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?
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.
So secures western dominance in eSports competitions. Like everything in life computer games are diverse enough that they can be harmful/predatory to high/mid level programming. I struggle to keep my son from gaming all of his free time away, but he also has learned Lua and C# to a pretty large degree doing this stuff and I cant be too mad about that. This weekend we are going to put together his first gaming rig fro…
I fail to see removing one from eSport scene damages the productivity of a country, if not increase it. eSports are pretty much a negative to the country as a whole. Gaming company use it as ad and sell the illusion to make big bucks. Yes, you could have the next Faker in your country. So what? for every international pro you create there's 100s more kids wasted their youth on a pipe dream where their time could be u…
This is a pretty good take, also what happens to the teens who don't make it to the competitions or twitch? I dont think the tax that eSport winners pay have any influence on a country's economy.
(USA centric view) You cannot legislate parents into being good parents. You cannot pass laws that protect children from bad parenting as best case result you may get the state to intervene and put the child in a foster system where there's a 50% chance that they end up in an even worse place.
Laws against child labor might be an example most of us would agree are called for, instead of just leaving it up to the parents whether children should work in mines and sweatshops or not. Although I have no doubt someone will show up and say that should be left up to parents too.
Children have assisted their parents in their work as they are able from an early age for millennia. It serves to train them in useful skills they will need as adults and also to improve the family's financial prospects, which is beneficial to the entire family including the child. Increasing wealth, in some areas, has allowed for the luxury of allowing children to prepare for adulthood in less immediately productive ways, such as schooling—but that does not imply that it is wrong for children to work. Most parents care deeply for their children's welfare; in general you can trust that if parents are asking their children to work they are doing so for the children's benefit. If you would prefer that they didn't need to work the solution is to offer them a better option, not take away one of the few ways they have to improve their situation.
I was about to reply with something opposing your thought and then realized other countries don't have an age limit and they don't have a billion underage kids dying of alcohol. If anything that probably happens more in the states where there is an age limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age I mean, yes, "other countries" don't have age limits, but it's pretty rare and it's overwhelmingly not what you'd call successful or stable countries.
This will destroy the Chinese games industry and this may have broader implications than just stocks in free fall. Video game programming is very cutting edge technology (eg. 3D graphics, animation, wayfinding, and more). China throwing this industry away will mean there are no home grown video game programmers which will have implications on their entire software engineering capability. This gives the rest of the wo…
The policy is targeting ONLINE games. Companies like Tencent will simply double down shipping those shitty games with loot boxes and microtransactions oversea to your kids. Meanwhile in China offline singleplayer games may see a boom.
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.
Temporary? We're a year and a half in, with no end in sight. If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Indefinite public health authoritarianism.
Mild? Australians can't travel more than 5km from their homes. For essential purposes only. Vaccinated Australians can only leave their homes for 2 hours a day (unvaxed 1 hour a day).
Speaking from my own childhood, I'd be curios if kids in China are going to try to circumvent this ban or if it is even possible to do so. (Similar to how homepages ask for your birthday... no one is going to check up on it). While this ban seems very specific (only online, certain hours of the week) I wonder if the companies might try to overachieve and extend it to offline games or social media platforms as well. G…
Yeah, this is just for the CCP to feel good about themselves and send a message. They have no way of enforcing that. Kids would just use their parent's phone. Or go to a WangBa that doesn't give a flying f*ck about the regulation.
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?
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.
>even to very libertarian people
I'm not even "very" libertarian at all, yet I find the "temporary" (which is not so very temporary) and "mild" (which is not so very mild) authoritarian measures absolutely reprehensible.
Just saying something is a false equivalency doesn't make it so. Both instances have the government putting limits on your autonomy in unprecedented ways. The government is very boldly telling you what you can and cannot do and how much of it when allowed. I completely reject your characterization of totalitarianism as "mild" and "making complete sense."