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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

#761

Post by Grimm1 »

jpgvm wrote: post #723
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in favour of governments doing this. But I have to admit I will relish the opportunity to tell my (11 year old) son about this around the dinner table tonight (after he spent the whole day hiding inside playing Terraria and Minecraft) And I wish as a parent I had the actual ability to enforce such a limit myself (maybe not so drastic). But the battle would be intense, futile, and conflict ridden. It's been tr…

China has as pretty scary high success rate with policies often deemed "doomed to fail" by the outside world. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if it's highly successful at cutting down on game addiction (which is a problem you easily carry into adulthood). Worth mentioning they aren't banning children playing games outside these hours. They are only restricting access to online games. Namely multiplayer games…

> China has as pretty scary high success rate with policies

Easy to have when you control what the media reports.

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

#762

Post by em500 »

mrobot wrote: post #751
bogwog wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a big double standard to call their flavor of restrictions "authoritarian", while being ok with (or even strongly in favor of) our flavor of restrictions, even though the two are objectively similar in nature. Our restrictions came about through a democratic process (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_... ), not because our supreme leader decided he knows what's best for us. N…

What do you actually know about China's governance and democracy? How do you know your flavor of democracy is really better than everyone elses? Chinese people actually like their government, and no they are not brainwashed.

In particular, it's ludicrous to believe that all laws are personally approved by Xi Jinping himself. The sheer volume of legislation ensures that even if he spends all his waking hours reading them, Xi can be barely aware of only a tiny fraction of what is enacted by the party.

Not completely unlike in the Democratic West, actual legislation originates from some opaque process involving lobby groups, lower regional governments, individuals in various party fractions, idealistic civil servants and sometimes even concerned citizens.

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

#763

Post by aforwardslash »

eric-hu wrote: post #488
II2II wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the value of the skills being learned. Learning about extended memory may have been of value to some people in the day, but it had negligible value a decade later. It may have launched a few careers, but it did not have lasting value. Learning how to create batch files had more value since those skills were transferable to similar domains (e.g. Unix administration and software development). That being s…

I beg to differ about XMS. That particular technology may have only been relevant for a decade, but the idea of using a harder-to-access storage to supplement cheap-but-limited storage is everywhere. L1 and L2 cache, data warehouses, cloud storage, and so on. I value learning about that abstraction early on. I’d agree it’s not singularly career changing, but I don’t think knowing any one technology in the software in…

XMS wasnt a supplement, and its behaviour wasnt analogous to a cache. It was a 32 bit wrapper that would allow 16 or 32 bit* dos applications to access all "extra" memory that 32 bit systems usually got installed. The access was commonly provided via emulating the EMS mechanism - a 64k or 128k block to be paged within the fist 2^19 bytes, or by providing a 32 bit address for a usable block.

*32 bit and protected mode (ring3) support was provided usually via DPMI, an interrupt service managed by a TSR (daemon), or VCPI, a more complex privileged system. Some DOS extenders could also provide this functionality for their own binaries, notably the very popular DOS4GW.EXE, the Watcom dos extender. Yes, the name of the file reflects the physical address limit of i386 systems, 4GB. (note that when working with linear addressing, the max addressable range is quite superior due to the paging mechanism).

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

#765

Post by bamboozled »

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…

“I have mixed feelings about this.”

You have mixed feelings a about what?

This is an absolutely insane government overreach and unacceptable.

Micromanaging what people can do with their time like this is 1984.

I grew up, sometimes skipping school and playing games all day, I still passed school, I have a good job in software and a healthy happy life.

I’d prefer the following question is asked, why do these kids require “spiritual opium”? Maybe living in a polluted authoritarian genocidal hell hole makes people want to escape reality ?

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

#767

Post by wanderer2323 »

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…

> solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math

That's not how improving through games works at all.

The things you understand through games are much more general than the surface of the gameplay. Total War (or Starcraft) won't teach you anything about commanding armies. But if you're observant enough it will teach you a difference between level-1 versus level-2 strategies. It will definitely teach you about the impact of timing on execution. It will show you complexity, risk, loss aversion, and how battles are usually won or lost before the first shot is fired. All these are useful things to experience so that you are better equipped to deal with them in real life.

What's even more important, the games will show you how YOU relate to these intangible concepts. How loss averse are you? Do you naturally tend to maximize win or minimize loss? How easy it is for you to abandon a pre-established plan? These and more are insights into your own nature that are not easy to get.

Finally, the multiplayer games will show you the human nature. You'll understand, for example, that different people play for different reasons, and just this understanding alone was worth all hundreds of hours I put into M:TG. I guess that most of the multiplayer insights are also available through participation (and/or managing) a regular sports team but I would have never been able to join as many of those as I had gaming teams.

TLDR: Games guide the player to instinctive understanding of categorical truths that underpin the simulations, and that is only possible through countless repetitions of similar scenarios* in different contexts. This is the true value of gaming.

[*] I'm not talking about grinding here[**], but playing same or similar games many times.

[**] although grinding can teach one about how seemingly small process improvements somethimes add up to a qualitative break ... and sometimes not. Figure out the best way to do a cow level run to learn more!

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

#768

Post by tshaddox »

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?

Here in the United States, minors aren't allowed in bars for even 1 hour per week! Is the difference here the "amount of authoritarianism," or simply the types of things each country believes are harmful enough for minors that they ought to be banned or restricted?

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

#769

Post by tshaddox »

bogwog wrote: post #702
lhorie wrote: post #687

China thinks that video games (specifically, the online variety) are harmful enough to children that it needs to be regulated at a federal level and children's exposure to games should be restricted. But here's the thing: We on the west do exactly the same thing for things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. The motivations behind all those restrictions are even similar (largely related to children's health/well-b…

> It's a big double standard to call their flavor of restrictions "authoritarian", while being ok with (or even strongly in favor of) our flavor of restrictions, even though the two are objectively similar in nature. Our restrictions came about through a democratic process (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_... ), not because our supreme leader decided he knows what's best for us. N…

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?

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

#770

Post by tshaddox »

joshschreuder wrote: post #692
lhorie wrote: post #687

China thinks that video games (specifically, the online variety) are harmful enough to children that it needs to be regulated at a federal level and children's exposure to games should be restricted. But here's the thing: We on the west do exactly the same thing for things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. The motivations behind all those restrictions are even similar (largely related to children's health/well-b…

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…

Is there research suggesting that the physical and psychological problems caused by cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling are significantly reduced at age 18 or 21?
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