This is the first of a series of posts that we hope will feel like a conversation with gamers asking: What should safeguarding in our communities look like?
Safeguarding is all about promoting the health, wellbeing, and rights of everyone – but particularly those who are more vulnerable. Children and vulnerable adults are often assumed to be at greater risk of other people try to fulfil their own needs and wants at the expense of their wellbeing.
Safeguarding, then, is about more than avoiding abuse, it’s about promoting the wellbeing of children and vulnerable adults.
There’s some unique safeguarding challenges in gaming spaces, above and beyond all the usual things we’re concerned about (we’ll explore how we interpret more typical safeguarding concerns in a gaming space in a later post).
This initial post is simply trying to map, or document, the safeguarding issues unique to board, card, role playing, and war gaming communities. It’s a living document, so check back because people’s comments and contributions will add to this list.
1. Trading of cards within a shop
We all know of horror stories where someone’s parents unknowingly trashed first-generation Charizards, or some other rare and expensive cards. We have ethical debates about someone picking up a rare game from a charity shop for pennies when it’s worth hundreds – should they offer to pay more, or be grateful they’ve got lucky?
But what about when a shop deals in trades? With many savvy gamers, the shop are not going to be ripping anyone off. There’s also some adults perfectly able to trawl the internet and price old collections, but perhaps they can’t be bothered and are happy to risk a lower price for a quick sale. But what if there’s someone with learning needs, or who isn’t aware of the value of their cards because they can’t access the internet, or a young person who sees £20 as a lot of money and isn’t worried about losing another £100 in value?
Exploiting vulnerable people for profit is a safeguarding concern – financial abuse is often assumed to be something that happens to the elderly, but we have plenty of vulnerable adults with Pokemon or YuGiOh collections – how do we safeguard them?
2. Private trades within our community
We don’t need to police trades between two consenting adults, even if they use our spaces. They’re entirely private concerns. But what if an adult, or an older-young person is trading with a young person, in a way that isn’t in their favour? Or is (knowingly or not) using their power to leverage a better deal because it can be hard for a younger person to say ‘no’ to someone older? What if someone is systematically seeking a good deal from someone who, whether through age, gender, ethnicity, or disposition is relatively ‘powerless’ compared to the person initiating the trade?
And what if these happen outside of our space, but only because of relationships built up between people within our spaces – what’s our safeguarding responsibility here?
3. DMs between adults and young people in our community
Is it appropriate for adult members of our community to use DMs (direct messages) to contact young people? Those in a position of responsibility (e.g. staff or volunteers running events), clearly not. And there’s enough awareness of safeguarding in the wider community to make me feel a bit uneasy about someone who’s chosen to use a direct message, rather than a more public group message or other online fora people can see.
4. Dealing with the risk of past 'offenders' in the community
This, I think is the most pressing concern we have. ‘Offenders’ is in inverted commas – I’m not just talking about people who have been caught and charged, but people who perhaps haven’t done anything illegal but have contributed to harassment or making spaces feel unsafe to particular groups. If someone is know for harassment in one group and they move to another local group, should we be following that up? What about between shops, when our capitalist mentality can sometimes create a barrier to safeguarding conversations?
And it happens. The police recently spoke to me after going to the house of a convicted sex offender, and he had spotted large piles of Magic: The Gathering cards living in our town. They contacted us with a description so, if the person ever did try to play with us, we could speak to the police about how to manage the risk (and this person does play in another shop, though not one particularly local to us).
We unknowingly attended a large comic-con a number of years ago that was being run by someone struck of from being a nurse due to sexual contact with a teenager. The level of deference that person received from the community made it clear (to us at least) that someone in that position could push boundaries again.
We know that people who abuse actively look for communities with the weakest safeguarding procedures – how do we make sure that isn’t us?
5. Intergenerational communities
Game shops and clubs often offer an intergenerational space to play. In many areas of life, safeguarding is relatively easy to maintain because the people in charge (like, the shop owners or the committee for a club) can control the adults who have access to children. However one of the benefits of the gaming community is it provides one of the few spaces adults and children can play together. If safeguarding is about promoting wellbeing, it’s massively in the interests of children and young people to build relationships with trusted adults outside their home – the adage “it takes a village to raise a child” is, by some psychological theories, absolutely true. But who’s responsibly is it for ensuring that adults who attend are going to behave appropriately around children? And that any relationships that are build are appropriate, even outside of the building?
6. When do we assume the role of 'carer' for young people?
In some cases, we may be responsible for young people’s safety but without any of the usual documentation. If a 15 year old attends a youth centre, there’s usually parental consent forms and contact details. If a 15 year old attends Friday Night Magic, who’s responsible for their wellbeing? It would seem pretty unreasonable to expect a parent to stay with them, but then we don’t have any legal responsibility for their wellbeing either.
7. Do we accept emotional outbursts? Is 'saltiness' an excuse for aggressive behaviour?
Games can trigger high emotions. When that one 45 year old, 6 foot tall man storms off in a huff because he’s lost a game of Catan, swearing and muttering under his breath, all the adults in the room probably shrug it off as “that’s just Bob, he’s always a sore loser”. But what if he’s playing against a 14 year old who isn’t used to seeing adults fail to regulate their emotions like that – what if they think they’ve caused his behaviour, and that causes them some kind of emotional trauma? Or perhaps worse – what if someone gets angry, or even physical, with them?
8. The potentially higher proportion of particularly vulnerable people
In safeguarding we talk about vulnerable people a lot, but not all ‘types’ of people are equally vulnerable, or vulnerable in the same way all the time. Games, while more mainstream than the past, still disproportionately attract those young people who are ‘othered’ or ‘marginalised’, who have lower self esteem and may fit that stereotypical ‘geek’ trope, or who have special education needs – generally perceived as a more vulnerable group of young people.
We’d love to have your thoughts – what do you think are some of the greatest safeguarding challenges gaming spaces face? And how have you dealt with them?
This post was written by Peter Hart, one of the directors for both People's Meeples and Gamers@Hart, who currently works at the School of Education in the University of Leeds, and completed his PhD on ethics and safeguarding in relationships between youth workers and young people.