[HN Gopher] China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for...
___________________________________________________________________
China has forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than
three hours/week
Author : extesy
Score : 763 points
Date : 2021-08-30 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| adotbacon wrote:
| 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 necessitates
| redesigning these games so that they're playable - at least
| segmenting China's user experience to retain interest. If this
| regulation can encourage developers to better respect gamers'
| time and resources, that's a win.
|
| On the other hand, games with longer matches like DotA2/League in
| their standard modes may run too long to squeeze into an hour. I
| don't think the experience in those games themselves disrespects
| the time of users, but the 50% win-rate matchmaking and dream of
| getting out of 'dumpster tier ELO' can be problematic. On a hot
| streak or a cold streak? "Let's play til we win/lose."
|
| Single-player games have less pressure and more ability to walk
| away at mostly anytime (especially these days with quick-save) so
| you're playing them more on your schedule rather than beholden to
| the game itself (really the people playing). Multiplayer creates
| a lot of replayability through the unique decisions other players
| are making.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/business/media/china-
| onli... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-sets-new-rules-
| for-youth-...
| [deleted]
| throwlejos wrote:
| I don't understand why there is such an outrage about this. I bet
| most of the HN crowd supports vaccine requirements to even buy
| groceries, always using the argument that is to protect everyone.
| Well the Chinese gov has determined that people being addicted to
| games is a threat to their society as a whole so they decided to
| restrict them. I'm sure you could even get some doctors to do
| publish some papers about how the games are really affecting
| these kids, that way you have the "Science" blessing.
| adenozine wrote:
| Conspiracy theory I just made up, don't take seriously:
|
| This is to control the demand for GPUs, as there is now such a
| drastically psychotic situation around the supply that a nation-
| state must now intervene to allocate cards for their AI projects.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Based
| wildwex wrote:
| The State should recognize that the responsibility begins with
| the Parents. If the State wants to promote a level of guidance
| that aligns with some common sense, then provide
| information/advice/recommendations to Parents on how to manage
| their children's growth. Mandates are a draconian move when
| you've lost control.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Mandates are a draconian move when you've lost control.
|
| Mandates are only enforceable if you have control in the first
| place, so your reasoning is backwards.
| CmdSheppard wrote:
| Glad I don't live in China
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| This is not about Kids gaming and it ruining their minds. This is
| about Chinas gaming kids playing games where people can
| talk/converse with/to them, and thus depart "information" without
| much official control.
| rexreed wrote:
| 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?
| mywittyname wrote:
| China is where the USA was 20-30 years ago. Had video games
| been as advanced in the 90s as they are today, the USA would
| have instituted similar policies back then. There was a huge
| crusade against gaming in the 90s, particularly when it came to
| children playing videogames.
|
| The USA benefits from having an older population who grew up
| playing videogames. Anyone under 40 probably played games at
| least a little bit growing up. And those under 30 almost
| certainly did, as games started becoming more broadly appealing
| in the PS2 era. So they view games in a much different way than
| their parents, who largely knew nothing about videogames did.
| hollerith wrote:
| The rates of rule breaking and law breaking are much higher in
| China than they are in the West.
|
| One of my goals if I were in charge of the Chinese government
| would be to get that rate down by making what rules and laws I
| introduce easy to enforce (and easy to understand and to follow).
|
| In particular, _if_ I were going to impose this kind of ban, I
| would 've made it apply to everyone, not just under-18s. Well,
| actually, I would've made 2 tiers of restrictions, the looser
| tier allowing more hours per week, so that if a boy escapes the
| stricter tier of restrictions (e.g., by signing in with the
| credentials of an adult in his life) he still has some limits on
| how much he can play.
| zepto wrote:
| > a boy
|
| Seems odd that you'd only apply this to boys.
| hollerith wrote:
| I'd apply it to girls, too.
|
| I was assuming (but do not want to defend the claim) that
| most of the children wanting to play more than the allowed
| amount of time will be boys.
| ahallock wrote:
| I get that China is authoritarian, so I'm not even going to argue
| about that, but even if you agree with the premise, three hours
| seems to be swinging too far in the other direction. Do they
| enforce the same rule with other entertainment? What about board
| games or MTG? And it's not like movies are much different, other
| than being passive. Actually, passive entertainment might be
| worse.
| runnr_az wrote:
| Presumably, a market for video game time will emerge...
| docmars wrote:
| This is an interesting policy to me.
|
| I spent a LOT of time gaming in my teen years, but my parents
| practically forced me to play outside with friends, ride my bike,
| be a part of a church youth group, and greatly encouraged my
| hobbies programming and designing software formally starting at
| age 8.
|
| I already had a pretty well-balanced life, and by this policy's
| standards, I would be "too addicted to gaming" and breaching its
| rules.
|
| Today I work a wonderful job in tech getting paid well, and by
| and large love my life.
|
| While in some ways, I can agree with the outcomes these policies
| are driving at, I can _never_ get behind a government enforcing
| these at the risk of penalizing a family or children for
| breaching it.
|
| Wars have been fought and won (rightfully) over the culmination
| of these types of far-reaching policies that seek to determine
| how an individual spends their recreational time outside of other
| obligations like school and work.
|
| It also sets a terrible precedent for controlling the amount of
| time an individual spends on any other activity. I fundamentally
| reject the reasoning behind viewing gaming as a potential
| addiction when any other recreational activity could be
| classified as such if one spends a great deal of time pursuing
| it, especially given that many games incorporate history; useful
| story tropes for understanding life, myth, and relationships; and
| for online games, the social bonds, management of
| guilds/clans/resources, and other portable skills that readily
| translate to corollary activities in a multitude of career
| fields.
|
| China really knows how to bum its citizens out on so many levels,
| and the fact that so many in Western cultures seek the cold-
| calculated utilitarian outcomes of policies like these for
| Western civilizations without considering the tangible,
| psychological, emotional, and cultural impacts (among others) on
| societies is absolutely appalling.
|
| Western civilizations didn't endure wars and literal genocide
| over freedom from authoritarian lawmaking (and taxation) only to
| have these freedoms challenged again and again by a select few
| who have the audacity, hubris, and arrogance to impose on them in
| the name of the better good. Fuck that.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is insane.
|
| There should be no debate about this, discussing the pros and
| cons of games and the potential for addiction.
|
| Well, this is China, at least this has the merit of clarifying
| their policies.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Ahah, my problem solving was so honed by 13 hr per week Starcraft
| in high school.
|
| My elders thought I should spend time doing normal things like
| watching TV instead.
|
| Hilariously out of touch.
| brundolf wrote:
| I wonder how Blizzard is feeling about throwing in with the CCP
| right about now
| zpeti wrote:
| They are probably too busy pretending to be activist and on the
| side of minorities in the western world, ie taking zero risks
| pretending to be virtuous.
|
| In the meantime the actual authoritarians who are persecuting
| religions and minorities are walking all over them and getting
| them to comply.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| I find it interesting how many companies "condemn
| mistreatment of minorities" in the US... then are silent on
| Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs.
|
| Where is Blizzards statement that Chinese abuse of Uyghurs is
| wrong? -- where are the protest banners and digital events?
| bArray wrote:
| > I wonder how Blizzard is feeling about throwing in with the
| CCP right about now
|
| I'm wondering how many foreign investors in the Chinese market
| are feeling right now. They were warned over and over again,
| and continued to invest with the promise of short-term gains.
| This exact lack of foresight caused the 2008 financial crisis
| and will continue to cause many other financial disasters in
| the future.
|
| A few good rules I've heard are 1) Don't invest in a Country
| that won't easily give you a visa, 2) Only invest in Countries
| that have stable and accountable governments (democracies), 3)
| Diversify to prevent a single point of failure.
|
| The same reason you cannot negotiate with the Taliban is the
| same reason you cannot reason with the CPP. You cannot reason
| with a state led purely by an ideology. Ultimately, push comes
| to shove, the ideology blindly comes first. If Capitalism fails
| at all but one thing, it's that it is able to admit it's own
| failures and adapt, even co-exist with other ideologies if
| allowed.
