games there are concerns around spending controls and gambling or gambling like mechanics we've all seen articles about children getting hold of their parents credit cards and spending money they shouldn't on new skins or extra lives for their favorite games and we'll also have read criticisms of businesses not doing anything when that happens not refunding for instance so again the DCMS select committee went really heavy on this and on the nature of the in-game

transactions in questions particularly the random element of loot boxes indeed the recommendation to the government was to legislate to have loot boxes regulated in the same way as more traditional forms of gambling if the government accepts this recommendation it would mandate the removal of loot boxes from any game for under-18s and required developers to apply for gambling licenses some developers that might hurt their margins for others it would have caused completely wiped them out and so onto the final kind of harm's data harms these harms are in the minds of politicians and government the kind of harm's that came to light after the Cambridge analytical scandal the questions being asked are what the businesses know about us and how are they using that and of special interest when it comes to video games what dates are collected on children and how is it used this again was squarely in the sights is that DC on a select committee

and has been a key driver of the Information Commissioner's age-appropriate design code although ironically the commissioners proposed solution is to collect more data rather than less the Select Committee concluded that data on playtime and habits are collected by games companies for their own commercial purposes but the businesses are willfully obtuse in sharing that the committee believes that data harm is played into social harms by what they called designed addiction their recommendation was that developers should be required to add air to her behavioral design code of practice and that the new regulator for online harms that the government will shortly be introducing should oversee that we see again this administrative and financial burden placed on developers and an industry with no obvious proof that this will help either the user or indeed society more broadly and that's a summary of the really big issues there's a lot more going on besides this so I mentioned the Children's Commissioner

and her report on the impact of games on children the Economic and Social Research Council has just funded some some research into the link between video games and gambling and the competitions and market authority as well as the government are exploring the digital advertising market and I haven't even mentioned Breck's yet because a you might have heard about earlier but be it's really an issue for the entire economy and not something really specific to the games industry they simply put there's a really significant amount of political and regulatory risk for the games industry at the moment and I'm sorry that I've spoken about such doom and gloom so early and for the pgc London programme but despite what looks like a pretty hostile environment there are some positives there are things that businesses can do both individually and collectively to protect themselves against this risk and indeed to see some opportunities so I know I haven't spoken

a huge amount about opportunities if we think about that DCMS to that committee at EVMs select committee no matter how hostile talking about video games gives government the license to think about gay and what they can do to make the industry more successful in the UK that's a good opportunity for businesses to talk to government about the things that matter to your business so what can you do the first thing is to monitor and assess keep up the date with political opinion and consider if and how you need to respond either as an individual as a business or as an industry but also assess your own practices as you go other things that you could do better or indeed other things that you do really well this leads to the second thing show governments and politicians and policy makers what you do well and ideally show them with evidence and numbers lobbying and campaigning can so often be thought of as a Dark Arts but this is really all it is

show government your good work educate them on your industry and explain how some proposals would do more harm than good the third and probably the most important thing that any industry can do in its engagement with government and creating a regulatory system that works for it is to offer government and politicians solutions government has only so many people and politicians have only so much bandwidth they want to be able to show progress and demonstrate positive impact that takes the heat off them so offering solutions that are workable for that for the industry is a fantastic way of effectively mitigating regulatory and political risk you might be big enough that you have some in-house capacity to do that but you may well not be so consider joining a trade body or you know indeed working with an agency to tell your own story and I'm very happy to talk to anyone here about their business risks and opportunities and what the right course of action might be for them and

ultimately we're all here because we know the hugely positive impact of videogames on individuals and on societies and we'd like to see more of it thank you very much for listening and I think we've now got time for some questions right slightly early it's good if it was the terrible problems barely so yes do we have questions there's a lot of issues covered there a lot of kind of different topics sort of talked about there's a gentleman there we've got we've got good 5 to 10 minutes or you know take it easy you can bit of a long-winded one but I think you mentioned kind of the hostility of the the DCMS inquiry but and I agree they they were quite hostile I watched every single one of those verbal evidence giving sessions but also like it was an opportunity for the games industry to prove itself and be accountable and answer those questions and at no point throughout that process did I see the games industry saying we do recognize

