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Regulating digital games

Regulating digital games is a topic that has been at the forefront recently due to the advancement in gaming technology. US Congress pushed the games industry to set up an Entertainment Software Ratings Board to determine age ratings. This led to the Pan European Game Information rating in 2003. This rating system is similar to that of films.

As online games have become more impactful, the question of content regulation is becoming more important. This issue got in the focus after the Christchurch shootings in 2019, when users of Roblox, an online gaming platform, started re-enacting the event. After this incident, Roblox employs “thousands” of human moderators and artificial intelligence to check user-submitted games and police chat among its 60m daily users, who have an average age of about 13.

This has prompted debates on how to regulate social media-like conversations. Politicians have argued that the constitution should protect in-game chat as it is considered similar to one-to-one conversation.

Game makers are doing their best to design out bad behaviour before it occurs. For example, when users of Horizon Worlds complained of being virtually groped, a minimum distance between avatars was introduced.

Similar o content moderation of social media, online gaming will trigger new policy and governance challenges.

Africa Tech Festival 2023

Africa Tech Festival will be held from 14 until 16 November 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa.

During the three-day festival, there will be two main events with the aim to unite Africa’s tech ecosystem and industry verticals.

The first one is Africom which will focus on topics of Connectivity Infrastructure and Digitial Inclusion with an emphasis on: Connecting Africa’s Next Billion; Digital Infrastructure Investment; Telcos of Tomorrow; Sustainable Development & Green ICT, and Future Visions: Web3, The Metaverse & Beyond, among others.

The second event called Afritech will focus on topics on Entreprise Transformaiton and Emerging Technologies with an emphasis on: AHUB: Africa’s Start-up Scene; AI, IoT & Disruptive Tech, and Cybersecurity & Data Protection, among others.

For more information, please visit the event page.

Indian University launches MBA programme in the metaverse and web 3.0

India-based private university UPES School of Business has announced the launch of an MBA programme on metaverse and web 3.0, aiming to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the metaverse, blockchain, and web 3.0 ecosystems. The two-year programme is intended to offer theoretical knowledge of the metaverse, practical experience with companies working in the metaverse arena, and immersive experiences through Meta labs.

The programme’s designers promise to offer students a hands-on experience to better understand the metaverse and its associated technologies, and to equip them with the necessary skills for the future metaverse market.

Seoul officially launched its metaverse platform

The Korean capital Seoul has officially launched its metaverse platform dubbed Metaverse Seoul, where users will experience an immersive public service. In this virtual environment, users could fill out official paperwork, get help with taxes, and use other city services created for businesses, education and tourism. The platform will also include a virtual city hall, well-known touristic locations and a counselling service for adolescents and teens that offers mentoring and education.

The virtual platform will be developed over several phases, with official figures indicating that about $1.6 million has been invested and that the project’s second phase will cost about $2.2 million.

According to Seoul’s administration, the goal is to create a platform that would eventually manage all of the city’s administrative functions.

ITU-T launches focus group on metaverse

A Focus Group on Metaverse was established at the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) with the goal of supporting pre-standardisation activities for the metaverse.

Aspects to be considered as part of the group’s work include, among others: working definitions and terminology, concepts, vision, use cases, and ecosystem; technical requirements; technical frameworks and characteristics, including identification of fundamental underlying technologies; aspects related to security and the protection of personally identifiable information; networking infrastructure and connectivity; and interoperability.

The focus group is expected to carry out activities such as:

Study terminology and concepts.
Identify and study enabling technologies and key tasks for standardisation purposes.
Study and gather information to develop a pre-standardisation roadmap.
Build a community of experts to unify concepts and develop common understandings.
Identify stakeholders with whom ITU-T could collaborate.
Establish liaisons and relationships with other organisations that could contribute to pre-standardisation activities.

Breakthrough in haptic technologies will provide a greater sense of touch in metaverse-like environments

Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong have announced a breakthrough in haptic technologies. To provide a more genuine sense of ‘touch’ experience in the extended realities, the team has developed a more advanced haptic wireless glove dubbed WeTac.

Unlike the existing haptic gloves that are bulky and reliant on wires and cables, limiting users’ ability to fully immerse themselves in the metaverse, the WeTa glove overcomes these limitations by providing an ultrathin, skin-integrated wireless solution.