|
| Where does this leave the HN startup? Consider investing
| locally into people and systems you can trust and understand.
| As some of the largest and oldest companies know, stability can
| be better in the long-run at the cost of profit margins.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| They're having too much fun harassing employees to care.
| rolobio wrote:
| Probably having a hard time thinking straight with all the
| piles of money around them?
| brundolf wrote:
| Their massive, important new market for expansion just got a
| whole lot smaller
| rolobio wrote:
| This only effects children. Plenty of room to expand into
| adults, for now.
| blibble wrote:
| they've lost 50% of their users in 4 years
|
| and this was before the recent PR disaster
| jayd16 wrote:
| Probably has little to do with China.
| blibble wrote:
| which is why this decision will be such a blow
|
| they made the calculation that losing some percentage of
| their western markets to appease the CCP was worth it
|
| and now they're going to lose that too
|
| couldn't happen to a group of nicer people
| mbesto wrote:
| > they've lost 50% of their users in 4 years
|
| Blizzard maybe, but Blizzard is owned by ATVI and are still
| growing top line revenue QoQ:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/companies/ATVI.OQ/financials/income
| -...
|
| So, yes the company is technically still in "piles of cash"
| ($2.8B net cash from operations in 2020 for example).
| scruple wrote:
| Doesn't Tencent flat out own Riot? I'd be much more interested
| in understanding what they (Tencent) think of this.
| firebird84 wrote:
| No, they own a significant minority stake.
| dxhdr wrote:
| They acquired the entire company in 2015. You are probably
| thinking of Epic Games.
| laumars wrote:
| > _Gaming companies will be barred from providing services to
| minors in any form outside the stipulated hours and must ensure
| they have put real-name verification systems in place, said the
| regulator, which oversees the country 's video games market._
|
| This will almost certainly be extended beyond China because of
| the obvious data mining revenue and will almost certainly be a
| net loss for consumers globally.
| choeger wrote:
| We live in interesting times, indeed. All the devices we own now
| become bricks in the walls government wants to build around us.
| Make no mistake, China is just the first state to implement such
| a measure and video gaming is just the first use case.
|
| It's really obvious by now that more and more policies like this
| will be embedded into software. There are so many applications:
| Cars (how much, where, and how do you drive), TVs (what do you
| watch and when), personal assistants (what do you talk about with
| your children)...
| javajosh wrote:
| I think this rule only applies to "online gaming services",
| which is significantly less dystopian.
|
| But I agree with your larger point, and would argue that
| insofar as we no longer understand our tools' functioning then
| they can (and will) be used to control us.
| mproud wrote:
| I'd read kids can sign in with other IDs to get around this.
| lnyng wrote:
| Original notice from the government:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210830120201/http://www.nppa.g...
|
| Google translation of the first entry:
|
| > Strictly limit the time for providing online game services to
| minors. Since the implementation of this notice, all online game
| companies can only provide minors with one-hour online game
| services from 20 to 21:00 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and legal
| holidays. At other times, it is not allowed to provide online
| game services to minors in any form.
| lostmsu wrote:
| This will not work well for people with multiple kids.
|
| Also, imagine influx of games for services to handle.
| kaibee wrote:
| > This will not work well for people with multiple kids.
|
| Ah, fortunately they planned for that way ahead of time.
| teitoklien wrote:
| Damn
| TooKool4This wrote:
| I wonder if this will encourage a renaissance in China of LAN
| play, more P2P protocols for online gaming, and informal game
| servers run by people you know (rather than the game
| publisher).
|
| Sounds like it could be kinda fun (nostalgia for me)
| hjek wrote:
| So it's not just 3 hours per week, _it 's three specific hours
| a week_, but also only for online games services. It's
| interesting that the law covers the _service_ , not the
| _client_.
|
| Now, I wonder what qualifies as an _online game service_. If I
| play correspondence chess over email, would the email host be
| running an online game service? If someone modifies the Battle
| of Wesnoth network code to run over IRC messages, would the IRC
| host be running an online game service? (What about
| decentralized network game protocols?)
|
| Lots of legal grey areas to explore, like with Phil Zimmerman
| putting the PGP code in bookform. I'm sure you could find a way
| to game online without relying on an online game service.
| lnyng wrote:
| I believe this all comes down to enforcement, which is grey
| in the first place. It also matters if the game got
| (maliciously) reported to enforcement agents.
| sushid wrote:
| This is a such a classic HN comment:
|
| 1. Law does x 2. HN commenter: what about x+y? what about
| x-1?
|
| The answer to your decentralized chess is that no one would
| care if it broke the rules or not unless millions of people
| were hopelessly addicted to it and it warranted a second
| look.
|
| Your average Zoomer is not interested in decentralized chess
| or any other gaming service that requires only an
| intermittent internet connection. I can see local network
| mobile MOBAs becoming a thing but I'm sure workarounds like
| that would be eventually squashed as well.
| hjek wrote:
| > This is a such a classic HN comment:
|
| Thanks!
|
| > The answer to your decentralized chess is that no one
| would care if it broke the rules or not unless millions of
| people were hopelessly addicted to it and it warranted a
| second look.
|
| Ok, so you'd have a online gaming vacuum for _all <18 gamer
| kids of China_. Don't you think someone would make a game
| or two run over IRC (or SMTP some other protocol) if it
| meant capturing that entire market? Then it _would_ be
| millions; and then perhaps authorities _would_ care _, and
| then perhaps herpaps an IRC server_ could* be "an online
| gaming platform", which would be interesting and peculiar
| legally, is what I'm saying.
|
| (What really distinguishes / categorizes something as a
| game network protocol as distinct from written human
| language, legally..?)
| nearbuy wrote:
| I'm pretty sure if this policy got kids to play chess or
| Go over IRC, instead of games like League of Legends, the
| government would call it a big success and pat themselves
| on the back.
| eunos wrote:
| Yes the target should violations occur is game company. Not
| the parents, or youths.
| moulei wrote:
| It seems that "online games" include all games can download
| from the Internet, whether they have a multiplayer component
| or not. Steam China also includes an "anti-addiction" system,
| even though the vast majority of games on there are solo
| game. https://m.jiemian.com/article/4445107_yidian.html
| beaunative wrote:
| The regulation, technically not a law, is meant for companies
| in the video game industry. If you went length to circumvent
| the online game definition, no one cares, but if a corporate
| does that, it would sure trigger investigation.
|
| * Hell, you don't even need to circumvent the defintion if
| you can get around it technically.
| azernik wrote:
| It's impossible to regulate clients - there are too many of
| them, and they're under direct physical control of minors who
| are opposed to the regs.
|
| In this as in many things, big central institutions are much
| easier for a state to work with.
| mlillie wrote:
| Is the original article not a major journalistic misstep then?
| Nowhere does it clarify that this only applies to online
| gaming.
| moulei wrote:
| I found some government documents to support my view that all
| games available on the Internet are "online games" in the
| eyes of the Chinese government
|
| http://www.gov.cn/flfg/2010-06/22/content_1633935.htm
|
| translated form deepl: "The online game referred to in this
| method refers to the software program and information data
| composition, through the Internet, mobile communication
| networks and other information networks to provide game
| products and services.
|
| Online game online operation refers to the business behavior
| of providing game products and services to the public through
| information networks using user systems or fee-based systems.
|
| Online game virtual currency refers to the virtual exchange
| tool issued by online game operation unit and purchased
| directly or indirectly by online game users using legal
| tender in a certain proportion, existing outside the game
| program, stored in the server in the form of electromagnetic
| records and expressed in specific digital units."
