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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

#621

Post by Marcus316 »

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.

Interesting. Is it a huge deal if they miss their 30 minutes a day?

I probably allow my kids too much time with screens, but the flip side is that, if they don't have screen access for a few days, they don't really care. They'll read some books or play outside, no big deal. I get wary of setting hard limits on their screen time, because (knowing their personalities) they would then never accept if they didn't get that time for whatever reason, and constantly be trying to make sure they get their screen time, rather than the current state of affairs where missing their screens for a day or two doesn't phase them one bit.

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

#622

Post by honkycat »

Bad law, this basically kills the online gaming hobby for people under 18. I think there is a lot of value in online multiplayer games, personally. People aren't robots, they need a way to relax, and I find it an amazing way to have a bit of competition in my life when I struggle to fit in anything else.

I watched an interview with David Harbor and he made a really amazing point. ( David is an avid poker player ): D&D is a lot like poker, in that it doesn't get REALLY good until you've been doing it so long that you get the feeling you should REALLY be doing something else.

I feel the same way about gaming. I play a lot less anymore, and that is because the way to play a game is to dive in and really immerse yourself in it for a few hours straight.

Hell, you can't even get warmed UP in an online FPS game in under an hour.

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

#623

Post by solatic »

rank0 wrote: post #435
birbs wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is controlling how children spend their time. In the U.S., the government mandates a lot about how children spend their time. They need to go to school and they aren’t allowed to buy alcohol or tobacco. Children under 16 aren’t allowed to spend any time driving an automobile, etc.

So why can’t you use the same logic to justify any arbitrary regulation? I don’t agree that having SOME laws means that the government should be able to pass ANY law.

To justify any arbitrary regulation imposed on children.

No child owns his own life or decision making. Typically parents make most decisions, the government makes some others e.g. mandatory schooling, setting standards that parents most abide by if they don't want their children taken away from them (sufficient food and shelter etc.).

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

#624

Post by lizard »

lhorie wrote: post #331
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…

> If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills. Eh. No, that's not quite how that works. If you look at north american elementary school level reading, you may notice that books are often categorized by levels. Some of this has to do with complexity of sentence construction, some has to do with vocabulary, and some has to do with subject matter. The gist of the educat…

> Game text is usually not structured with any didactic value in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of furigana in Japanese in consideration of target audiences). A lot of game categories don't even require any reading beyond recognizing words (which is somewhere between kinder and 1st grade level reading skill)

> Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're typically spending a large amount of time doing other things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly common phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to skip over dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off gimmicks that rely on reading the text carefully for instructions or clues.

This is a consequence of modern gaming trends and by no means an issue with video games themselves.

There are a lot of game categories that provide or even require extensive reading. We don't have to accept _all_ games a beneficial; it's not like we use magazines and tabloids to teach reading comprehension either.

There are games where killing monsters isn't the primary goal, or even if it is a significant aspect of game play can be averted by finding alternative solutions, usually through the in-game lore.

Deus Ex was a great example where several bosses could be entirely side stepped by reading emails throughout the game (though to be fair, only a few of them actually required _reading_ the email as opposed to simply discovering it). Arcanum is another that if you pieced together enough of the backstory and paid attention to the dialog you could talk the final boss down. There are even more out there, as you mention, that offer hints to puzzles and gimmicks, some of which even present it as a riddle ensuring you read and understand the text rather than just found it.

Sure, a lot of people will skip these things and save-scum or post on message boards to get the answer, but that's not much different than CliffNotes everyone used.

If you want to use video games in school do the same thing we do for books: Select the games the offer quality reading and evaluate based on comprehension rather than completion. You can even require students submit save files to verify they took the reading path.

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

#625

Post by solatic »

ip26 wrote: post #505
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?

It’s about more than just online games. It’s about control Isn't this more likely to provoke the opposite? Addictive time-wasters are an aid to authoritarian government. Assuming this policy is effectively enforced, Chinese youth suddenly have a lot more free time on their hands.

> Addictive time-wasters are an aid to authoritarian government.

They're an aid to control; however, the government has interests apart from control. If the government feels that it has sufficient control, but worries about economic output, it may prioritize economics over control. Ultimately government needs to achieve both.

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

#627

Post by bluishgreen »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #610
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…

If you want to get your message across to these types of people, you should first consider MMOs IRL. The friends, the responsibility, the schedules, and the socio-political skills are all very real. It’s better to refer to hiking, etc as AFK. Credentials: I grew up on 40+ hours a week of video games. I’ve played more than a year worth of screen time in World of Warcraft, I’ve gotten a Bachelors of Computer Engineerin…

This is hacker news self selection talking. The filter: The few who found computer science through gaming and made a cushion of a life which let's us the time luxury to post on an online forum in the middle of a Monday(at least it is the middle of a Monday for me). Meanwhile countless lives went into backbreaking labour work if that in the "below the API" sort of uber and amazon delivery work. These lives and their stories will rarely be represented here. I am speaking for a friend who went into construction and got injured and is on disability at the age of 35. He said he could have made so much more of his life had he not played 24/7 video games for several of his most precious formative years during high-school and early college (of which he dropped out).

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

#628

Post by mywittyname »

rexreed wrote: post #449

Isn't this the "kids watch too much TV" of the Z generation? I mean, I know that gaming in large quantities to the exclusion of social interaction and education is harmful, but that's what was also said about TV and the growth of cable. So is this much ado about nothing?

China is where the USA was 20-30 years ago. Had video games been as advanced in the 90s as they are today, the USA would have instituted similar policies back then. There was a huge crusade against gaming in the 90s, particularly when it came to children playing videogames.

The USA benefits from having an older population who grew up playing videogames. Anyone under 40 probably played games at least a little bit growing up. And those under 30 almost certainly did, as games started becoming more broadly appealing in the PS2 era. So they view games in a much different way than their parents, who largely knew nothing about videogames did.

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

#629

Post by coding123 »

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…

So, in a way, you could be seen as arguing for authoritarianism.

> And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms

So, for example, Opiods. In the United States we're treating the symptoms by banning it (and this is pretty much supported by both political parties). Yet we know the root cause: People that are effectively feeling worthless, do not feel connected to a specific social group and/or disengaged from culture.

Other aspects of our entire culture is causing people to feel like that: 1. Changing family values, 2. Disconnected from people, connected to devices and online popularity, 3. Impossible to succeed and feel valuable.

I feel like we have a really weird problem: Our capitalistic environment or, greed in general, are driving these problems. So the solution is authoritarianism.

Sorry that's just the way my mind works. I see right through issues to their root causes and it makes my worldview weird.

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

#630

Post by auiya »

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…

> Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as addicted as possible and to play as long as possible to an extent that made the old school 90s RPGs grinds look tame and mild.

You do realize the term "quarter muncher" isn't a modern one right? We had plenty of those types meth-level-addiction games back in the early days of gaming too.

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