Rethinking Canada's approach to children's digital game regulation
Rethinking Canada's approach to children's digital game regulation
Background: Connected digital games offer exciting opportunities for children to connect, play, and learn, but first they must navigate industry trends that jeopardize their rights, including invasive data collection and manipulative gambling mechanics.
Analysis: A policy analysis reveals that Canada’s existing digital game regulation largely relies on a U.S. industry-made classification system and is ill-equipped to address these issues. Comparative analysis shows that despite previous similarities in their approaches to game regulation, Canada has now fallen behind the United Kingdom, where shifting approaches to “age-appropriateness” are producing promising new frameworks for supporting children’s rights across the digital environment.
Conclusion and implications: This article concludes with a call to action for a rights-based Canadian response to the problematic issues that have emerged within the children’s game landscape.
age appropriate design, children's culture, children's rights, digital games, media classification and regulation
142-162
Grimes, Sara M.
4639e2e0-222b-4cdc-8113-24d3956bcd14
Jayemanne, Darshana
abc0b3af-260a-44b8-a873-954d9fb6d4a0
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
24 March 2023
Grimes, Sara M.
4639e2e0-222b-4cdc-8113-24d3956bcd14
Jayemanne, Darshana
abc0b3af-260a-44b8-a873-954d9fb6d4a0
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Grimes, Sara M., Jayemanne, Darshana and Giddings, Seth
(2023)
Rethinking Canada's approach to children's digital game regulation.
Canadian Journal of Communication, 48 (1), .
(doi:10.3138/cjc.2022-0008).
Abstract
Background: Connected digital games offer exciting opportunities for children to connect, play, and learn, but first they must navigate industry trends that jeopardize their rights, including invasive data collection and manipulative gambling mechanics.
Analysis: A policy analysis reveals that Canada’s existing digital game regulation largely relies on a U.S. industry-made classification system and is ill-equipped to address these issues. Comparative analysis shows that despite previous similarities in their approaches to game regulation, Canada has now fallen behind the United Kingdom, where shifting approaches to “age-appropriateness” are producing promising new frameworks for supporting children’s rights across the digital environment.
Conclusion and implications: This article concludes with a call to action for a rights-based Canadian response to the problematic issues that have emerged within the children’s game landscape.
Text
RethinkingCanada_sApproach_Accepted_2022
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 16 September 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 16 January 2023
Published date: 24 March 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
Funding: Funding for this project (Children and Age-Appropriate Game Design: Children’s and Developers’ Experiences of How Digital Games are Classified, Rated, and Designed for Children) was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Dr Jayemanne was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council no. AH/S002871/1 (InGAME: Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Sara M. Grimes, Darshana Jayemanne, Seth Giddings.
Keywords:
age appropriate design, children's culture, children's rights, digital games, media classification and regulation
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 476566
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/476566
ISSN: 0705-3657
PURE UUID: 48b0ac2d-5efe-4fed-a01f-808610426109
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Date deposited: 09 May 2023 16:37
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:37
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Author:
Sara M. Grimes
Author:
Darshana Jayemanne
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