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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

#381

Post by TooKool4This »

lnyng wrote: post #110

Original notice from the government: https://web.archive.org/web/20210830120201/http://www.nppa.g... Google translation of the first entry: > Strictly limit the time for providing online game services to minors. Since the implementation of this notice, all online game companies can only provide minors with one-hour online game services from 20 to 21:00 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and legal holidays. At other times, i…

I wonder if this will encourage a renaissance in China of LAN play, more P2P protocols for online gaming, and informal game servers run by people you know (rather than the game publisher).

Sounds like it could be kinda fun (nostalgia for me)

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

#382

Post by II2II »

lordnacho wrote: post #208
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…

> Half the time I spent gaming was spent figuring out how to get the computer to do what I wanted which lead to a life long interest in technology. I remember the old days of "extended memory" which meant you needed slightly different configuration files for each game. That meant if you wanted to play a bunch of games, it made sense to learn how to write a bat script to config according to what you wanted to play. Yo…

There is also the value of the skills being learned. Learning about extended memory may have been of value to some people in the day, but it had negligible value a decade later. It may have launched a few careers, but it did not have lasting value. Learning how to create batch files had more value since those skills were transferable to similar domains (e.g. Unix administration and software development).

That being said, people rarely discuss technical skills as a benefit of gaming. Things like resource management are more often brought up. Maybe there's some benefit to games in that respect, but I suspect most people learn about resource management within the context of games and very little of that is transferable to the real world.

This isn't to say I'm opposed to using games for education. I have certainly taught concepts in mathematics using Minecraft. Yet it does take a higher level of awareness of what you are trying to learn (or teach) than going through the mechanics of playing.

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

#383

Post by coding123 »

jpambrun wrote: post #334
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?

Alcohol pretty much universally prohibited for minors and nobody calls that authoritarian. Governments have responsibility for the wellbeing of citizen, even against themselves (mandatory seatbelts comes to mind). Meanwhile, gaming addiction can also be very destructive.

I was about to reply with something opposing your thought and then realized other countries don't have an age limit and they don't have a billion underage kids dying of alcohol. If anything that probably happens more in the states where there is an age limit.

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

#384

Post by steve76 »

The richest boss, the poorest bum, all die the same. I would rather focus on something important, not dying, as in curing liver cirrhosis or blocked arteries or matted down nerve hairs in the brain than try to tell a billion and a half of people what to do all the time from far far away. What a wonderful weapon that is. Cure disease, and don't give you the cure. How can your people excel if they really do not want to do it? If they don't like you and want you gone? It will just be contorting yourself to the test, a facade without any true knowledge.

People in, and what comes out? Another day away from the gallows? Leave other people alone. They're probably going through stuff and know what's best for them. You took away their humanity and turned them into industrial stock, something to be harvested and consumed. No wonder they run and hide from you.

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

#385

Post by iszomer »

namelessoracle wrote: post #7

I have mixed feelings about this. Younger me learned a lot of problem solving skills and most importantly spent a lot of time learning how to read by playing RPGs and games that required lots of reading. My reading skills would not have been as advanced if i wasn't playing text heavy games that had a lot of plot like Square Enix games and the CRPGs of the time. Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as a…

Sure but there wasn't a monetary incentive path like we have today with the Internet and livestreaming. I still remember picking up my first copy of DOOM and playing with friends on a 28.8Kbps dialup modem.

This comic sort of represents those childhood sentiments experienced today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDG_IEDc9A

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

#386

Post by yumraj »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #298
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?

Some people don't like this move personally, but at the same time appreciate diversity of value systems around the world. Its a hedge. If the whole world followed the same value system, a systemic flaw could result in much disaster.

So the whole country of 1.3-1.4B people has the same value system?

This is more like the CCP imposing its value system on them.

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

#387

Post by lambdasquirrel »

jpambrun wrote: post #334
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?

Alcohol pretty much universally prohibited for minors and nobody calls that authoritarian. Governments have responsibility for the wellbeing of citizen, even against themselves (mandatory seatbelts comes to mind). Meanwhile, gaming addiction can also be very destructive.

It's hard enough for their parents to enforce these decisions. Good luck with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM6hEOtV92E

When kids game excessively, I'd wager it's an escape for them. It's an escape just as much as it was for the geeky / nerdy kids of America, as it is for the kids in China who have goukou.

You can try to enforce whatever culture you're gonna enforce, but I think we've seen from the war on drugs that these kinds of things don't really work. There's always some deep psychological and/or physiological deficit whenever there is an "addiction" at play. And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms. You can try to tighten control so that you can try to force that "ideal" society, but when you do that, things have a way of becoming authoritarian in a handbasket. Everything messed up about China is about socialist idealism turning authoritarian, and you can say that about other countries too.

People should have figured that out when they did that study on rats, where the rats that lived in some enriched environment, with plenty of playtime, did not get addicted to sugar water the way that the rats trapped in cages did.

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

#388

Post by thomastjeffery »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #298
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?

Some people don't like this move personally, but at the same time appreciate diversity of value systems around the world. Its a hedge. If the whole world followed the same value system, a systemic flaw could result in much disaster.

By that same argument, it would be better not to have all of China forced to follow the same "value system", yet that is exactly what authoritarian policy like this intends.

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

#389

Post by eunos »

sushid wrote: post #273
hjek wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's not just 3 hours per week, it's three specific hours a week , but also only for online games services. It's interesting that the law covers the service , not the client . Now, I wonder what qualifies as an online game service . If I play correspondence chess over email, would the email host be running an online game service? If someone modifies the Battle of Wesnoth network code to run over IRC messages, woul…

This is a such a classic HN comment: 1. Law does x 2. HN commenter: what about x+y? what about x-1? The answer to your decentralized chess is that no one would care if it broke the rules or not unless millions of people were hopelessly addicted to it and it warranted a second look. Your average Zoomer is not interested in decentralized chess or any other gaming service that requires only an intermittent internet conn…

Yes the target should violations occur is game company. Not the parents, or youths.

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

#390

Post by yuy910616 »

sergiomattei wrote: post #346
birbs wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because an authoritarian government made a decision doesn’t necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian. In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything. Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.) You should reflect on why you vie…

But this is authoritarian. Why should the government control how I manage my time? I'm pretty sure this site would be pretty outraged if the government decided we could only code 3 hours a week. And please don't use the "but coding is constructive!1!" argument. A good use of time is defined by whoever spends it, not whatever someone else's idea of wasting time is. As a case in point, playing hours of Splitgate has ke…

People can't be left to their own accord.
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