Rune Kristian Lundedal Nielsen

Esports is the fastest growing sports industry globally, and esports research is becoming more prevalent. However, there is a lack of research on what 21 st century skills esports players develop. This study examines the experiences of nine young CS:GO players and their coach enrolled in an esports program at a sports college in the greater Copenhagen area. Through observation and group interviews we try to identify the pedagogical goals of the coach and how these are understood and experienced by the players. Based on Gee's notion of affinity space and Dialogical Self Theory, we explore how the players position themselves in relation to their esports activities as well as their perception of what it takes to be a competent player. The preliminary findings show that both the players and their coach emphasize healthy culture ('sund spilkultur') as a key aspect of the esports activities. Thus, players believe that being able to communicate well and in a respectful tone is a core competency on par with technical skills and understanding of the game. In summary, players report that their experience of better communication skills is an ongoing concern both inside and outside of the game. In addition, the players describe how their 'people skills' transfer to friends, family and school work as a result of esports training.

In this paper we investigate the phenomenon colloquially known as " loot boxes " or " loot crates ". Loot boxes became a hot topic towards the end of 2017 when several legislative bodies proposed that they were essentially gambling mechanisms and should therefore be legislated as such. We argue that the term " loot box " and the phenomena it covers are not sufficiently precise for academic use and instead introduce the notion of " random reward mechanisms " (RRMs). We offer a categorization of RRMs, which distinguishes between RRMs that are either " isolated " from real world economies or " embedded " in them. This distinction will be useful in discussion about loot boxes in general, but specifically when it comes to the question of whether or not they represent instances of gambling. We argue that all classes of RRMs have gambling-like features, but that only one class can be considered to be genuine gambling.

Whether or not gaming causes addiction continues to be debated in the scholarly literature. The American Psychiatric Association has proposed " Internet gaming disorder, " a non-substance addictive disorder, in order to encourage further research on the subject. We suggest that competitive gaming, better known as esports, might provide a unique platform on which to discuss the validity of the proposed disorder.

We greatly appreciate the care and thought that is evident in the 10 commentaries that discuss our debate paper, the majority of which argued in favor of a formalized ICD-11 gaming disorder. We agree that there are some people whose play of video games is related to life problems. We believe that understanding this population and the nature and severity of the problems they experience should be a focus area for future research. However, moving from research construct to formal disorder requires a much stronger evidence base than we currently have. The burden of evidence and the clinical utility should be extremely high, because there is a genuine risk of abuse of diagnoses. We provide suggestions about the level of evidence that might be required: transparent and preregistered studies, a better demarcation of the subject area that includes a rationale for focusing on gaming particularly versus a more general behavioral addictions concept, the exploration of non-addiction approaches, and the unbiased exploration of clinical approaches that treat potentially underlying issues, such as depressive mood or social anxiety first. We acknowledge there could be benefits to formalizing gaming disorder, many of which were highlighted by colleagues in their commentaries, but we think they do not yet outweigh the wider societal and public health risks involved. Given the gravity of diagnostic classification and its wider societal impact, we urge our colleagues at the WHO to err on the side of caution for now and postpone the formalization.

Esports is the fastest growing sports industry globally, and esports research is becoming more prevalent. However, there is a lack of research on what 21 st century skills esports players develop. This study examines the experiences of nine young CS:GO players and their coach enrolled in an esports program at a sports college in the greater Copenhagen area. Through observation and group interviews we try to identify the pedagogical goals of the coach and how these are understood and experienced by the players. Based on Gee's notion of affinity space and Dialogical Self Theory, we explore how the players position themselves in relation to their esports activities as well as their perception of what it takes to be a competent player. The preliminary findings show that both the players and their coach emphasize healthy culture ('sund spilkultur') as a key aspect of the esports activities. Thus, players believe that being able to communicate well and in a respectful tone is a core competency on par with technical skills and understanding of the game. In summary, players report that their experience of better communication skills is an ongoing concern both inside and outside of the game. In addition, the players describe how their 'people skills' transfer to friends, family and school work as a result of esports training.