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well no, that doesn't follow such an interpretation.
|
| You only provide a single player offline game once. And you
| don't provide any service over information networks outside
| of the download and updates.
| lnyng wrote:
| I wonder if the journey article author didn't think online
| game differs much with general games.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yes, it's a very major mistake.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| 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 Warcraft. It became a
| habit to simply click the icon as soon as the desktop loaded, and
| although I do have many good memories, I also know friends that
| played 8 hours a day for years whose lives look worse off to me.
| Through loot-boxes, social scores, and now mobile, addiction has
| been perfected.
|
| And yet, we are not robots. We make our own choices. Parents set
| limits and create alternatives, and schools and community groups
| do too. Games also simply get old after a while. Anyone who
| really wants to stop a gaming addiction can stop it - it is only
| a question of will. So I find what the CCP is doing abhorrently
| wrong because their actions create the very dependence on
| government, and the removal of will at any other level, that
| perpetuates themselves as a solution. The Western way is messier
| for sure, but if we want freedom, we have to be OK with mistakes.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > 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.
| hjek wrote:
| > 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 addictive in
| its immersiveness and the game mechanics rely a lot on
| assaulting baddies.
|
| > The first game I remember being extremely addicting was World
| of Warcraft. It became a habit to simply click the icon as soon
| as the desktop loaded,
|
| This is interesting to read, that you as a ex-gameaholic
| disagree with this law. I wonder whether it could really be
| _the forces that are moving game development_ (as in money, as
| in capitalism) that are the real problem because they profit
| from creating addiction, rather than computer games as such.
| One can only wonder what computer games would look like in a
| world not dominated by neoliberalism, and whether a healthier
| game development model is possible?
|
| I am reminded of this longer comment that was removed from the
| Godot source code recently:
|
| > _A capitalist oligarchy runs the world and forces us to
| consume in order to keep the gears of this rotten society on
| track. As such, the biggest market for video game consumption
| today is the mobile one. It is a market of poor souls forced to
| compulsively consume digital content in order to forget the
| misery of their everyday life, commute, or just any other brief
| free moment they have that they are not using to produce goods
| or services for the ruling class._
|
| From https://github.com/godotengine/godot-
| docs/commit/b872229427d...
| pitaj wrote:
| 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.
| honkycat wrote:
| I have family and friends who work in the game industry,
| and I can tell you it is none of the above.
|
| Here is the answer: Crappy gatcha games and skinner boxes
| branded with a popular IP marketed towards kids are:
|
| 1. Much easier to make
|
| 2. Makes A TON MORE MONEY.
|
| A gatcha game is basically a slot machine, which is
| basically a website with a fancy front-end. This means you
| can shovel out these games with low-skill labor, make your
| money, and then re-skin the same website with another
| property.
|
| A lot of the gaming companies that used to be owned by a
| visionary leader are now owned by VC firms that don't give
| a shit about games, they give a shit about the money
| machine.
|
| So they produce the same crap over and over again,
| employing behavioral psychologists to develop the most
| addicting loop possible.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Games are more expensive to make and prices have not kept
| up with inflation, but units sold are at least two orders
| of magnitude than they were twenty years ago, and
| individual free-to-play titles have playercounts that dwarf
| the total userbase of all games at the turn of the
| millennium.
|
| Multiplayer does not require constant funding, unless you
| want to lock the game down so you can sell
| microtransactions. I can fire up the original Quake or
| UT99, pick a server, and play online; it doesn't cost id a
| cent. On the other hand, I recently tried playing Splinter
| Cell: Blacklist again, a game released in 2013, and their
| centralized online services don't work.
|
| Developers have made an effort to keep players from hosting
| their own servers, which has introducing many new problems.
| For example, the lack of community moderation / 'toxicity',
| homogenization of gameplay options within a title to
| support a matchmaking pool, and stagnation due to lack of
| new maps, modes, and mods that used to be created by the
| community.
| highfreq wrote:
| I wonder how well their internet infrastructure and game servers
| will handle the enormous spike in traffic 8pm - 9pm Fri, Sat, and
| Sun.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's interesting how they are only restricting online games.
|
| Games where young frustrated [0] [1] Chinese teenagers could talk
| relatively freely with others from different regions of China. Or
| god forbid, learn English and have contacts with westerners.
| Better to keep them grinding on shaving a few tenth of a second
| on basic algebra problems for the Gaokao. That will better
| prepare them for the factories.
|
| [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-
| many-...
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-
| china-o...
| DantesKite wrote:
| What do you think about the government banning alcohol?
| sadgrip wrote:
| If you and I sat next to each other. You with an online game
| in front of you and me with a few handles of vodka and we
| both started playing and drinking without stopping I would
| likely be dead before you reached Chinas mandated time limit.
| I thought it was obvious that the risks between these two
| things are very different.
| pknerd wrote:
| Seeing how people dying playing games like PUBG. I'd like my
| government also implement this. Though I don't know how could it
| be implemented. Must be at ISP level.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Sadly when I hear news like this my first reaction is wondering
| when it's coming to the US :-(
| KoftaBob wrote:
| That's a pretty misguided reaction, considering there's no
| legal mechanism for this to be enforced in the US.
|
| Do you think the US gov is going to propose requiring all
| gamers to provide a real ID to prove age, and people will just
| be ok with that? No way in hell.
| mrfusion wrote:
| We did lockdowns which were previously unimaginable in a free
| society.
|
| I don't take anything for granted these days.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Do you feel the same restrictions should be put in place for
| social media, TV, and non-educational books as well?
| mrfusion wrote:
| I feel like you're agreeing with me?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Not at all, just curious if you're consistent. Maybe we
| should ban listening to "harmful" music? Hell, let's ban
| playing instruments all together. Unless you're playing
| Christian rock of course.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'm against all restrictions. I guess my comment was
| confusing?
|
| We could agree to disagree on whether we agree. Lol.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Sorry, I've worked with so many puritans that I assumed
| you were expressing their sentiment. Yes I agree with
| never adding restrictions on media.
| Shish2k wrote:
| I'm very confused because to me it doesn't look like
| either of you have expressed an opinion, so what are you
| claiming to agree or disagree with?
|
| (eg "When is this coming to the US?" looks to me like a
| neutral question, neither for nor against the policy)
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Like with Bitcoin regulation, good luck to the governments with
| enforcement.
| kreetx wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but unlike bitcoin many of these games
| are played online in a centralized way, so China could even
| forward these regulations to these online services so they
| could enforce them themselves (if they want to continue being
| legally available).
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Didn't China successfully shut down a bunch of miners recently?
| brundolf wrote:
| All game companies operating in China, software and hardware,
| have to go through the CCP. They could definitely force
| companies to add software timers that automatically shut games
| down when a time limit is reached.
| cracell wrote:
| Sure but this is like DRM. You just create an arms war.
|
| Underage users would find ways to appear to be 18 or older.
| Or use multiple accounts to continue playing. This is already
| common in many grind games. You have support accounts that
| feed the main account items.
|
| Or just straight up hacking the timer system. Or playing
| games published outside if China.
|
| Where there's a will, there's a way.
| brundolf wrote:
| Remember we're talking about a totalitarian regime, where
| using real IDs for digital accounts is already a thing.
| Where importing unapproved foreign media is (presumably)
| banned. Where you can't so much as get a VPN without
| permission.
|
| I'm sure some people will find ways around it, but I don't
| think that will be the norm.
| Gunax wrote:
| I dont see it working any differently than piracy. If
| people can hack the bytecode to appear as though the game
| has received a valid key, I dont see why they cannot do
| the same for these restrictions.
| brundolf wrote:
| And the code or techniques for doing so will get scrubbed
| from the internet. Individuals may independently figure
| it out, but they'll be a drop in the bucket.
| oromo wrote:
| Online games in China already require players to sign up with
| their identification cards. Hope that helps.
| esjeon wrote:
| It's actually quite easy. Roast _game companies_ to integrate
| the national-wide timekeeping service into their games. AFAIK,
| this is what Korea had been doing, but the policy recently got
| called off.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Requiring state id to access any game is fairly easy to
| implement in a country like China. If you don't provide one
| that's over 18, you're by default forced into restrictions.
