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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

#431

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

lhorie wrote: post #91

People talking about the benefits of games reminds me of people talking about the benefits of, say, a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. I similarly have mixed feelings as well, but for slightly different reasons. I've read about studies that say that musical training (which…

Ditto. Games certainly helped develop my problem-solving skills, but I reckon I'd have gotten 90% of the benefit in 10% of the time, and the remaining 35 hours a week would have been better spent elsewhere.

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

#433

Post by Aerroon »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #422
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?

How is limiting the amount of time a Chinese child can play online games worse than barring me from buying Diablo as a teenager? If people are acting comfortable with authoritarian government, it's because we grew up under a quite similar one.

In practice there weren't tools around to actually stop you from getting and playing D2 when you were a teenager. There are now.

I do agree with you that a lot of rules on kids even in our "free countries" were hypocritical and didn't actually work.

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

#434

Post by dxhdr »

firebird84 wrote: post #210
scruple wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Tencent flat out own Riot? I'd be much more interested in understanding what they (Tencent) think of this.

No, they own a significant minority stake.

They acquired the entire company in 2015. You are probably thinking of Epic Games.

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

#435

Post by rank0 »

birbs wrote: post #416
sergiomattei wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is authoritarian. Why should the government control how I manage my time? I'm pretty sure this site would be pretty outraged if the government decided we could only code 3 hours a week. And please don't use the "but coding is constructive!1!" argument. A good use of time is defined by whoever spends it, not whatever someone else's idea of wasting time is. As a case in point, playing hours of Splitgate has ke…

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.

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

#436

Post by skystarman »

woofie11 wrote: post #425
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 no more or less comfortable with authoritarian government than I am with an authoritarian market-based corporatocracy. Odds are that you are under an NDA which limits your freedom of speech. Odds are that if you refused to sign one, you couldn't afford a mortgage in a place with a lot of tech. Odds are you will sign more NDAs so your kids can keep going to the same school. The freedom of no regulation is an illus…

I'm not sure a country that commits cultural genocide and sent a million or more Muslim Uighurs into reeducation camps is where you should be looking for a "better system". Forced sterilization, forced labor...

Or a country that has no freedom of the press, savagely beats or murders political dissidents, will take away your job and livelihood if you dare question CCP orthodoxy...

The fact that you think is somehow morally equivalent to an NDA is just absolutely astonishing.

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

#437

Post by Ajedi32 »

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?

Yep, the policy itself isn't necessarily an issue, but the fact that it's being imposed by the government is a huge problem. (Especially since it's not even a democratically elected government. Taxation without representation and all that.) If a parent instituted the exact same policy for their kids I would have no problem with that.

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

#438

Post by doomleika »

This is actually worse, underaged minors are only allowed to play from 2000-2100 in Fri, Sat, and Sun(and holidays). Down from cumulative 1.5 hours(3 hour in holidays) per day in 0600-2200. There's no clear effective date for this mandate. But many of the game I see have those policy in place already.

The restriction applies to "online games", but keep in mind in China GaaS games(read: gacha games) are the norm, they are always online to fight piracy. So basically, this applies all the games that actually matters in China.

This will likely to push the China game industry to a new round of battle royal to fight for those little time they have from players, I feel bad for small shops, after 10 years of bloodbath China games had their monetization pattern in place(gacha/monthly passes/daily missions). Now they have to restart over and try again.

eSport scene? yeah, gone, but honestly this is probably good in the long run.

China shops has been winning this era of gaming and crubstomping JP/KR gamedevs with superior gacha models, server stability, update quality/quantity. This mandate will likely to halt their dominance and gave JP/KR a breather.

and I guess Bytedance's game divisions is a goner now...

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

#439

Post by skystarman »

jdavis703 wrote: post #330
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?

This isn’t any more authoritarian than the US banning alcohol and cannabis for people under 21. At least China is allowing kids to do a little bit of gaming. Meanwhile in the US young adults and children are outright forbidden from intoxicating substances (as opposed to many European countries where teens can buy low-alcohol beverages.)

Alcohol has been scientifically proven to cause long-term health consequences to children. It is also an incredibly addictive and dangerous substance that often results in lifetime debilitation, cancers, and other deadly diseases.

This is not in any way similar to video games.

This entire thread seems to be overrun with Tankies or CCP bots.

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

#440

Post by runawaybottle »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #422
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?

How is limiting the amount of time a Chinese child can play online games worse than barring me from buying Diablo as a teenager? If people are acting comfortable with authoritarian government, it's because we grew up under a quite similar one.

Taliban just banned music recently, again. There are two topics here, one is authoritarianism and the other is parenting.

Kids shouldn’t be playing games 5 hours a day and looking up to streamers. The government shouldn’t be involved in this.

I think the larger threat of gaming in today’s society is that we have a situation where the standards have gone up dramatically for everyone to be an average mediocre person. You will have to do something serious if you want a real career in the future. You will have to be social and socially astute to navigate social networks (pretty much as early as 10). The pressure is much higher at a much younger age, and chronic gaming is going to be the goto escape. We don’t have a reasonable enough society where gaming can just be an innocuous past time. It’s going to be a hideout for people growing up under the enormous pressure of this new world.

I expect drug use, and prescription medication use to be going up on exactly the same curve.

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