these problems we are aware it was very defensive I mean they just the DCMS described them as willfully obtuseness and it was a very obvious lack of transparency and honesty and I feel like the games industry is kind of dug this hole itself a little bit I'm just wondering what your what your view is on that so I would disagree that the games industry has dug the hole itself I think that I think two things I think first of all that going in front of a select committee is a really difficult thing it is not an everyday situation and that committee I think had made its mind up before it got any businesses in front of it so his line of questioning was always quite aggressive and quite hard to offer any actual help towards the second thing I think though is that you're right there would have been more that could have been done and a big part of how you do that is you prepare and you think about what the committee might want to ask and you think about how to do it and I think that's a skill that's there's

not kind of it's not obvious it's not naturally imbued you get it by having done it before or having worked in that place before and I think honestly that games businesses probably could have done more to work with their trade body or with others to prepare for those sessions I mean these were big game companies though like they're not sort of small indie developers you don't know what they're doing is like big giant corporations who have to deal with lawmakers and regulators on a regular basis so say that they just weren't prepared or didn't know what they were doing feels like kind of giving them bit of a free pass for kind of screwing it up quite badly I think I think we've seen lots of really big businesses in recent times not just in the games industry that have got very big very quickly and all of a sudden have to answer to regulators and lawmakers and make a bit of a hash of it the first time around so I take that point wholeheartedly I think that there were actually some really good examples in that Select Committee so for instance I actually think that King gave a really

good account of themselves had come with answers and data thought about what they needed to talk about and done that within some of the the other legal confines so for instance there are listed business right they have to deal that you know they can't give out all their data in a select committee without notifying okay sorry - to managing two things at once cool any further questions we have out there but there's a chap with a rhino's hello yes I am wearing a hat congratulations you spoke a little while ago about the prospect of regulations have you given any thought to the picture in China and whether those form of regulations will be appealing to UK government or Europe at large yes so of course lots of what happens in China is kind of looked on that by the rest of the world because it's a huge market for so many businesses and so other countries look

to kind of either align or not on the basis of making themselves an obvious second market so I have certainly heard politicians talk about some some of China's proposed regulations are also for instance the Cinderella law that limits when younger people can play games particularly during late evening to early morning that I'd be really surprised if Western economies certainly the kind of in in the EU's broad regulatory market and indeed in the US regulatory market went in that direction partly because they're cut by the double-edged sword of wanting businesses to know less about all of their customers and to hold less data and part of how you can do some of the kind of the regulation that China has done essentially is because it knows everything about its citizens so while they do think about it sometimes I'd be really surprised if they went as far as

you've seen China go I think they have an appetite in the UK certainly for limiting the amount of information this is collected particularly on children and I think that that then precludes them from what they then have what they would like to do which is to to limit play time I think that that's the lesser goal for them and limiting the amount of data that's collected cool I have this one question just to finish because I thought some of it was one was running about you obviously raised another issue that is all if you're a sort of a game developer publisher right now it's very hard to keep up with everything you know obviously you're mean pliant with laws I get that but what do you think is the biggest threat will the biggest you must do this of the different sort of legal issues come either now or coming down the line aside from brexit which every

business needs yeah yeah yeah so aside aside from that for me I think the really big thing to think about is loot boxes actually you've got the age-appropriate design code coming and that's actually due to be released at some stage this week in its final form but I think that the most immediate threat to lots of games business's financial financials essentially on bottom lines if that stops exactly what if all of a sudden you're not allowed to have in-game transactions of some kinds without having a license a betting license so big that's a big deal to think about cool all right thank you very much please [Applause] you

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