| lhorie wrote:
| For those comparing to western standards, note that this is just
| an increase on existing regulation. According to wikipedia[0],
| China has had regulation limiting underage video game play time
| from as early as 2005, meaning that most children there have
| never actually lived in times when underage unrestricted play was
| allowed. So in terms of "voice", this is akin to parents deciding
| what's good for children, except on a national scale.
|
| > China has sought to deal with addiction to video games by its
| youth by enacting regulations to be implemented by video game
| publishers aimed to limit consecutive play time particularly for
| children. As early as 2005 China's Ministry of Culture has
| enacted several public health efforts to address gaming and
| internet related disorders. One of the first systems required by
| the government was launched in 2005 to regulate adolescents'
| Internet use, including limiting daily gaming time to 3 hours and
| requiring users' identification in online video games. In 2007,
| an "Online Game Anti-Addiction System" was implemented for
| minors, restricting their use to 3 hours or less per day. The
| ministry also proposed a "Comprehensive Prevention Program Plan
| for Minors' Online Gaming Addiction" in 2013, to promulgate
| research, particularly on diagnostic methods and interventions.
| China's Ministry of Education in 2018 announced that new
| regulations would be introduced to further limit the amount of
| time spent by minors in online games. While these regulations
| were not immediately binding, most large Chinese publishers took
| steps to implement the required features. For example, Tencent
| restricted the amount of time that children could spend playing
| one of its online games, to one hour per day for children 12 and
| under, and two hours per day for children aged 13-18. This is
| facilitated by tracking players via their state-issued
| identification numbers. This has put some pressure on Western
| companies that publish via partners in China on how to apply
| these new anti-addiction requirements into their games, as
| outside of China, tracking younger players frequently raises
| privacy concerns. Specialized versions of games, developed by the
| Chinese partner, have been made to meet these requirements
| without affecting the rest of the world; Riot Games let its
| China-based studio implement the requirements into League of
| Legends for specialized release in China.
|
| > A new law enacted in November 2019 limits children under 18 to
| less than 90 minutes of playing video games on weekdays and three
| hours on weekends, with no video game playing allowed between 10
| p.m. to 8 a.m. These are set by requiring game publishers to
| enforce these limits based on user logins. Additionally, the law
| limits how much any player can spend on microtransactions,
| ranging from about $28 to $57 per month depending on the age of
| the player.[126] In September 2020, the government implemented
| its own name-based authentication system to be made available to
| all companies to uphold these laws.[1]
|
| So China is quite serious about it, even going as far as tying
| playtime to their national id system (which westerners are
| probably going to balk at), and imposing limits to micro-
| transactions for underage players (which, I think, is actually a
| good thing). It's interesting that eyesight issues are also
| brought up as a rationale (especially considering the school
| cramming culture there). Kind of a mixed bag IMHO, but alas,
| what'd you expect from mass-implemented regulations?
|
| [0][1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China#Governmen....
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| And as always, kids will find a way to circumvent restrictions
| no matter how the state will try to enforce. South Korea is a
| prime example of this - they had a law starting from 2011 where
| kids can't play online games after midnight. After the
| enactment of the law kids began to use other people's IDs
| (parents, older friends, ...) either by persuation or resorting
| to more "sneaky" methods, making the whole thing kinda
| pointless. The law was eventually abolished a few days ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_law
| m0zg wrote:
| China, apparently, does not know any 18 year olds. I'm sure
| they'll all voluntarily comply, no problem. /s
| detaro wrote:
| Rules for how online gaming companies can offer their service
| is kind of the opposite of expecting users to comply
| voluntarily with restrictions on online gaming?
| m0zg wrote:
| There are also self-hosted, and offline games. Shit, my 17 yo
| plays until 4 in the morning somehow even though his internet
| turns off at 10pm and his phone has no data plan.
| detaro wrote:
| So your point is that people won't follow regulation
| targeting online games, by playing not-online games?
| m0zg wrote:
| My point is that if "playing games" for days on end is a
| concern, this does next to nothing to fix that. In fact,
| I'm not even sure there is a fix per se. As a parent, I
| think this is a big problem. Literally an entire
| generation of young men and women are wasting entire days
| on their YouTube/TikTok/computer games addiction (often
| all three) and neither learning nor doing anything
| worthwhile with their lives. That bill will come due in
| the form of poverty, crime, substance abuse, and death
| 10-20 years from now, when these folks see that they
| can't get paid for watching youtube all day. At least not
| reliably. Kudos to the Chinese for seeing a little bit
| ahead of everyone else, even if their "solution" is
| nothing of the sort.
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| The dismissive attitude commenters have in this thread towards
| the personal freedom aspect here is concerning.
|
| Though, maybe when discussing China it seems like beating a dead
| horse to some...
| criloz2 wrote:
| Most people don't really appreciate the thing that they have
| until the day that they lost it. That why human history
| cyclical
| rexreed wrote:
| As a side note, this is more evidence that we're about to see the
| pendulum swing back towards decentralized IT systems. Social
| media, megatech companies, censorship, and privacy issues are
| taking some of the shine off highly centralized systems, and we
| might see a renaissance of offline, sometimes-connected,
| distributed, privacy-oriented systems.
| oxymoran wrote:
| This is the thing that is going to spur a backlash against the
| CCP in China. Or at least it should. Minors are the perfect
| protesters: are you going to jail, beat, or kill them? The
| international backlash would be incredible.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| Yes. Taking away entertainment from the youth so they have to
| find something else to fill their time with. What could
| possibly go wrong.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Feels like you know very little about this issue.
|
| China has huge problems with addictive mobile games. All those
| IAPs you hate in games and loot boxes, etc are rampant in games
| popular in China.
|
| Moreover, many parents around the world are starting to limit
| the screen time of their kids out of fear. It is a common
| parenting tactic of famous tech CEOs. The CCP will be seen as
| caring about kids and helping to parent them.
|
| Kids are not going to protest this and their parents are going
| to happy with the result. Kids who really care will find a way
| around the restriction. Tencent and related stocks will slip
| for a few weeks then climb back up again
| zetazzed wrote:
| When I was a kid, I learned a tremendous amount from playing
| complex games like SimCity, Civilization, and Ultima. I feel like
| they opened my horizons to feel empowered to do interesting and
| meaningful things in the world, and they basically substituted
| for time I would've spent with GI Joe.
|
| Now, as an adult, when I do game, it substitutes for time I
| would've spent exercising, working on coding/ML side projects, or
| hanging out with the family. Hence, I'd like to flip this policy
| - please cap me at 3 hours a week but allow my kids to play!
| thekingofravens wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. In high school and grade school, nothing
| mattered really, so games were just fun. However, I noticed
| there came a time recently when myself and all my friends had
| to choose between video games and failing college (or not going
| to college). Almost everyone I knew well enough to keep tabs on
| post high school chose video games. A total of 9 people and
| only 2 (myself included) were able to get gaming under control
| enough to make it. The others had their ambition sucked away by
| video games, and are starting to seriously regret their lives
| now.
|
| So while I think their approach is far too extreme, I can
| understand why they would be very concerned about video games.
| dharmab wrote:
| This policy is for online games. All of the games you listed
| would not be subject to it.
| stoned wrote:
| Everyone's experience is different. My conclusion has been that
| I didn't learn anything from gaming as a child. I wish my
| parents had done a better job (they did try) steering me from
| gaming into pursuits I belive (emphasis on _I_ ) promote
| greater intellectual, emotional and social development than
| gaming.
| turbohz wrote:
| This is because not all videogames are equal and, of course,
| not all people are equal.
|
| Even among online games, there's a huge variety of
| experiences available.
|
| I'm not against regulation, just not overbroad.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I wonder why China feels so afraid of games.
| Kranar wrote:
| They see the effects that gaming has on children in neighboring
| countries, Japan and Korea, to the point that WHO added "Gaming
| disorder" as a disease and considers the addictive properties
| of video games, as well as monetization of that addiction to be
| a growing concern.
