Our report highlights the positives of this pioneering industry, but also social risks we need to bear in mind, like the impact of gaming on mental health," said López when introducing her report to the plenary today. The report was led by MEP Adriana Maldonado López, and secured 577 votes in favour, with 56 against and 15 abstentions. To collect EU-wide data on the average time spent playing games, average in-game spending, socio-psychological effects, present a yearly report to Parliament on it

Our industry is committed to a fair and transparent consumer experience when playing videogames" ISFE & EGDF

Other actions recommended include proritising data protection, improving the gender imbalance on the industry's workforce, and making it as easy for consumers to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. To support the promotion of public and private education and information campaigns directed at parents and caretakers to inform them of the tools in place, such as the PEGI app, and to encourage usage To assess the use of gold farming in connection with financial crimes and human rights abuses and to present appropriate initiatives if necessary To update the EU Kids Online research project, which gathers EU-wide data on children’s online experiences, and to fund this and similar initiatives in the future

I built a career in journalism but I felt, always, that the person in print had nothing to do with me. She looked like me, but she was my ghost, and she was not reliable. I could never stop working, but I could never stay in any job; as soon as I arrived, I yearned to leave. I became marvellous at being fired and learned to soothe, and even thank, the person who was firing me, the better to start again at the beginning. It was a game I played with myself. I would procrastinate over my work to stoke the fear, but I was not lazy. I met a sensitive, clever man and married him, but I worked on my wedding day. I worked on my honeymoon. I worked in the labour ward, until I was offered the morphine. I was terrified of losing things and I would try to lose them so I could be, momentarily, at peace. My husband, at least, knew that, which is probably why I chose him. I am not a complete idiot. I mourned the lives I could have lived

One morning in early 2002, at perhaps 5am, which is, as all addicts know, when the night breaks, leaving you with mashed lips and mad eyes, I stood in front of the mirror in my mother’s house. I had been drinking alcoholically – that is, without stopping – for almost nine years, and I was very near the end. I pointed at myself – I remember myself as a very attractive drunk, red-lipped and irresistible, but this is the voice again, for I was nothing of the sort – and I said, very clearly, “I hate you and I wish you would die.” I knew then what the voice in my head wanted, and how powerful it was. It made a mistake by being honest and, because it made a mistake, I lived. To assess how the PEGI system is being implemented in the different types of games available, and to consider enshrining it in EU law to make PEGI its Code of Conduct the mandatory age-rating system for all games in the single market At the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), we believe that increased understanding of the basics of addiction will empower people to make informed choices in their own lives, adopt science-based policies and programs that reduce drug use and addiction in their communities, and support scientific research that improves the Nation’s well-being.

We need to harmonise EU rules, ensuring strengthened consumer protection with a focus on minors" Adriana Maldonado López, MEPLópez made more than a dozen recommendations in her report, including a call for harmonised rules across the European Union's single market when providing clear information about games content, as well as systems that help parents understand and control how much time and money their children spend on games. I was, for a while, a columnist, but that was no good, either. To write a good column, I had to work myself into such a state of rage that the week was empty of anything else. I had a schedule of rage, which I followed dutifully; if I wrote on Wednesday, I would be numb on Thursday and would then stoke the rage over the weekend. On Monday, the rage would ebb, to be replaced by terror, which would reach a pitch on Tuesday night, after which I would write what seemed to me not sentences, but tiny, insistent stabs. That is not a job; it is a condition. Late summer in 2013, I was sitting in a self-help group. This one was surrounded by a very fine, old graveyard, like a metaphor, with many famous intellectuals in fabulous tombs; we sat calmly with the dead, as if we belonged there. The baby was at home in the cradle. I always said the same thing at this self-help group, and they were very patient with me. If I had published a good article in the previous 24 hours, I was happy because I existed in a form with which I was comfortable, and which other people could recognise and approve of. If not, I moped, and complained that I was not happy. I avoided self-help groups where they talked about their gratitude. I did not believe them. I was too scared to drink alcohol, but I couldn’t do anything else about a condition I barely understood. I went to self-help groups in gloomy church annexes, which seemed as despairing – though less vivid – as what I had left behind, and heard people talk about “spiritual growth”. I missed my near-death, for it had not been boring. I did not know what they were talking about. I could not hear them. I said I was an alcoholic, because I supposed I must be, but I didn’t really know what it meant.

To assess the possibility of requiring providers of online games targeting minors to develop child impact assessments While de Poitiers never wore the crown, she wielded substantial political and artistic influence within the court of King Henry II, who was her lover. Often described as a whip-smart Renaissance woman, de Poitiers was a patron of the arts and managed the education of the royal family’s children. European consumer protection laws are extensive and flexible to cover and sanction practices that are deemed misleading, unfair, or aggressive," the statement read. "As recognised by several studies, the problem lies with insufficient enforcement, which undermines the effectiveness of the legal framework." We coexist uneasily, today, the voice and I; she tells me to procrastinate over my work, to start fights, to give up. If I am unwary, she can plunge me into the deepest despair, and I have learned to construct an obstacle course to thwart her. It is made only of ordinary human love. Nothing else works.It was a weird song, and truthfully, I wasn’t very excited about it. I couldn’t tell where it was going. It was typical Stevie – most of her songs, in their inception, are close to 10 or 12 minutes long, with endless verses and epic stories. My job became one of editing, taking all of these sections and making them flow, cutting out the fat. Stevie would go crazy – ‘Oh, that verse was about my mother! That part was about my dog!’ [laughs] These things would mean something to her, but they had to work for the listener. To analyse the way in which loot boxes are sold, and take necessary steps to bring about a common European approach on loot boxes to protect consumers, in particular minors Gold Dust Woman’ was really my symbolic look about somebody going through a bad relationship, and doing a lot of drugs, and trying to… just make it, trying to live, trying to get through it to the next thing. – October 1997 Spin