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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

#951

Post by bigbob2 »

doomleika wrote: post #537
bigbob2 wrote: post #511

Really strange decision to make in the middle of a pandemic. You would think they would be encouraging activities which enable social distancing, not banning them.

COVID have been under control for a long time in CN, there’s lambda outbreak here and there, but most of them are eliminated fast. Giant exhibition have been hold for more than a year now. And CN is getting kids back to school

US is also getting kids back to school but that doesn't mean the virus is under control here. At this point I don't think there is much of a reason to believe anything China is reporting to the rest of the world.

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

#952

Post by doomleika »

bigbob2 wrote: post #951
doomleika wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID have been under control for a long time in CN, there’s lambda outbreak here and there, but most of them are eliminated fast. Giant exhibition have been hold for more than a year now. And CN is getting kids back to school

US is also getting kids back to school but that doesn't mean the virus is under control here. At this point I don't think there is much of a reason to believe anything China is reporting to the rest of the world.

Giant cons in China are back to action for a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzrxrN_3seo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJk7VGldrYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix1RY-2C9lA

Most of the corps are back to their 996 schedules, this includes low tier, manual heavy sweatshops. you can ask people who have contact in China, they will all tell you the same thing.

Knowing COVID, it's not possible "fake" it at this scale nor this long. They had COVID in control, more or less.

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

#953

Post by adotbacon »

Karunamon wrote: post #809
adotbacon wrote: post #695

Importantly this is limited to online games. The reuters article doesn't make that clear, but NYT / WSJ articles do [1][2]. Many online games use matchmaking which push you towards a 50% win rate which keeps you more interested than if you were to 'always' win or lose. Depending on the game, you might then spend money or grind time in an attempt to improve the resources available. And in some of those, 3 hours a week…

>Many online games use matchmaking which push you towards a 50% win rate which keeps you more interested than if you were to 'always' win or lose. Any competitive, skill-based matchmaking system that's tuned to produce the fairest game will strive to produce games where all participants have a statistically equal chance of victory. That includes non-video games. Why are you spinning this as if it's some dirty, manipu…

Matchmaking alone isn't inherently evil. As you allude to: what's the point playing if you're going to win 100% of the time or lose 100% of the time?

I'm commenting in the context of why China might ban online gaming. If you can learn the strategies that you fight against in a bot in offline play - or exploit the blunders they make - it can still be fun, but there's less variance and more predictability. You'll probably get tired of it sooner than seeing emergent strategies from other players. Until games are built with bots that can effectively mimic the full range of ELO and unique strategies like you get in online play, I think there will be something missing in offline play. Even then, do we derive the same satisfaction from beating a bot?

Partner up matchmaking with engagement tricks like "first win of the day" and other quests that net you some in-game resources like battle passes and you create a sense of FOMO that drains player time (while ensuring active players to keep queues fast). Add in micro-transactions and financial drain can happen too.

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

#954

Post by seanicus »

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…

Such a good point. As a burgeoning dramatist (lol) Square's SNES RPG work did so much for me. Massive, sprawling stories made very engaging by interaction. Point of fact, a Chrono Trigger fanfic was one of the first stories I wrote.

On the other hand, my numerous hours spend playing WWE Attitude and Goldeneye probably wasn't exactly expanding my horizons.

I'm a new parent so I'm not sure how I'm going to navigate this myself but I assume the above will guide my own rule-making.

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

#955

Post by abecedarius »

staunch wrote: post #886
abecedarius wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about China going beyond that. But now would be a good time to roll back all the temporary 9/11 stuff, if there are any politicians wanting to see some trust lent to talk about 'temporary'. Hard to see a better occasion for it ever coming up, with the 20th anniversary in a couple weeks. About the WW2 example, I was surprised how much was still on the books and even in continuing 'emergency' use, read…

A lot of laws stay on the books but are not employed. Many of them should be struck down and many would be if they were ever brought to court. Judges need cases to strike them down. The U.S. legal system is by no means perfect but there are very few examples of real abuse that go unchecked for long periods. U.S. history is full of overreach that is curtailed relatively quickly, although it can go on for years at a ti…

Airport security theater and ID mandates; the AUMF; mass domestic spying, extent unknown but normalized and unquestionably at a level 20th-C. Americans would consider completely unamerican. For a start.

I think it's status-quo bias to look at this picture and think the high-order bit is that yes, temporary emergency measures were temporary. In the bigger picture there are dozens of separate national emergencies getting repeatedly renewed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i....

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

#956

Post by nwellinghoff »

TheFattestNinja wrote: post #897
nwellinghoff wrote: post #877

The key to making games productive is NOT to buy them for your children :). Or at least make it a rare event. When I was a kid, my parents refused to buy me a machine good enough to play the games I wanted. As a result, I got scrappy and found a way to piece together a computer that was decent enough to play at least "something". The main game I was interested in was the infamous "Star Control II". I was able to soci…

I play online LoL at top 5% level on a 2011 laptop with integrated graphics though, free to download. Not sure that approach really works anymore.

hmm maybe it has to be a linux based system or something these days. Also, don't kids always want to play the latest ?

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

#957

Post by Revenant-15 »

president wrote: post #635
Revenant-15 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cl…

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

So every forum that has mods to moderate the posts that are made is "authoritarian"? Do you listen to yourself? It's not authoritarian to ensure a certain level of quality or level of discourse. And what's going on in these comments does not meet any reasonable bar.

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

#958

Post by JCharante »

BobJackienine wrote: post #926
JCharante wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid I got into Eve Online (an MMO) and started to learn to program front end by creating Eve related websites for in-game currency (yes the TOS allows it). My code got forked and I still see it being used. With the right game there is so much opportunity for growth in transferrable skills. It would have been hard to motivate myself to learn about databases, creating backend services, using SSO for login, rate li…

This reminds me of when I realized Diablo 3 could be completely automated after seeing a wow bot mining in action. Some of the bots I was running were playing better than humans on the top of the charts meanwhile my friends were spending their entire life trying to keep up with my bots.

Ah I had an older friend who ran EverQuest 2 bots and traded the rare item drops or something for money (rmt). He was poorer so it's how he afforded playing other games.

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

#959

Post by emadabdulrahim »

Instead of regulating played time of video games for kids, how improving education so it's actually engaging and entertaining to kids, then they won't feel like they have to escape their boring and dull childhood?

I'm obviously against that kind of regulation coming from the state.

I'm saying that and I was addicted to WoW during end of high school and college. But guess what? It was better than any alternative. My life sucked at home, at school, and personally. I lived in country where I was a misfit. I was lucky to have a fun outlet that also made me fluent in English and learn a few skills along the way.

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

#960

Post by trefsoftware »

JCharante wrote: post #393
swman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it really depends. I have way too many personal anecdotes of people I knew from back in the day (middle/high school) who gamed like 8 hours a day. Most of those people were _addicted_, and a handful went on to drop out of college and aren't really doing that great today. They still play 8+ hours a day.. I remember I'd ask them if they wanted to study, or if they want to go hiking or do something IRL, but they…

As a kid I got into Eve Online (an MMO) and started to learn to program front end by creating Eve related websites for in-game currency (yes the TOS allows it). My code got forked and I still see it being used. With the right game there is so much opportunity for growth in transferrable skills. It would have been hard to motivate myself to learn about databases, creating backend services, using SSO for login, rate li…

Yep, besides learning servers in Minecraft, I learned logic gates and very fundamental Computer Science concepts from Redstone when I was a kid. My parents were always good at regulating, but there were definitely weeks I'd play for hours.
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