|
| For various reasons, the issue is not nearly as prevalent in
| the U.S. or Europe but it's a pretty big issue across Asia.
|
| Is this the right way to curb it? Absolutely not, the
| government should look to find the root causes of the
| addiction, mostly social in nature, and promote healthy
| alternatives, but like most things the government is more
| interest in easy and short term solutions.
| saxonww wrote:
| Most of the answers here are about games being addictive and a
| time waste, but what about communication? I actually have no
| idea about this - is in-game communication in e.g. fortnite
| able to be monitored?
|
| If not, and if the CCP is as interested in controlling
| discussion as people in the West think they are, online games
| are a problem. Youth are supposed to be more impressionable and
| easily influenced. So, the CCP may just be trying to limit
| competition.
| devit wrote:
| They are addictive and conditioning and thus compete with the
| social conditioning from the Chinese government.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| With that logic you'd expect the Chinese government to force
| the gaming companies to do the conditioning for them...
|
| Addiction to Online/PC Gaming is a real problem in China.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Same reason why they downgraded a lot of 2nd tier colleges to
| 'vocational' colleges: to increase the number of people they
| can put in a factory to work high pace, low pay slave jobs.
| This looks to be a shot at the laying flat kids who don't want
| to be taken advantage of, so they are removing the
| entertainment being relied on for something to do. Kids don't
| want to die for the party, they've seen nothing comes out of
| it, so they just passively resist.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > Same reason why they downgraded a lot of 2nd tier colleges
| to 'vocational' colleges: to increase the number of people
| they can put in a factory to work high pace, low pay slave
| jobs.
|
| 996 white colar jobs are not high pace low paying slave
| jobs?...
|
| And how many such jobs are there anyway...
| pototo666 wrote:
| Parents hate games. The governament is ran by parents. That's
| why.
| smt88 wrote:
| If you want to be _the_ global superpower and also keep your
| strangehold on society, you don 't want children spending a lot
| of time on games.
|
| You want them to learn social skills (for future reproductive
| success), study math/science, etc.
|
| The US brain-drained the entire world for more 100 years, and
| the CCP likely sees efforts like this as a way to catch up.
|
| I disagree -- I think you become as powerful as the US by being
| the best place for smart people to move to, not by forcing your
| populous into a predetermined mold -- but they're never going
| to be the attractive bastion of freedom that the US was
| perceived as.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Trying to look at from their point of view and in good faith,
| excessive childhood gaming seem to be causing problems for some
| people like stunting their personal and intellectual
| development. China seems to be taking a stance that their
| citizens are a human resource for their country, and excessive
| gaming is hurting their asset.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > like stunting their personal and intellectual development
|
| This. And social development. What are the implications of
| having all of your friends online and never met them in real
| life?
| shadofx wrote:
| Lower likelihood of Covid, for one
| mkoryak wrote:
| What else?
|
| I can think of a dozen negatives
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I wish I knew. I mean, no sex?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I really do wish we could have a better discussion about
| this - not this thread, or even this submission, but in
| general.
|
| It's interesting how gaming addiction is on the fast
| track for a formal disorder diagnosis
| (https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-
| gaming,
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5700715/).
| When I look at Candy Crush - just to pick on one - and
| other "gamified" (ie optimized for addiction) cases they
| seem to have a lot more negatives, particularly for
| groups with still-developing prefrontal cortexes. I
| really worry about the developmental impact of modern
| gaming and social media. I have increasingly seen kids
| that are just not well attached to reality in ways that
| are detrimental to them, going on several years now.
|
| It feels bad to pick on escapism when the world is such a
| mess, but, just like the similarly increasing drug
| problems (particularly in opiates) it is only making the
| situation worse.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's part of the recent big pro-fertility drive (same as
| banning 996 work-weeks).
|
| They want kids to engage with work and, well, each other, to
| raise families, rather than having purely digital lives.
| bserge wrote:
| Most of them are addicting time wasting shit. Especially mobile
| games, good God.
|
| Show me a mobile game that has a good story, little grind,
| works offline and sells for ~$60 with no in-game purchases.
|
| Phones are as capable as a PS3/PS4 these days, too.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| Monument valley 1 & 2.
| floatboth wrote:
| GTA San Andreas is a mobile game now. Matches all criteria
| except it's cheaper :D
| clarle wrote:
| I feel like this might unexpectedly have a good side for
| consumers.
|
| The ban applies to the service, not the client. Could we have
| another Renaissance of local gaming again? More games allowing
| LAN-based play in response to minors not being able to regularly
| access a centralized server.
| beloch wrote:
| >Previously, China had limited the length of time under-18s could
| play video games to 1.5 hours on any day and three hours on
| holidays under 2019 rules.
|
| How effective/strict has enforcement of the previously existing
| time limits been?
|
| If time limits haven't been hard to circumvent or punishments for
| doing so severe, most kids would have routinely flouted the
| rules. Video games are quite the carrot.
|
| It would be interesting if, by feebly enforcing these time
| limits, a totalitarian government would willingly commit the
| blunder of passing a law that trains children to disobey the
| state.
| [deleted]
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is barely credible as the pitch for an episode of Black
| Mirror.
| FpUser wrote:
| I think I am on board with this decision unless said the game is
| actually educational. Otherwise we have some students spending
| all the time shooting monsters and having bad health and lots of
| other problems as a result.
| Animats wrote:
| The official announcement is more useful.[1] Google Translate
| does a decent job on this.
|
| Some of these restrictions have been in place for a few years.
| The number of allowed hours are being reduced, and the technical
| standards for enforcement are being strengthened. A key part of
| this is "real name verification". That's been around in theory
| for years, but was not that effective. A tougher standard was
| introduced in September 2020.[2] Tencent and NetEase, the big
| game companies in China, already have it working. Some of it uses
| the national identity card, and some of it uses face recognition.
| Identity cards are only issued at age 16, so verifying kids is
| hard. There's a slow but steady tightening up on ID in China
| that's been underway for decades.
|
| There's been a purge of unapproved online games. The Apple app
| store cooperated last year and deleted about 500 games.
| Unauthorized game publishers are being shut down.
|
| [1] http://www.news.cn/2021-08/30/c_1127809919.htm
|
| [2] https://www.scmp.com/abacus/games/article/3095509/chinas-
| rea...
| javajosh wrote:
| The restriction is specifically "online games". Not offline
| games. Which is interesting because it implies that offline games
| are somehow less addictive - but in my experience, offline games
| can be very engaging, too. But perhaps it's in a more wholesome,
| problem-solving way?
|
| It's kinda impressive that the CCP can make decisions that affect
| 1B+ humans like this, overnight. I hope it's the right thing to
| do, for the kids' sake.
| azernik wrote:
| "Online games" only for two reasons:
|
| 1. Online games are easier to restrict. Centralized servers,
| corporations with addresses and bank accounts, &c
|
| 2. Online games are a political threat. The Chinese government
| worries not just about "political" organizing, but about any
| movement or activity that gets people in the habit of
| collective action and mass communication.
| fallmonkey wrote:
| Yet you might be surprised to know that, in China, all those
| "offline games" are categorized as online games because they
| all can be distributed online, when it comes to import reviews.
| No game is safe from this, really.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No, that's incorrect. The service of hosting a game for
| people to download is an online games service. The game
| itself if it has no access to any network is not.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is a different incentive. For an offline single player or
| LAN game, you want to make the game interesting to play enough
| that the player will buy the game.
|
| For an online game or a microtx based semi single player game,
| you want the player not to play, but to pay, over and over.
| That means that engineering addiction that leads to nothing but
| payment and compulsion is very profitable.
|
| Offline games can definitely be very addicting and engaging.
| But ime those that are are because you're trying very hard to
| do something difficult, or because you're exploring, or because
| you're creating, all of which are ways in which video games can
| plausibly be helpful. And you will eventually get bored or move
| on to another game, which will give you time and pause to
| reconsider what you're doing.
