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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

#631

Post by auiya »

cvdub wrote: post #106
namelessoracle wrote: post #7

I have mixed feelings about this. Younger me learned a lot of problem solving skills and most importantly spent a lot of time learning how to read by playing RPGs and games that required lots of reading. My reading skills would not have been as advanced if i wasn't playing text heavy games that had a lot of plot like Square Enix games and the CRPGs of the time. Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as a…

There's no denying that Dark Souls is hard. It's also fair. It's 100% your fault every time you die, and you know what you did wrong.

There's PLENTY of jank in Dark Souls, don't kid yourself.

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

#633

Post by kevbin »

yuy910616 wrote: post #405
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard enough for their parents to enforce these decisions. Good luck with that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM6hEOtV92E When kids game excessively, I'd wager it's an escape for them. It's an escape just as much as it was for the geeky / nerdy kids of America, as it is for the kids in China who have goukou. You can try to enforce whatever culture you're gonna enforce, but I think we've seen from the war on dru…

People have been making a lot of prediction about China, such that market economy would lead to more political openness or a middle class would demand more political freedom - all good guess but turn out wrong. I think we're bad at prediction - so why not let them experiment and see how it turns out 50 years later.

Historically, totalitarian "experimentation" hasn't gone so well.

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

#634

Post by timwaagh »

There is a time for nuance and there is a time for condemnation. This isn't the time for nuance. It's a government telling people what they can and can't do. It's deprioritizing happiness for merely ideological reasons. What do they expect kids to do instead? Lie Flat and watch the state propaganda channel?

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

#635

Post by president »

Revenant-15 wrote: post #514
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?

Honestly, I wish I could delete at least half the comments here, including yours. It's as if the moment somebody mentions "government", the majority of HN that is American goes "bu-bu-but it's authoritarian!!!!" and cries about freedom. It's ridiculous. The CCP is an authoritarian government. Yes. Is this being proposed in the US? No. Why all the whining and insane amount of pearl-clutching then? Frankly, I was hopin…

> Honestly, I wish I could delete at least half the comments here, including yours.

It sounds like if you had your way, you'd be quite the authoritarian. Do you hear yourself?

> The CCP is an authoritarian government. Yes. Is this being proposed in the US? No. Why all the whining and insane amount of pearl-clutching then?

Vaccine passports and mandated lockdown and vaccines without informed consent are bringing us closer to authoritarianism than we ever have before.

> Has the level of discourse really become that much worse on HN over the years?

So in response you create a meta post complaining about others complaining about authoritarianism?

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

#636

Post by wing-_-nuts »

cercatrova wrote: post #412
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…

> 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. Fun fact, there has been recent research to show that the "glass of wine during a meal is healthy" is entirely a myth; _no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4803651/

>_no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0].

I don't buy it. At worst, the negative health effects of alcohol are on an exponential J curve. Negative health outcomes like the risk of cancer is very small up until a rather high amount of consumption (4 drinks per day?) and only then outweighs the cardiovascular benefits.

Regardless, like meat consumption, I have no desire to give up drinking in moderation. I think that with this, like with everything, one has to weigh their enjoyment vs the potential for harm.

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

#638

Post by president »

yuy910616 wrote: post #322
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 glad I have certain inalienable rights, but I'm also happy to see the authoritarian government experiment continue. There is a chance that liberal government is the most effective government, ever - the so-called end of history argument, but let's not forget the shot heard around the world was fired less than 250 years ago. Benevolent dictatorship could still work - especially today. Look at Singapore, look at Ch…

> lifting millions and billions of people out of poverty is an achievement that shouldn't be denied

This is an oft-repeated propaganda talking point. Their system created their poverty in the first place. Not sure breaking something then fixing it again is much of an achievement. Not to mention, the Chinese government changed the definition of what constituted poverty in order to make that claim. I really don't care about the US vs China war because I think the US has already lost but it is quite annoying to hear people repeat propaganda.

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

#639

Post by megameter »

mywittyname wrote: post #588
Filligree wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern games dont have that text, and even when they do they have voice acting to get around it. Games like Chrono Trigger and old school Final Fantasy are rare and dont get made as much anymore unfortunately. Its all gambling boxes. What sort of games have you been playing? Modern games come in every possible variety, and as soon as you look outside the likes of Fortnite you're swamped in story-heavy games, if tha…

I like text-heavy games and agree with the GP that they are not nearly as common as they used to be. Voice acting is almost universal and most games require subtitles to be enabled to have much of any reading. Sure, are some games like Disco Elysium, Pathfinder Kingmaker or other D&D-style games, which are big walls of text with minimal voice over, but let's be honest, those games are targeting middle-aged people, no…

If I go on itch.io right now and pick something at random, the likelihood of it being both made by a teenager and involving written storytelling is quite high. Likewise a huge hit of the last decade was Undertale and it had the kind of success where I recall seeing kids draw the characters in chalk on the sidewalk. The evidence indicates that writing never went away, it's just not upheld by large productions(and even then, Nintendo regularly eschews voice acting).

To me, there's nothing sacred about text, it's just a medium.

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

#640

Post by spoonjim »

Marcus316 wrote: post #621
gallamine wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We restrict our kids to 30 min /day of screens. Try telling them it's not worth it. They are absolutely rabid about it.

Interesting. Is it a huge deal if they miss their 30 minutes a day? I probably allow my kids too much time with screens, but the flip side is that, if they don't have screen access for a few days, they don't really care. They'll read some books or play outside, no big deal. I get wary of setting hard limits on their screen time, because (knowing their personalities) they would then never accept if they didn't get tha…

The concept of "Screen Time" is so insane. You can do everything on a "screen" from writing the next great American novel to watching porn. So, is X hours of screen time too much? Depends on what you're doing with it.
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