Our first computer, a Sinclair ZX81, was brought home by my father, a chemical engineer, in 1981. We wrote games together after having previously played games together.
Nowadays, gaming serves as many people’s introduction to the technology, just like it did for me.
I adhere to the following two fundamental gaming truths:
To start, everyone can enjoy gaming. No one organization “owns” gaming. Instead, you are welcome to play and welcome to all the enjoyment and skill-building that comes with gaming, whether you are new to gaming or an ardent esports fan. In this sense, when everyone can participate, everyone gains.
Think again if you assume gamers are primarily guys, specifically teen boys. We are a 2.6 billion-strong community of parents who play with their children, explorers who travel the world together, instructors who make arithmetic fascinating, grandmothers who play with their grandchildren to learn about them, and soldiers who stay in touch with their families back home. Today’s gamers tend to be older, with over half being female.
Second, gaming must support and safeguard everyone’s safety. It must be safe to play video games. We all carry a portion of the burden of community safety since building a community is a shared endeavor and protecting the community is crucial labor. This goes for both the game industry and players.
Video games have become the world’s largest cultural industry, more significant than movies and music, thanks to the widespread adoption of gaming and its international communities. But it also occurs at a time when hate speech, bigotry, and misogyny are all part of a toxic stew that permeates digital life.
Like rock and roll, literature, and television before them, video games are frequently derided or mocked for being pointless, violent, or only containing hate speech. But video games are specifically made to be inclusive. Regardless of age, education level, social status, race, religion, politics, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, or ability, we don’t only “walk in someone else’s shoes”; we also stand on an equal footing. Gaming doesn’t just bring together stereotype-defying players; it also brings us together via our shared love of fun and satisfies our innate desire to play. According to the intergroup contact theory, ties with individuals outside our groups effectively combat polarisation and prejudice. Creating unforeseen friendships with people we might never meet in real life is where gaming excels. “As an interactive form of entertainment, gaming settings have the ability to bring people together for collaborations across differences, and to foster empathy and mutual understanding via play,” says Dr. Linda Tropp, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
When someone says that playing video games is a waste of time, I remind them of the benefits of gaming for one’s health and society. In addition to providing sheer joy, gaming aids in socialization for autistic kids and memory enhancement for Alzheimer’s patients. Researchers have discovered that gaming teaches children cognitive skills and empathy while teaching adults leadership, better decision-making, and reduced stress and despair. The entry point to these 21st-century talents and STEM is gaming (science, technology, engineering, and math). Just consider that teenage girls playing video games are three times more likely to seek a career in STEM. 74% of kids who regularly play games online with others have made friends there, and 37% have made more than five.
We can intentionally and purposefully maintain creating a secure and welcoming gaming environment for everyone by banding together as an industry. I pledge to this as well as Microsoft and Team Xbox, starting with the following guidelines and deeds:
We pledge to exercise caution, initiative, and promptness. Our Xbox Safety team is known as the “Defenders of Joy” because we will protect you in any way that is technologically and humanly possible so that gaming can continue to be enjoyable. We’ll spot abuse and misuse of our platform and immediately address them. To identify potential safety issues and solutions in the future, we also intend to diversify the membership of our safety team. We just released a revised version of our Xbox Community Standards because hate and harassment have no place in gaming. It explains how each of us can maintain gaming enjoyable and secure for everyone while also outlining the repercussions of breaking these standards. Our 150,000 Xbox Ambassadors, who serve as leaders, stewards, and allies in the community, will be called upon to create new community missions to create a friendly and secure environment for all gamers since a welcome community is a key to a safe community. We will also keep introducing innovative initiatives to promote the well-being of the broader gaming community.
We promise to give you the tools you need to protect your gaming experience any way you see fit. We think giving you the means to make your gaming experience as comfortable as possible is essential. We are equipping our official Club community managers with proactive content moderation tools this summer, which will aid in fostering forums where gamers can talk openly about their favorite titles. By the end of 2019, we intend to introduce new content moderation features to Xbox Live for all users. The simplest option for parents and guardians to control who their children interact with as well as their family’s screen time, content, and expenditure are to create a Child or Teen Account. We will make it simpler for parents and guardians new to console and PC gaming to find and generate Child or Teen accounts, even if more than 26 million Child and Teen accounts have already been made. We launched Gaming Summer Camps this summer to give young gamers new opportunities to explore life skills and practice healthy habits that can be used in gaming and everyday life. This year, Microsoft Stores launched a series of family workshops to assist parents in understanding the tools available to them on console and PC. Additionally, we just introduced a new “For Everyone” destination on Xbox.com where parents, guardians, and gamers can understand how we’re enhancing inclusivity, accessibility, and safety features to make gaming more enjoyable. To ultimately give our community of gamers and their parents or guardians power over their own experiences, we are now innovating in these and other practical ways to lessen, filter, and create a shared awareness of toxic encounters.
We pledge to collaborate with the gaming sector on safety measures. We will publicly share safety innovations with our industry because we want to protect every gamer, just like Microsoft has made PhotoDNA technology widely available to everyone in the computer sector to combat the transmission of child pornography. Numerous teams working in moderation, user research, data science, and others have already partnered with industry partners to exchange insights and best practices in safety, security, and privacy.
The gaming industry is expanding quickly, and the upcoming launch of new game services like Apple Arcade, Google Stadia, and Microsoft’s Project xCloud will expand global access to gaming. Our industry must balance its intense need for safety with its fierce urgency to perform.
To make gaming accessible to everyone and protect gamers worldwide, we invite all gamers and industry partners to join us in upholding these principles. This will help bring the globe together.