|
| Meanwhile you could be grinding an online video game doing
| menial tasks and buying microtransactions without ever having
| an end goal in mind and without being creative, for over a
| decade, every day.
|
| So I think they're very different.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| i find it amazing how much tolerance is expressed when
| authoritarian rule is passed "for the kids sake".
|
| I feel reminded of the current apple issue.
|
| Are people really that ready to accept dictate over their and
| their kids behaviour in the name of moral and health? Isn't
| "time spent online" miles away from what the government should
| be allowed to regulate in your life?
| javajosh wrote:
| Impressive doesn't mean good. I don't have any control over
| what the CCP does, which is why I hope the action they've
| taken will not hurt people.
|
| If the CCP decided to ban smoking, it would be a violation of
| people's rights. But it would also be a net benefit to almost
| everyone, and to society (health care costs would go down).
| That kind of authoritarianism is a LOT easier to stomach
| than, say, putting the Uygars into concentration camps. At
| least to me. (Singapore is an example of what I would call a
| mostly-benevolent authoritarian regime, for example.)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If the CCP decided to ban smoking, it would be a
| violation of people's rights. But it would also be a net
| benefit to almost everyone, and to society
|
| I think you are conflating "banning" with "convincing
| people to stop"; these are not the same. The PRC has banned
| lots of things without actually stopping them, and lots of
| countries have banned lots of addictive drugs without
| stopping their use, and with a whole lot of social harms
| resulting from the attempts to enforce the bans.
|
| > health care costs would go down
|
| Health care outcomes would no doubt improve if smoking was
| reduced by a ban, but healthcare _costs_ would probably go
| up. IIRC, most studies have shown that reducing smoking
| increases lifetime healthcare costs (because, simplifying,
| people spend more time dealing with treatable problems
| instead of dead from incurable lung cancer.)
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| If you know anything about the Opium problem in China during
| the Qing Dynasty, China doesn't take to kindly to that kind
| of stuff. This time they're not executing people in the
| streets though.
|
| Videogames are extraordinarily addictive. They should
| absolutely be limited for kids.
| SolarNet wrote:
| > i find it amazing how much tolerance is expressed when
| authoritarian rule is passed "for the kids sake".
|
| > Are people really that ready to accept dictate over their
| and their kids behaviour in the name of moral and health?
|
| To be clear, most commentators here are probably from outside
| China. There isn't anything anyone commentating here can do
| about this. So all we can really commentate is on the
| outcomes and what it might mean.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| >> Isn't "time spent online" miles away from what the
| government should be allowed to regulate in your life?
|
| For anyone who can think for themselves it is, but the CCP
| has crippled its population's ability to think independently
| with their constant, forced propaganda. This brainwashing is
| a form of violence against its people and I hope they rise up
| someday, but I don't know how that could happen.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's a great narrative, but then how do you explain all the
| 'think of the children' laws passed in other countries
| including the US?
| Aperocky wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of a joke.
|
| ---
|
| A high level official from China's propaganda department
| visits the CNN, and asks to learn the state of the art in
| propaganda.
|
| Bemused, CNN receptionist replies: we are living in a free
| country, there are no propaganda here.
|
| CCP official: That's exactly what I'm trying to learn!
| rflec028 wrote:
| Tight.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| It's easy to make decisions for that many people when you're an
| oppressive dictatorship that just murders dissidents.
| floatboth wrote:
| Well, offline games can't be real-money lootbox casinos, at
| least if we're talking truly offline.
| ezekg wrote:
| inb4 all 'offline' games in China start to sync 3 times a
| week (for unrelated reasons)
| bradford wrote:
| both online/offline games can skew your internal
| reward/reinforcement system, but online games have a kind of
| social pressure that I just don't see with offline.
|
| Social circles are established around online gaming; my
| teenager feels like he's letting his friends down if he doesn't
| spend enough time with 'The Clan'. His 'membership' with the
| group is at risk if he doesn't contribute his time.
|
| It's made life somewhat difficult as a parent, to say the
| least.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >>Social circles are established around online gaming; my
| teenager feels like he's letting his friends down if he
| doesn't spend enough time with 'The Clan'. His 'membership'
| with the group is at risk if he doesn't contribute his time.
|
| Social circles are established around a common interest. Most
| people have to have some shared interest in order to be
| friends. I don't know how your son would socialize if he
| didn't have something in common with his social milieu. If
| your son was born at an earlier time, he would have to
| contend with the demonization of skateboarding, calling your
| friends over the landline, D&D, rock& roll, dance halls,
| chess, cafes, channel surfing, and any other thing "geeks",
| "hooligans", "layabouts", and other so-called non-conformists
| enjoyed when these hobbies were deemed the social malaise of
| their day. I can't speak for your circumstances in
| particular, but this argument of the "wrong" social circles
| enjoying the "wrong" hobbies strikes me as the kind of pearl-
| clutching I thought would have died with those farcical
| accusations of Harry Potter promoting witchcraft and covens
| back in the early 2000s.
| bradford wrote:
| There's an obvious pattern where every generation has had
| their activities scrutinized (and often feared) by the
| parent generation, and the scrutiny/fear is usually not
| justifiable.
|
| That said, a pattern is a pattern until it isn't, and I
| think it's fair to ask what criteria you'd use to evaluate
| the cost/benefit of some activity on a cohort of
| individuals that lack a fully developed frontal lobe.
|
| Some questions going through my mind as I've witnessed my
| children during quarantine:
|
| 1. Does the activity negatively impact the individuals
| ability to satisfy other obligations (academic, fiscal,
| personal-care, etc)?
|
| 2. Does the activity require only a shared interest, or is
| active participation required? if the latter, what's the
| time demand of the participation?
|
| 3. If the individual ceases the activity, will they
| maintain relationships with the individuals they
| participated with?
|
| 4. Can proficiency in the activity translate to other
| endeavors?
|
| 5. does the idea of taking a break from the activity cause
| anxiety or stress?
|
| I let my kids play the games because I want them to have
| some autonomy, but online games _in particular_ result in
| greater negative answers for these questions than other
| activities (including offline games).
|
| Curious about your observations... do you find there's no
| difference between online vs. offline?
| [deleted]
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Good luck enforcing this...
| 2snakes wrote:
| Some very famous prodigies made a 'game' out of their field.
| Terence Tao for example, said he used to make a game out of
| mathematical solutions. And that he knows more about math after
| graduate school than before or during.
|
| My personal experience in this was with a imaginative text-based
| game called a MUD. There were times when I was spending 20-50+
| hours a week role-playing and player-killing with a group of
| friends. I very nearly flunked out of a full-tuition scholarship
| my freshman year, and left anyway because it wasn't fulfilling to
| me - I wanted to be a sysadmin, not study liberal arts. In HS it
| was fun using a PoE adapter to POTS for Internet access.
|
| The things I took away from excessive gaming were "saying the
| right words to convince other people I have their best interests
| at heart" (RP for player-run cabals) and "speed reading skimming"
| "fast-twitch typing" and "writing conversationally."
|
| I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble financially
| and academically and emotionally without these 'second lives' but
| I did see some positive outcomes. Real Life is usually a richer
| experience socially/experientially... except when it comes to
| playing make-believe... how much of the intersubjectivity
| superstructure (sociologically) isn't make-believe...? Perhaps,
| perhaps.
| compactdisk wrote:
| > The things I took away from excessive gaming were "saying the
| right words to convince other people I have their best
| interests at heart" (RP for player-run cabals) and "speed
| reading skimming" "fast-twitch typing" and "writing
| conversationally."
|
| This is extremely relatable. I grew up playing Runescape and I
| legitimately think it helped me develop better rhetorical
| skills than my peers and just better instincts in general when
| it comes to social and economical things.
|
| Don't get me wrong though, those thousands of hours spent on
| video games were still not worth it. And I also don't think
| it's desirable to be too instinctive and "twitchy".
| Karunamon wrote:
| This probably eliminates China as a serious esports region going
| forward. You can't even go anywhere near professional play
| without a lot of time and effort, and 3 hours a week simply isn't
| enough to even get into scouting range.
