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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

#401

Post by ericmay »

yuy910616 wrote: post #390
sergiomattei wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you believe this then surely you'd want less government since you can't leave these people to their own accord and also making decisions.

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

#402

Post by rank0 »

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.

Lots of others ITT are expressing the same view, and I understand the logic behind it.

Alcohol is an addictive, psychoactive, carcinogen. The difference between drugs and “online game time” is pretty stark from my perspective.

The essence of your argument seems to be: “we already give up some control for other health-related regulations and online game time is no different.”

I have to admit, drawing the exact line is difficult and I’m unable to create a clear definition of government overreach. This specific example is obvious to me, but clearly some people disagree.

Where do you think the line should be? Would you be okay with CCP mandated exercise, sleep time, or diet? Do you believe there should be a line at all?

Not trying to be adversarial here, I am genuinely curious.

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

#403

Post by doomleika »

S_A_P wrote: post #347

So secures western dominance in eSports competitions. Like everything in life computer games are diverse enough that they can be harmful/predatory to high/mid level programming. I struggle to keep my son from gaming all of his free time away, but he also has learned Lua and C# to a pretty large degree doing this stuff and I cant be too mad about that. This weekend we are going to put together his first gaming rig fro…

I fail to see removing one from eSport scene damages the productivity of a country, if not increase it.

eSports are pretty much a negative to the country as a whole. Gaming company use it as ad and sell the illusion to make big bucks. Yes, you could have the next Faker in your country. So what? for every international pro you create there's 100s more kids wasted their youth on a pipe dream where their time could be used to more productive matter. The damage could be justified IF you are the game dev/publisher so your country could benefit from all the royalties, but this is not the case for many of the countries(of course in China this is a mixed case where Tencent holds 100% of Riot).

This is actually a problem in Korea that they have many failed eSport candidate that have no proper skill to live in a very competitive job market. Although Parasite(2019) is a bit exaggerated but not getting in prestigious school/company(Samsung) will likely to put you in a very miserable economy situations.

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

#404

Post by Scarblac »

crysin wrote: post #231
Scarblac wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Children deserve a lot of protection, and anybody can become a parent. A lot of people are far too bad at parenting to leave the decisions to them completely. Some intervention is needed.

(USA centric view) You cannot legislate parents into being good parents. You cannot pass laws that protect children from bad parenting as best case result you may get the state to intervene and put the child in a foster system where there's a 50% chance that they end up in an even worse place.

So the only possible thing that can be legislated is a foster system?!

Even the US already does far more than that, like making alcohol illegal for minors.

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

#405

Post by yuy910616 »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #387
jpambrun wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dru…

People have been making a lot of prediction about China, such that market economy would lead to more political openness or a middle class would demand more political freedom - all good guess but turn out wrong.

I think we're bad at prediction - so why not let them experiment and see how it turns out 50 years later.

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

#406

Post by luckylion »

coding123 wrote: post #383
jpambrun wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age

I mean, yes, "other countries" don't have age limits, but it's pretty rare and it's overwhelmingly not what you'd call successful or stable countries.

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

#408

Post by beaunative »

jackconsidine wrote: post #336
jdavis703 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t any more authoritarian than the US banning alcohol and cannabis for people under 21. At least China is allowing kids to do a little bit of gaming. Meanwhile in the US young adults and children are outright forbidden from intoxicating substances (as opposed to many European countries where teens can buy low-alcohol beverages.)

Weed is illegal in China and they do have a drinking age there, albeit 18 not 21, so this seems like a false equivalency.

Drinking age in China exist only on paper, and it doesn't exist for most people. If you call the police in China for drinkning age violation, they would probably think you are insane. Hardly can be said in the US.

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

#409

Post by hjek »

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…

> This is a such a classic HN comment:

Thanks!

> 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.

Ok, so you'd have a online gaming vacuum for all . Don't you think someone would make a game or two run over IRC (or SMTP some other protocol) if it meant capturing that entire market? Then it would be millions; and then perhaps authorities would care, and then perhaps herpaps an IRC server could* be "an online gaming platform", which would be interesting and peculiar legally, is what I'm saying.

(What really distinguishes / categorizes something as a game network protocol as distinct from written human language, legally..?)

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

#410

Post by keyb0ardninja »

uncoder0 wrote: post #255
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 feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. It's rather alarming how widespread and quickly this change in ideology has happened.

This is exactly what F. A. Hayek warned us about in his book The Road to Serfdom.
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