Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 1001 posts

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

#581

Post by UnFleshedOne »

echelon wrote: post #377
uncoder0 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. Half of the US is up in arms about it, for better or worse. I think you'd have a hard time imposing anything on the US. The other half doesn't think immunizations are authoritarian, just science. Maybe 1% of the loud and attention grabbing people on either side of the…

That 1%, if they are loud enough, can move overton window for the whole society. Recall how fast vaccine passports moved from a crazy right wing conspiracy theory to an obvious and necessary measure. Last year is full of such examples.

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

#582

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

Not knowing much about the great firewall, but taking in context from the article, it seems like they'd only really be able to limit "modern" games, which are always connected.

If you can somehow get your hands on an SNES and FF6 cart, or (more likely) figure out how to get an emulator and ROM to your computer, no one will be the wiser. So, if anything, this will be a boon to older console games.

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

#583

Post by yupper32 »

pageandrew wrote: post #447
staunch wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporary and mild authoritarian measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic make complete sense, even to very libertarian people. The U.S. has a track record of such measures being temporary, such as the much more extreme measures taken during WW2. Comparing this kind of thing to what China is doing is drawing a false equivalency. There is no legitimate comparison to be made.

Temporary? We're a year and a half in, with no end in sight. If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Indefinite public health authoritarianism. Mild? Australians can't travel more than 5km from their homes. For essential purposes only. Vaccinated Australians can only leave their homes for 2 hours a day (unvaxed 1 hour a day).

> If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game.

Your argument is already flawed. We don't have vaccines available to everyone in the US yet.

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

#584

Post by criloz2 »

pphysch wrote: post #528
shahbaby wrote: post #96

Bad idea. Scarcity artificially increases percieved value. This is how you make something more addictive, not less.

On the contrary, not having access to a bad habit for 5 days a week is a great way to replace that habit.

It is not the work of the government to do those things.

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

#585

Post by adventured »

nybble41 wrote: post #457
riffraff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In UK you can't buy alcohol if you're below 18. You can drink alcohol in a public place if you're 16 and there is an accompanying adult buying it for you. It's not quite a "free for all", but anyway, I doubt it relates to the issue at hand. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age#Europe

Those rules are for public drinking. There doesn't seem to be any age restriction for private alcohol consumption in the UK, or for that matter most of Europe.

The US similarly allows private underage consumption of alcohol - with more restrictions than in most parts of Europe - with parental consent and oversight. This varies from state to state in how it works and the limits, of course. Most states draw a strong legal distinction between underage drinking parties vs moderate underage consumption outside of a party context.

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

#586

Post by pluto8195 »

devnulll wrote: post #501
goostavos wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know where people are coming from any more. Like literally everyone else in tech who knows how the sausage gets made, I'm appalled by the teams of Ph.Ds which exist solely to exploit the dopamine response of children. However, it never would have ever crossed my mind to jump from "here's a particular problem" to "the government should control how much of a specific activity your child can do at home"

There are all sorts of things governments express control over, even at home. The obvious scenarios are alcohol, nicotine & drugs. As a parent of young children, there are addition parallels between Minecraft / Roblox / Alcohol / Cigarettes. To a real degree, more effort is put into making gaming deliberately additive - although flavored vaping (bubble gum, cotton candy, etc) would like to enter the conversation.

the US has imposed many rules on the manufacturers and distributors of addictive substances as well (banning flavored vapes, marketing towards children), I think it would be much more constructive to impose some regulation on how games are made, and how they are pushed rather than the behavior of children.

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

#588

Post by mywittyname »

Filligree wrote: post #571
namelessoracle wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Modern games dont have that text, and even when they do they have voice acting to get around it. Games like Chrono Trigger and old school Final Fantasy are rare and dont get made as much anymore unfortunately. Its all gambling boxes. What sort of games have you been playing? Modern games come in every possible variety, and as soon as you look outside the likes of Fortnite you're swamped in story-heavy games, if tha…

I like text-heavy games and agree with the GP that they are not nearly as common as they used to be. Voice acting is almost universal and most games require subtitles to be enabled to have much of any reading.

Sure, are some games like Disco Elysium, Pathfinder Kingmaker or other D&D-style games, which are big walls of text with minimal voice over, but let's be honest, those games are targeting middle-aged people, not 10 year olds.

The games kids are playing today involve very little reading.

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

#589

Post by criloz2 »

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #220

The dismissive attitude commenters have in this thread towards the personal freedom aspect here is concerning. Though, maybe when discussing China it seems like beating a dead horse to some...

Most people don't really appreciate the thing that they have until the day that they lost it. That why human history cyclical

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

#590

Post by gallamine »

true_religion wrote: post #510
everdrive wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games work best as a lesser of many evils, and come with a few caveats: If you watch a lot of TV, it's hard to argue that video games are a worse use of your time. Video games do have some legitimate benefits, but it's probably hard to say that they are more beneficial than other things you could be doing with your time. (ie, reading difficult literature or articles vs. reading RPG text.) However, people aren't…

Sure but I’m not really comfortable with this level of government interference with peoples lives. No one ever stopped me from playing soccer for 5 hours a day when I was younger, and in high school sports practice was a 3 hour minimum. This restricts game play to 3 hours per week. That means essentially you can’t play video games for leisure … while at the same time you are forced to do a minimum of 40 hours a week…

We restrict our kids to 30 min /day of screens. Try telling them it's not worth it. They are absolutely rabid about it.
Post reply on HN