| Seanambers wrote:
| Looking back at all the hours that I spent in
| Q1/Q2/Q3/BF2/BF3/BF4/CS/CSS/CSGO.
|
| Yeah, maybe I could've used that time better - But none of my
| friends did anything reasonable with that time and I don't think
| I am any more special than them.
|
| Still do the occasional session, still love the FPS!
|
| I find the reckless timewasting on social media, reddit, much
| more harmful in comparison.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Kids will just sink time in old games / old emulators. I had a
| phase playing gamse on TI83 growing up. The silver lining is
| hopefully the market will focus more on short single player
| offline experiences.
|
| Or publishers can cirvument entirely by moving games web on
| foreign server, and it's another entertainment locked behind VPN
| situation.
| floatboth wrote:
| Good! Old emulators and (truly) offline games in general can't
| be lootbox casinos.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| I don't know much about youth culture in China, maybe all their
| teens are well behaved and obedient...
|
| But my working experience is largely with "transition" students
| in America and can tell you that rules like this are like
| commanding the tide not to go out. At best you teach them that
| your rules are arbitrary and give them a framework for subverting
| them, they may just reject your authority outright and then
| you've got nothing...
| majani wrote:
| Exactly. The problem with all these highly publicized, flimsy
| regulations is that when you eventually fail to enforce them,
| the extent of your authority comes into question. Better to
| have few laws that are strictly enforced.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Is crime going to skyrocket? These kids are going to have a lot
| of time on their hands and nowhere to spend it.
| solox3 wrote:
| One could try reading a book, learning a new skill, or
| socializing.
| zepto wrote:
| > or socializing
|
| Perhaps by joining a gang...
| sergiotapia wrote:
| That's not how it works for the majority of bored kids with
| raging hormones.
| pphysch wrote:
| In functioning societies with functioning economies, it
| certainly does work that way.
| falcolas wrote:
| I enjoy reading immensely, but even I hardly consider it to
| be a replacement for online gaming with your friends.
|
| Or, if I'm being frank, a more inherently valuable form of
| entertainment than gaming.
| Akuehne wrote:
| And just like that, China's competitive Dota scene will
| disappear.
|
| I wonder how this will effect the Perfect World/Valve
| partnership.
| jjcm wrote:
| This is the one I'm really curious about. With many esports the
| competition has been West vs China. Esports are on the rise as
| well, and now China has crippled their presence in the scene.
| It'd be akin to restricting athletes to training for only 3
| hours before their 18 for the olympics. China's representation
| in the competitive scene, especially among the new generation,
| is heavily damaged with this.
| pphysch wrote:
| It will take a hit but certainly won't disappear. Success in
| Dota 2 nowadays is not based in having fast reaction times and
| dexterity but in strategic planning and team cohesion. If top
| teams have a young player, it is usually in position 1 or 2,
| and many older players are also currently succeeding at those
| roles.
|
| Besides, this regulation does not appear ban things such as a
| Dota club at school (online play would be forbidden, but local
| lobbies would not).
| beaunative wrote:
| Here is the thing, those online games prey on inner mechanism of
| the human nature for profit, and kids are specially vulnerable,
| so to some extent, certain level of restriction would be
| desirable.
|
| Also note the general background of Chinese bureaucracy,
| especially at country level are almost all at Biden's age.
| Imagine their rage when their children abandon them for games and
| now it's their time to pay them back.
|
| That being said, it's still surprising since 3 hours/day seems
| fair and ok, but 1 hour/day and 3 hours/weeks feels overreaching.
| overgard wrote:
| > Here is the thing, those online games prey on inner mechanism
| of the human nature for profit
|
| You're painting with far too broad of a brush here.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Thinking back to my gaming binges with Ultima Online... imposing
| something like this would have turned me into a radical.
|
| I'm mad just thinking about it. And to think people want
| socialism / communism in the US.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| 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.
| fma wrote:
| Chinese citizens: "What pandemic?"
|
| The Chinese government was able to control the pandemic because
| they are authoritarian. Meanwhile Florida just received 14
| portable morgues.
|
| Before I get the "Fake News" crowd coming at me...I was on a
| video conference call last week with my Chinese counterparts in
| my company (my first meeting) and I was taken aback when
| everyone in the conference room didn't have masks...then I
| remember their spread is basically nill.
| doomleika wrote:
| 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
| namelessoracle wrote:
| 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 addicted
| as possible and to play as long as possible to an extent that
| made the old school 90s RPGs grinds look tame and mild. (the
| grinds in those games basically existing to make sure you had to
| play long enough to not be able to return it to the store or beat
| it via rental)
|
| Modern UX of games is designed so that you dont have to really
| read or understand the game mechanics even to be able to play and
| get into that feedback loop. To the point where when a game comes
| along like Dark Souls that asks you to learn the game systems to
| beat it, gamers go gah gah over "how hard" it is.
| [deleted]
| clifdweller wrote:
| yeah this is mostly for the genshin impact/gacha games that are
| super popular and are made purely to suck money or time for
| grinding. I doubt they will put to much effort into policing
| drm free games running locally.
| merrywhether wrote:
| In a parallel world they just attack this problem directly
| and outlaw lootbox/gacha gambling entirely for all ages. It's
| obvious that such design is meant to prey on intrinsic
| feedback loops in the human brain, so why not just go
| straight to the source. People will still find ways to
| gamble, but at least elsewhere it's generally explicitly
| labeled as such.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as
| addicted as possible and to play as long as possible to an
| extent that made the old school 90s RPGs grinds look tame and
| mild
|
| I try to tell my extended family this but I can tell that they
| choose not to listen. Games are no longer what they were
| growing up and you have to make sure your kid isn't playing a
| glorified slot machine. I plan to build a machine and only
| install certain games on there for the kids to avoid this very
| trap.
|
| Parents today just don't understand how pernicious these
| companies have become. They used to include a hot girl in each
| game to keep you interested and prevent you from feeling bored.
| Sure it was lazy but that's all it was, lazy. Now, you have
| games like Genshin Impact that have weaponized sexuality to the
| point where people are pumping hundreds of dollars to see more
| sexuality in the game. Hearthstone's card packs function
| identically to Skinner boxes. League of Legends teases you with
| the prospect of going pro in gaming despite players have a
| higher chance to make it to the NFL than make it going pro in
| LoL.
| overgard wrote:
| I'm sure there are a lot of culture differences, but as a
| westerner I have no mixed feelings on this -- I think it's just
| insane. This is what parents are supposed to be in charge of
| doing.
| pojzon wrote:
| Too many modern parents are not up to being a parent
| unfortunately.
|
| It's a hard work to maintain work/life balance while at the
| same time be a model for your children.
|
| It takes A LOT of discipline and we all know how much
| discipline most ppl have..
