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

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by marcod »

gallamine wrote: post #590
true_religion wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Assuming your children are not 17 ...

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

#612

Post by solatic »

rank0 wrote: post #402
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.

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…

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

Requires elaboration. When "online game time" is intentionally designed to be addictive, its affects on addicts need to be critically examined - loss of physical fitness, loss of social fitness, loss of motivation, agoraphobia. That both can be consumed responsibly in small quantities does not preclude that addiction is a serious problem and too often not treated like a serious problem in Western countries.

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

#613

Post by marcod »

ethbr0 wrote: post #339
maerF0x0 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first computer was a 486 33mhz w/ about 250MB HD . I could only keep a couple games installed at a time, meaning i was always installing and uninstalling. Then I had to play with the autoexec.bat and cmd.com files . Then I broke it. Then i had to fix it cause my mom was still making payments on the computer (like it was a refrigerator with a 10yr lifespan) ... This is how I got into computing. Come to think if of…

+1 for breaking autoexec.bat (on a 386). And getting yelled at by my dad, who needed it for work. Thankfully, this led to a great decision when he upgraded -- his old machine became mine. If I broke it, well, that was my problem, and I should learn how to fix it. Cue ~10 year old me learning about the Windows / DOS boot process. In summary, we should encourage kids to play games, but make them harder to install and m…

I have definitely lamented how easy it is for my kids' generation to play games, compared to the memory optimization techniques I had to employ to even get them running ;)

> Ooh, if I LH the mouse driver and allocate a little more EMS it should work, but don't forget to load DOS=high,umb!

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

#614

Post by caddemon »

TillE wrote: post #500
swman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Gaming addiction" is 99% depression and similar disorders. It's just not a thing on its own, it's a symptom.

The vast majority of depressed people do not demonstrate symptoms of gaming addiction. Even if one were to accept the argument that gaming addiction is always caused by underlying depression, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered separately from garden variety depression - there is often a nasty positive feedback loop between depressive symptoms and addictive symptoms. Besides, psychiatry in general needs to be increasing the precision of its definitions if we are going to get anywhere with new treatments.

Ironically, depression is often caused by other underlying disorders (e.g. Autism), yet if the symptoms are met there will be a comorbid diagnosis, rather than saying that depression is just a symptom. It can be difficult to disentangle cause and effect for a lot of comorbid diagnoses, and also many existing treatments address symptoms rather than causes. So the distinction you are making hardly exists in the field at large (at this time).

As for the deeper question, "could an otherwise healthy person develop gaming addiction?", I'm inclined to answer yes. It of course depends on how you define "otherwise healthy", as I'm sure we could identify genetic risk factors for gaming addiction, and I bet they will correlate with risk factors for addiction, ADHD, etc. However I've certainly seen people who were functioning well but perhaps a bit bored at school/work or a bit anxious in social situations take a complete nose dive when they got hooked on the "right" game.

I'm curious if you would say the same thing about gambling addiction?

Edit: just to add I am 100% against anything like what China is doing. I think we need more resources to help those who are spending more time gaming than they would like, which involves recognizing it as a legitimate issue. I also wouldn't mind some restrictions on the tactics game companies can take to make their games addictive, although the details of that would require careful consideration.

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

#615

Post by honkycat »

pitaj wrote: post #555
hjek wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But games were different. They were, and I wonder why. If you run some open source 16-bit gaming console emulator, you also know that there won't be in-game purchases, because it just wasn't a possibility. Perhaps it was a technological sweet spot that limited capitalist exploitation within video games? The games still had ethical issues then, like, it's actually difficult to find non-violent games. Even Zelda is a…

A few possible causes: - Game prices have not kept up with inflation. - Games are more expensive than ever before. - More games now have online multiplayer, requiring constant funding.

I have family and friends who work in the game industry, and I can tell you it is none of the above.

Here is the answer: Crappy gatcha games and skinner boxes branded with a popular IP marketed towards kids are:

1. Much easier to make

2. Makes A TON MORE MONEY.

A gatcha game is basically a slot machine, which is basically a website with a fancy front-end. This means you can shovel out these games with low-skill labor, make your money, and then re-skin the same website with another property.

A lot of the gaming companies that used to be owned by a visionary leader are now owned by VC firms that don't give a shit about games, they give a shit about the money machine.

So they produce the same crap over and over again, employing behavioral psychologists to develop the most addicting loop possible.

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

#616

Post by fimdomeio »

adventured wrote: post #570
ericmay wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have mixed feelings about this. I don't. If this were to be proposed in America I would view it as extreme government over-reach.

> If this were to be proposed in America I would view it as extreme government over-reach. It is an extreme government overreach, whether in the US or China. It's an abuse of human rights. China is about one step away from treading into classic Mao Communist cultural attack mode. The interesting thing about pursuing so much control, is that more control requires ever more control, it's a negative spiral. More oppress…

And if that wasn't bad enough, then they banned Winnie The Pooh

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

#617

Post by jumelles »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #604
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 favour of governments doing this. But I have to admit I will relish the opportunity to tell my (11 year old) son about this around the dinner table tonight (after he spent the whole day hiding inside playing Terraria and Minecraft) And I wish as a parent I had the actual ability to enforce such a limit myself (maybe not so drastic). But the battle would be intense, futile, and conflict ridden. It's been tr…

"You see my son, these children with limited human rights..."

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

#619

Post by mywittyname »

ehutch79 wrote: post #372
sudosysgen wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tencent et al already get a single digit percentage of their revenue from minor users on online games. It will not kill them. There is also a massively underdeveloped market for single player Chinese games that is only recently starting that will benefit massively from this decision.

but there won't be any minor users graduating to of age users. I'm making an educated guess here, but i'm betting you won't see a real surge in single player games.

Single player doesn't prevent them from being tied to an online service. Even in America, lots of modern "single player" games don't run without a connection to the internet.

These services could easily institute the same limitations on their SP games; forcing them to do online checks on certain events. They could even be sneaky about it by punishing you if you try to evade the checks somehow by deleting your save game, making the game more difficult, or employing other techniques used to dissuade pirates.

They can also do forced updates on software to fix any exploits, run background services that force kill executables, and a bunch of other stuff. Mobile devices are especially well locked down. It just depends on how badly the company wants to keep kids from playing the games. They just need to make it too big of a pain to worry about for 99.99% of gamers, then report the other 0.01% of troublemakers to the authorities.

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

#620

Post by abecedarius »

staunch wrote: post #423
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.

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.

I agree with you about China going beyond that.

But now would be a good time to roll back all the temporary 9/11 stuff, if there are any politicians wanting to see some trust lent to talk about 'temporary'. Hard to see a better occasion for it ever coming up, with the 20th anniversary in a couple weeks.

About the WW2 example, I was surprised how much was still on the books and even in continuing 'emergency' use, reading https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Leviathan-Critical-Government-...

Post reply on HN