701–710 of 1001 posts
Yeah, maybe I could've used that time better - But none of my friends did anything reasonable with that time and I don't think I am any more special than them.
Still do the occasional session, still love the FPS!
I find the reckless timewasting on social media, reddit, much more harmful in comparison.
China thinks that video games (specifically, the online variety) are harmful enough to children that it needs to be regulated at a federal level and children's exposure to games should be restricted. But here's the thing: We on the west do exactly the same thing for things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. The motivations behind all those restrictions are even similar (largely related to children's health/well-b…
Our restrictions came about through a democratic process (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...), not because our supreme leader decided he knows what's best for us.
Not sure where you're coming from with calling the two situations similar. They're obviously entirely different.
> My advice is to be careful of using loaded terminology such as "authoritarian"
How is that a loaded term? What other word would you use to describe the Chinese government?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a feeling that there is a bit of subtle manipulation by the framing going on here. The current Reuters article title that I get is "Three hours a week: Play time's over for China's young video gamers", but the submission's title is "China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week". This conjures images of Chinese police raiding homes and punishing children or parents who are cau…
It's not just limiting to three hours a week, but to three particular hours a week. Feels even more Draconian to me.
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?
Almost every single comment I make with that sentiment gets instant downvoted or flagged.
Putting aside the horrible ethics of controlling society like this, it sounds like a really bad policy by China that would likely backfire. 1) Mandating that kids all game at the same time will have bad problems for some web services. Some games geared towards younger people might be close to a ghost town 95% of the time, and then surge radically in traffic during allowed gaming hours. This is asking for technical pr…
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…
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.
Multiplayer does not require constant funding, unless you want to lock the game down so you can sell microtransactions. I can fire up the original Quake or UT99, pick a server, and play online; it doesn't cost id a cent. On the other hand, I recently tried playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist again, a game released in 2013, and their centralized online services don't work.
Developers have made an effort to keep players from hosting their own servers, which has introducing many new problems. For example, the lack of community moderation / 'toxicity', homogenization of gameplay options within a title to support a matchmaking pool, and stagnation due to lack of new maps, modes, and mods that used to be created by the community.
China thinks that video games (specifically, the online variety) are harmful enough to children that it needs to be regulated at a federal level and children's exposure to games should be restricted. But here's the thing: We on the west do exactly the same thing for things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. The motivations behind all those restrictions are even similar (largely related to children's health/well-b…
I don’t agree that the restrictions are objectively similar. Cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling all have very well researched and understood physical and psychological problems over decades. I’m not aware of any such research done into the effects of playing video games more than three hours per week (though would be interested to read it), so there’s a good chance that this is more than “government looking after the…
The other major factor that was mentioned was addiction. I'm not sure there are studies on this, but at least anecdotally, a lot of people seem to think it is a problem.
Some other comments are also mentioning that this is more a restriction on companies providing services to underage audiences, and we do have a bunch of legal restrictions on how companies are allowed to interact with children; see COPPA.
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’ve skimmed the comments with the same dismay until I read yours. The lack of concern about using coercive force to control how people dispose of their leisure time is disturbing to say the least. Maybe that over a billion people out there who are living with the same freedom as inmates in a minimum security prison in the US should be a more pressing issue than the nuances of the normative value of video games. It d…
I don’t think well of the CCP for many reasons but please, this is a very superficial understanding of China on display. It seems more well suited to Soviet about half a century ago.