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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

#791

Post by SuoDuanDao »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #327
blackbear_ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. Is there anything that actually scales linearly? I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do.

I'd argue that benefits from games - at least from games in the 90s - scale in a weird but, to a degree, superlinear way. That is, if you do it only a little, you may as well not do it at all. Come to think of it, quite a lot of things in life scale like this. Software development being among the well-known ones for this audience - e.g. if you'd be given only a 30 minute window for writing code during a day (or even…

This seems very plausible. I suspect one of the most consistent benefits of games is that it trains the mind to pay attention to one thing for a long time. The longer those sessions, the more effective it probably is.

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

#792

Post by throwaway675309 »

gnull wrote: post #725
joshschreuder wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If there is no extensive research on gaming, it doesn't mean gaming should not be limited. Since we don't know how harmful gaming is, keeping it widely available might be as dangerous as limiting it. Keeping games available is as much of a decision as limiting them. Why do you think picking the former option requires extensive research and the latter doesn't?

Number one there absolutely is extensive research on gaming and its potential physiological ramifications.

Number two even if there weren't, by your logic you could justify restricting anything in the entire universe by stating that there isn't sufficient research.

A.k.a. we don't know what long term ramifications may be caused by extensive winking, so will be restricting to the amount of winking you can perform to 50 winks per day.

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

#793

Post by dillondoyle »

One point I haven't seen brought up yet is the amount of interaction and forum type communications that happen in modern games within the context of CCPs wanting to control all online speech.

The TV show Occupied (norway Okkupert) has a fun example where a militarized group uses video game live audio chat to secretly communicate and pass info.

I think there are memes about COD waiting rooms too illustrating digital forums of speech, even the most dumb teenager smack talk you can think of!

And that seems scary to CCP.

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

#797

Post by graderjs »

dillondoyle wrote: post #793

One point I haven't seen brought up yet is the amount of interaction and forum type communications that happen in modern games within the context of CCPs wanting to control all online speech. The TV show Occupied (norway Okkupert) has a fun example where a militarized group uses video game live audio chat to secretly communicate and pass info. I think there are memes about COD waiting rooms too illustrating digital f…

Could be, but i don't think they have a problem policing speech anywhere else, why would they particularly focus on it in games in a way to restrict the time? If it was the case there's always another online property people can occur to converse. the correct English acronym is CPC now, i think

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

#798

Post by Seb-C »

make3 wrote: post #673
ddtaylor wrote: post #22

My understanding is that South Korea already does this to some extent with users having to be over 18 or having a Pro Gaming license to play after some hour. The result has not been that the vast majority of SK gamers promptly log off at said hour. The result has been the majority of them connect to non SK servers immediately at said hour or use a friends account.

Are you saying China can't enforce this? the difference is that China is able to actually apply the law, with it's fire wall and unprecedently separated tech infrastrure. It may also threaten the companies to straight up boot them from China if they don't comply.

People will just start to crack the games to remove this rule, and use private self-hosted servers imho.

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

#799

Post by tshaddox »

_vertigo wrote: post #782
tshaddox wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean it's impossible, according to your definitions, for the U.S. Congress to pass any bill that is in any way authoritarian? Or, indeed, is it possible for the U.S. government to do anything authoritative, since it is ostensibly democratic?

No, but let's not pretend like they are the same degree of authoritarian.

Okay, if the mechanism by which the government ostensibly makes a policy isn't the thing that makes the policy authoritarian or not ("democracy" versus "single-party" or "communist"), and the content of the policy itself isn't the thing that makes the policy authoritarian or not (restricting minors' alcohol usage versus restricting minors' video game usage), then what is it that makes the policy authoritarian or not?

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

#800

Post by lhorie »

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.

We restrict both time and what they have access to, and the kids don't generally crave screen time (they're in elementary school).

Aside from watching movies every once in a blue moon, they only have access to specific games (all of which fall in the educational category), so no endless content feeds and no micro-transaction BS.

At one point, they got into one game enough that they'd demand daily screen time, but then the novelty wore off and they stopped asking.

Most days, they just spend their play time doing other things and screen time doesn't even come up.

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