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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

#551

Post by zerocrates »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #400
namelessoracle wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with "the problem solving skills" section of your argument. But not the reading one. Getting good at reading is almost purely exercise. You do it more, you get better/faster at it, which has gains that show up in all kinds of fields be it tech, medicine, whatever. Old school games had basically an entire novel embedded inside of them worth of text. 10 year old me wanting to read all of Final Fantasy 6 a…

Obligatory Disco Elysium mention, but it still proves your point, because it is considered so unusual by today's standards.

Though Disco Elysium is now almost-totally voice acted as well.

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

#552

Post by shrimp_emoji »

SnowProblem wrote: post #477

Like many other commentors here, I grew up playing primarily skill-based video games, like Legend of Zelda, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Counter-Strike, StarCraft. It was wanting to make these games that led me to become a software developer. But games were different. Even a game like Pokemon, which has a few loot-box mechanics, was only mildly addicting. The first game I remember being extremely addicting was World of Warc…

> Anyone who really wants to stop a gaming addiction can stop it - it is only a question of will.

| sed "s/gaming/drug/"

> The Western way is messier for sure, but if we want freedom, we have to be OK with mistakes.

Syncs with the outcome of prohibition.

Free will is a pretty religious and naive concept, IMO. A way to phrase what you're saying is that a laissez-faire society gives everyone more net utility than the up-front utility gains of banning all sources of harm. Then it's up to everyone's imagination to see how/personal relationship to harmful things/moral arrogance to say yea or nay.

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

#553

Post by AustinDev »

908B64B197 wrote: post #415
uncoder0 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Australia seems to be rushing toward that future at an out of control pace.

My wife and I were actually considering moving there. We even started some of the paperwork but after seeing the absurdity of their covid measures We have decided against it for now.

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

#554

Post by sillysaurusx »

nickff wrote: post #525
sillysaurusx wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to see you getting hammered for this sentiment. I agree with you and with the parent comment. Both things can be simultaneously true. I think you've implicitly agreed that the pandemic countermeasures were authoritarian, and this thread is saying "authoritarian bad." But we all saw what happened to places that delayed or denied countermeasures. If authoritarian bad, then that questions whether non-autho…

The parent made a specific claim: > "Temporary and mild authoritarian measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic make complete sense, even to very libertarian people. " I have not seen any (even centrist) libertarians supporting these measures; having checked the most mainstream libertarian publication (Reason). Additionally, 'very libertarian people' are minarchists, who definitely don't support these measures. Ha…

Libertarians? Sure, a few from my Twitter circle. Also pg comes to mind.

Very-libertarians? That’s a good point; I’m not sure I’ve seen any. But it’s hard to know who among us is very-libertarian except those who say so, which may be a small subset.

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

#555

Post by pitaj »

hjek wrote: post #535
SnowProblem wrote: post #477

Like many other commentors here, I grew up playing primarily skill-based video games, like Legend of Zelda, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Counter-Strike, StarCraft. It was wanting to make these games that led me to become a software developer. But games were different. Even a game like Pokemon, which has a few loot-box mechanics, was only mildly addicting. The first game I remember being extremely addicting was World of Warc…

> 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.

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

#556

Post by johncessna »

ethbr0 wrote: post #339
maerF0x0 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first computer was a 486 33mhz w/ about 250MB HD . I could only keep a couple games installed at a time, meaning i was always installing and uninstalling. Then I had to play with the autoexec.bat and cmd.com files . Then I broke it. Then i had to fix it cause my mom was still making payments on the computer (like it was a refrigerator with a 10yr lifespan) ... This is how I got into computing. Come to think if of…

+1 for breaking autoexec.bat (on a 386). And getting yelled at by my dad, who needed it for work. Thankfully, this led to a great decision when he upgraded -- his old machine became mine. If I broke it, well, that was my problem, and I should learn how to fix it. Cue ~10 year old me learning about the Windows / DOS boot process. In summary, we should encourage kids to play games, but make them harder to install and m…

I had printouts of autoexec.bat and config.sys for this exact reason.

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

#557

Post by mrguyorama »

turbohz wrote: post #441
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.

Would reading too many books be destructive? Edit: and too many newspapers?

In elementary school I got in trouble for reading books during class.

It was a mild addiction and the feelings of my teacher was that it could be disruptive to my experience and those of students around me.

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

#558

Post by miohtama »

andrepew wrote: post #113
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…

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…

I learnt English thru video games. I would not be here without them. But arguable, modern games with lootboxes and metrics are way worse than 90s offline games.

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

#559

Post by logicalmonster »

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 problems dealing with radically different usage patterns.

2) The limits are unreasonably small for a hobby. If they had said something like 16 hours a week any time you want as long as your homework was done, most Chinese gamers would have begrudgingly accepted it as part and parcel of living in a CCP Wonderland. But 3 hours is too small and is asking for kids to try and hack and find workarounds to the tiny limits. I'm sure that 14 year old me would have made a game out of trying to find workarounds around this rule regardless of the consequences.

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

#560

Post by zerocrates »

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.

It's a somewhat academic difference but ESRB rating age restrictions aren't enforced by law in the US: it's a voluntary system. The movie rating system is the same.

On the other hand, both systems owe their existence in part to government saber-rattling that they would impose actual regulation. Some attempts at actual legal enforcement have been struck down over the years.

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