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China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

reuters.com

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Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#311

Post by godelski »

murph-almighty wrote: post #266
rank0 wrote: post #235

I am appalled by all the supportive comments in this thread. Why are HN users so comfortable with authoritarian government? It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control. I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Actually though this is a fucking big brother atrocity of a policy that people will inevitably circumvent and the government will pick and choose when to enforce.

Except the people aren't our enemy. We're worried about an authoritarian government harming our friends.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#312

Post by cblconfederate »

mrlonglong wrote: post #147

Wouldn't those kids grow up resenting the CCP? If the CCP keeps doing this long enough, they're going to have millions of sullen people and then all it takes is just one spark.

Why? As adults they 'll be more understanding of why they were forced to stop that addictive behavior. And kids dont start revolutions

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#313

Post by Tiktaalik »

kuschku wrote: post #292
Tiktaalik wrote: post #238

This will destroy the Chinese games industry and this may have broader implications than just stocks in free fall. Video game programming is very cutting edge technology (eg. 3D graphics, animation, wayfinding, and more). China throwing this industry away will mean there are no home grown video game programmers which will have implications on their entire software engineering capability. This gives the rest of the wo…

Honestly, it'll just destroy the shitty gambling microtransaction games. Most studios will focus on offline games again, back to old-school games. Honestly, I'm a fan of this. No harm done to anything worth saving.

There are LOTS of online games that are not "shitty gambling microtransaction" games.

Even in the west where traditional, non-microtransaction games are very common, having an offline, single player, non-cooperative game is increasingly rare.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#315

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #127
andrepew wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that playing a game might not improve a class of skills in general like coordination or problem solving, but I don’t think it requires much study to determine improvement of skills directly used. For example, to improve your reading skills you need to practice reading. If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills. Games can also drive motivation in other areas…

Lot of things improve reading skills, like reading novels. Arguably, writing video games and novels would seem to be more useful way to improve skills. That's how I got started in programming at all. However, video games just doesn't seem life changing at all compared to all the things you could do.

[deleted]

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#316

Post by aeternum »

andrepew wrote: post #113
lhorie wrote: post #91

People talking about the benefits of games reminds me of people talking about the benefits of, say, a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. I similarly have mixed feelings as well, but for slightly different reasons. I've read about studies that say that musical training (which…

I agree that playing a game might not improve a class of skills in general like coordination or problem solving, but I don’t think it requires much study to determine improvement of skills directly used. For example, to improve your reading skills you need to practice reading. If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills. Games can also drive motivation in other areas…

For some games sure, but those games now make up a subset.

Look at the 'casual' games which are optimized via AI to hold attention and trigger repeat use. It may not be much of a stretch to consider these drugs for the human visual/rewards system rather than videogames. And these attention-grabbing tools are only getting better as we collect more data and develop better algos.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#317

Post by jliptzin »

bennysomething wrote: post #300
jliptzin wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is putting off other important things in their life to play video games then that's definitely a problem. However, if people want to set aside 100% of their free time to play video games, I don't think that's any worse than other things people do with their time that we (as a society) hold in high regard such as becoming a chess grandmaster, practicing violin 12 hours / day, watching football games nonstop…

Struggling to come up with a logical counter argument but learning a musical instrument is deeply satisfy as is listening to someone live who is good. Also maybe just in terms of being attractive to other people saying you are a level 122 mage in world of ever crack does not quite have the same allure as being able to captivate a room with your piano playing. Edit when I was about 12 I started playing the guitar non…

I play piano too, and also find it deeply satisfying but I also have friends who find playing video games deeply satisfying and I don't think one is worse than the other. As I am not a professional musician at the end of the day I only do it for my own enjoyment and if viewed through the lens of "productivity" it is a complete waste of time, anyone could just find the songs I play on spotify, played by someone far better than me.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#318

Post by jayd16 »

saxonww wrote: post #269
jayd16 wrote: post #184

Haven't we been through at least two generations of ubiquitous video games in the west? Is society noticeably different?

Are you kidding? Look at the US in 1980 vs. now. There has been a lot of societal change. I don't think it has much to do with video games, though. Nationwide BBSes (Compuserv, AOL, etc.) and then the Internet have made or accelerated societal change. People can congregate and share information at a scale that wasn't feasible before, and in particular marginalized groups have found strength in numbers that just wasn'…

Technology has progressed, obviously, but I don't see any reason to assume video game addiction has had any real impact.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#319

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

rank0 wrote: post #235

I am appalled by all the supportive comments in this thread. Why are HN users so comfortable with authoritarian government? It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control. I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?

I'm not in favor at all - but it doesn't seem like a massive overstep.

I honestly don't see what the big difference is between online games and weed.

It doesn't really seem off-brand for governments these days to be making these kinds of decisions.

I mean, if they decided to make coffee illegal for kids - yeah, that seems dumb, right? But is that REALLY that big of a difference than making tobacco illegal?

I just don't see a huge difference with online gaming.

Re: China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week

#320

Post by eranima »

murph-almighty wrote: post #266
rank0 wrote: post #235

I am appalled by all the supportive comments in this thread. Why are HN users so comfortable with authoritarian government? It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control. I’m sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Actually though this is a fucking big brother atrocity of a policy that people will inevitably circumvent and the government will pick and choose when to enforce.

"enemy"? What the fuck HN.

edit: Xenophobic mods flagging my comment lol

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