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

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

#391

Post by tester756 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

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.

english english english english english

A lot of people learned english via games

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

#392

Post by tejohnso » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

persedes wrote: post #281

aidenn0 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a parent. You absolutely can. The kid will make your life miserable about it for anywhere from 4 hours to 3 months depending on how stubborn they are.

dito, it's hard, but doable. We've gone cold turkey with the TV on our five year old and after a week or two he was much more tolerable and plays with legos for hours to keep himself occupied. He's still a 5-year old though, so removing TV alone won't help with that, you still got to parent / occupy him most of the time. It did however get easier to connect with him and reason about those decisions. We still watch st…

>He's still a 5-year old though, so removing TV alone won't help with that, you still got to parent / occupy him most of the time

Right. There's nothing quite as engaging as tv/gaming that he can just sit without guidance and safely do by himself for a few hours at a time while his parents are busy working. Probably comes down to lazy parenting.

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

#393

Post by JCharante » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

swman wrote: post #100

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…

I think it really depends. I have way too many personal anecdotes of people I knew from back in the day (middle/high school) who gamed like 8 hours a day. Most of those people were _addicted_, and a handful went on to drop out of college and aren't really doing that great today. They still play 8+ hours a day.. I remember I'd ask them if they wanted to study, or if they want to go hiking or do something IRL, but they…

As a kid I got into Eve Online (an MMO) and started to learn to program front end by creating Eve related websites for in-game currency (yes the TOS allows it). My code got forked and I still see it being used.

With the right game there is so much opportunity for growth in transferrable skills. It would have been hard to motivate myself to learn about databases, creating backend services, using SSO for login, rate limits when you're trying to scrape mass amounts of data, validating inputs to guard against bad actors, reading api docs, etc all to help make more in-game currency by exploiting inefficiencies in the world market to make profits from trading or creating internal tools. I learned about chain of command, opsec, and dealing with HR within my "guild."

Minecraft also helped to that regard with creating mods & server plugins for friends.

Sadly I think these opportunities are decreasing with the shift to mobile gaming. How are you supposed to mod a mobile game? How are you supposed to open the game's jar file and overwrite some files when you can't modify the download from the iOS store? How are you supposed to play with spreadsheets on an ipad?

I can see how my unhealthy 8-9hr/day addiction during my teens could have turned out terrible if I was born in this current generation. Thankfully it built a good foundation for a career.

I don't get kids these days with being able to play mindless mobile games. The closest thing to a game I have on my phone to a game is AnkiDroid (spaced repetition notecard software).

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

#394

Post by rabite » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #335

bennysomething wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That is really the main gist of it, women don't care much about video gaming and therefore society condemns it. Men on the other hand will probably be way more excited about your skills and endeavours in a v…

> Piano is good to show that you are fit and attract a mate, it isn't good to make friends. And therefore piano is seen as a noble hobby while gaming is seen as a waste of time.

I met two young women once who played Soul Calibur obsessively. I visited their house once and they asked if I wanted to play and I beat them both with my Voldo. They could not win a single round. So they spent a couple weeks really trying hard, reading Shoryuken forums, watching top tier players, really doing their best to really show me up. Then they invited me back again, and I promptly handed their asses to them a second time. Then I impregnated the hotter one.

Women in the tail end of millennials and zoomers do play video games in fair numbers. I'm an early millennial (born in 85) and it was not a cool thing to be be good at games when I was in high school, but it is now. Streamers have done wonders on this. Exhibiting competence and dominance in gaming can be a positive mating strategy, I got some wonderful children as proof.

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

#395

Post by Jensson » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #360

Jensson wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That is really the main gist of it, women don't care much about video gaming and therefore society condemns it. Men on the other hand will probably be way more excited about your skills and endeavours in a v…

It's not really about women. The levels in video games are manufactured goals. Making music sound good is an innate goal. In the same way making a beautiful build in Minecraft is also an innate goal and so is finding a creative way to optimize your factory in Factorio, which is why that's a lot more impressive to people outside the game than becoming a level 121 mage.

There is no difference really, becoming level 121 isn't a difficulty goal and doesn't matter but getting into masters league in Starcraft or similar will impress a ton of people since it is really hard. Similarly nobody will care about you spending a year learning Piano if can't play anything decent afterwards. And most people who practice instruments don't learn how to play well so their efforts were in vain, and unlike the level 121 mage they didn't even have fun doing it.

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

#396

Post by actacntact » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

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…

> Why should the government control how I manage my time?

It doesn't. Unless you're under 18.

> As a case in point

Age aside - as this law is worded, Discord wouldn't be restricted, offline games wouldn't be restricted, non-gameplay-as-a-service online gaming like voice-chat DND or P2P fightcade matches wouldn't be restricted, other forms of media aren't restricted, and you still have 3 hrs/week for the restricted subset if you must. I don't see why your stated benefits require a majority of your time to be spent on a gameplay-as-a-service game, so I don't see anything constructive in your life that would be prevented by this law in particular.

And it's this law in particular that positivity is being expressed for. In light of the recent (read: ongoing over the past decade+) design trends of gameplay-as-a-service games in East Asia regions, which something like Splitgate doesn't fit the profile for.

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

#397

Post by prox » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

namelessoracle wrote: post #200

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 would agree with "the problem solving skills" section of your argument. But not the reading one. Getting good at reading is almost purely exercise. You do it more, you get better/faster at it, which has gains that show up in all kinds of fields be it tech, medicine, whatever. Old school games had basically an entire novel embedded inside of them worth of text. 10 year old me wanting to read all of Final Fantasy 6 a…

One game that improves problem solving skills is Space Engineers.

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

#398

Post by ericmay » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

birbs wrote: post #332

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?

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…

> Just because an authoritarian government made a decision doesn’t necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian.

True.

> In the U.S., it’s somehow become popular opinion that the government shouldn’t do anything.

Amongst some people and some topics. Liberals don't think the government should do anything about heroin needles and homeless people, and conservatives don't think the government should do anything about gay conversion camps (arbitrary examples). This is the core of how democracy works. What you're seeing here actually is a breakdown in homogeneity when you have 300+ million people trying to make decisions when they have different values.

> 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.)

Which depends again on factors such as demographics, etc. and is largely a function of the lack of homogeneity. Not to mention all sorts of compelling arguments. Like we have people who won't take a vaccine, but we were also one of the first countries to roll out mass vaccinations. It's not simple.

> You should reflect on why you view a government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.

I think many people do reflect on that. It's a precarious balance of liberty, management of a nation state, and many other things. I don't think it's wise to try and over-simplify these things into "well the government just wants you to be healthy". Ok. Let's ban all junk food, alcohol, cars, high-end restaurants, skydiving, and make everybody walk 10,000 steps/day or else they go to jail. I mean, why would you view the government making a decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing?

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

#399

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

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?

Naturally, most of the comments here are expressing dissent to yours, simply because there is more to be said on that perspective.

Most of the people who agree with you simply upvote your comment and move on.

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

#400

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

namelessoracle wrote: post #200

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 would agree with "the problem solving skills" section of your argument. But not the reading one. Getting good at reading is almost purely exercise. You do it more, you get better/faster at it, which has gains that show up in all kinds of fields be it tech, medicine, whatever. Old school games had basically an entire novel embedded inside of them worth of text. 10 year old me wanting to read all of Final Fantasy 6 a…

Obligatory Disco Elysium mention, but it still proves your point, because it is considered so unusual by today's standards.