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think a big part of why I can quickly scan information on a
| page is from playing way too much Final Fantasy as a kid. To
| grind you need to do lots of combat, so I slowly dialed the
| "Response Rate" (i.e. speed at which text appears) until I
| could read all of the post-combat messages at the maximum
| setting.
| whatch wrote:
| > Modern UX of games is designed so that you dont have to
| really read or understand the game mechanics even to be able to
| play and get into that feedback loop.
|
| I wish this were true for me and GTA V. My friend and I really
| tried to do _something_ in GTA V Online together this weekend
| with little to no success. I felt really stupid by not being
| able to play any mission together
| refulgentis wrote:
| Square Enix games and CRPGs induced advanced reading skills?
| It's been a few years since I played one, but in my humble
| opinion, we'd probably find it has a 5th or 6th grade reading
| level. Replacement-level activities will likely have the same
| impact on someone 10 years d or above.
| eunos wrote:
| It's limited to the online game because the check is on server
| side rather than client (console/phone) side since it utilizes
| national ID data you provide when registering.
| techdragon wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? From the article it sounds
| like the expectation is that all games should be implementing
| mechanisms to limit this. But that could just be poor
| reporting by Reuters ( not unsurprising for a breaking
| foreign government regulation change like this )
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The ban is on providing video game _services_ to minors
| outside some hours :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28357167
| ulfw wrote:
| What about the Alibaba South China Morning Post then?
| https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3146918/china-
| limit...
| techdragon wrote:
| I see phrasing like
|
| > The notice also states that companies must strictly
| implement the real-name registration and login system in
| their games and not provide access to video games for
| those who are unregistered.
|
| But nothing clarifying if they have drawn any distinction
| between online games that require a persistent connection
| to servers to function and "offline" games that are stand
| alone single player experiences with no online
| connectivity required.
| mjn wrote:
| The Xinhua article on it (which I think is fairly
| authoritative) is clearer that it applies only to online
| games:
| http://www.news.cn/english/2021-08/30/c_1310157673.htm
|
| Specifically,
|
| > Online game providers can only offer one-hour services to
| minors from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and
| Sundays, as well as on official holidays, according to the
| document made public on Monday.
|
| > [...]
|
| > The official said that parents and minors can decide on
| by themselves how long the children will play other games
| that are conducive to minors' growth, except online games.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My reading skills were nurtured by books. My history interest
| was nurtured by video games. My tech interest was nurtured by
| finagling with goddamn interrupt priorities and boot disks to
| get games to run.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Modern games is a bit of a blanket statement.
|
| There are tons of modern games (arguably the majority when you
| consider the size of the market) that are not skinner boxes.
|
| If all you're looking at is AAA games and mobile crap, then
| sure. But there's more to games than that stuff.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Goodness. If this was the US, I would be losing my mind over
| such legislation.
|
| We must not convince the law makers that video games can be
| beneficial. That puts the wrong emphasis on the conversation.
|
| The emphasis must be, you have no jurisdiction when it comes to
| raising children. Your laws are invalid. Even if video games
| are detrimental, you do not decide what is the best interest
| for a child, the parents do.
| beaunative wrote:
| What about child protection service, school, free lunch at
| school, healthcare, and more comparably age 21 restriction
| for alcohol consumption? Those are all examples of
| 'jurisdiction over raising children'.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Physically abusing your child by chaining them to the
| radiator is not a parenting decision.
|
| Providing lunch at something the child is required to be at
| by law is not a parenting decision.
|
| Requiring annual physicals is not a parenting decision, nor
| a health care decision. However, requiring a specific
| treatment is both.
|
| Alcohol consumption is a grey area, and a cultural choice
| the country has made. Why not make the driving age 14? 18?
| It's a question of maturity. But this is a poor comparison.
| While alcohol has an objective measure of physical harm
| (ie: LD50, a measurable and detrimental effect on
| developing minds), video games do not.
|
| Listing these as examples is not a justification for the
| government deciding for a parent how much time their child
| can spend on video games.
|
| And for disclosure, I think a time limit is a much needed
| societal thing. But the government must not be the one to
| make that decision.
| beaunative wrote:
| A parents' can ask their kid to limit video game time,
| but can't have the video gaming industry to enforce it. A
| national government can.
|
| That's the issue.
|
| And if a parent really feels their kids deserve more
| video game time, they can always lend their own account
| to their kids, which would disable the mechanism, that
| simple.
| blueblisters wrote:
| The equivalent of regulating video game playing times for
| children would be regulating when a child gets to have
| their favourite dessert, when they get to go out to meet
| their friends etc. These are all highly context-dependent
| individual parenting decisions that the government should
| have very little say in. Especially in the form of rules
| like restricting play time to 8 PM on Weekends.
|
| The government can ask video game industry to provide
| enforcement mechanisms in the form of parental controls,
| which incidentally are quite widely adopted by most tech
| companies without government intervention in the West.
| beaunative wrote:
| I doubt dessert is comparable to video games, I will
| eventually get full with desserts, but potentially
| unlimited time with video games.
|
| The timeframe when a parents have a say in children's
| activity is already limited by compulsory k-12 schooling.
| What's the difference?
| blueblisters wrote:
| You can get harmed by a lot of things in excess,
| including desserts, well before you get physiologically
| or mentally exhausted by having too much of it.
|
| The difference is there is a long tail of activities that
| a family might be engaged in during non-school hours,
| especially a weekend evening. This is something a
| government can't possibly fathom or account for in an
| overarching policy.
|
| If a person chooses to have a child, they should be
| deemed to have enough agency to determine what's good for
| them.
|
| If a State wants to be the nanny, why stop at video
| games? Why not prescribe precise caloric intake, meal
| times, study times, sleep times, extracurriculars, and
| more? Just an illustration of how absurd this policy is.
| pojzon wrote:
| This policy is about predatory industry practices that
| make use of natural brain functions to make kids addicted
| to certain games while also spending absurd amounts of
| money on it.
|
| But in my opinion they should have just disabled this
| business model completely. It seems like they want to
| limit the inflow of cash but not by a lot.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| That simple? Until they decide to make it a felony to
| evade this system in that way.
| beaunative wrote:
| I mean that's just a prejudice false target, right now
| it's just a departmental policy with effect only to
| businesses.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I disagree. Children deserve a lot of protection, and anybody
| can become a parent. A lot of people are far too bad at
| parenting to leave the decisions to them completely. _Some_
| intervention is needed.
| crysin wrote:
| (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.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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.
| nybble41 wrote:
| 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.
| Scarblac wrote:
| So the only possible thing that can be legislated is a
| foster system?!
|
| Even the US already does far more than that, like making
| alcohol illegal for minors.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Good grief. This debate is so devoid of reason, it's
| difficult to have a discussion.
|
| Saying that video games is outside the jurisdiction of the
| government is NOT saying there needs to be no guard rails.
|
| Further more, yes. There are a lot of bad parents. The
| people who would be installed as the benevolent parental
| decision makers for society would be the worst of all.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Is the same true for alcohol and tobacco?
| sulam wrote:
| Speaking as a parent of two kids, I mostly agree, but also
| think that some amount of law-making in the interest of
| children is appropriate and fair. Drawing the line is the
| interesting part.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Precisely. But the statement, "the government has no
| business making parenting decisions" needs no
| qualification. It is an axiomatic statement, and it should
| not be a controversial statement.
|
| Like you say, what is considered a parenting decision?
| Reasonable people can have a discussion about this.
|
| But I'm shocked how many people seem to think A) the
| government actually should make parenting decisions, and B)
| that things like banning child abuse is an example of the
| government making a parenting decision.
|
| Neither of these things are reasonable, and so the
| discussion about what qualifies as a parenting decision
| will also be unreasonable.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I have mixed feelings about this.
|
| I don't. If this were to be proposed in America I would view it
| as extreme government over-reach.
| adventured wrote:
| > If this were to be proposed in America I would view it as
| extreme government over-reach.
|
| It is an extreme government overreach, whether in the US or
| China. It's an abuse of human rights. China is about one step
| away from treading into classic Mao Communist cultural attack
| mode.
|
| The interesting thing about pursuing so much control, is that
| more control requires ever more control, it's a negative
| spiral. More oppression requires ever greater oppression to
| keep the system from rupturing.
|
| Anyone championing this as borderline acceptable, those
| people have little terrifying monsters inside, little psycho
| dictators, yearning to violently oppress and control people.
| Societies are always filled with these little monsters
| running around trying to violently control people, they
| always have to be pushed back against.
|
| In China's case, Xi is pursuing a new cultural revolution, as
| he sees fit to implement. One thing after another is being
| taken out, targeted.
|
| They took out all traces of freedom of speech, years ago.
| They isolated the people with the great firewall, to restrict
| foreign influence, control domestic influences, and keep the
| people contained. They installed aggressive censors at all
| tech and media companies. They eliminated all independent
| news and media. They've further cracked down on all religion,
| religious expression, religious worship. They banished nearly
| all foreign reporting from the country. They banished all
| joke apps. They banished all gay culture. They're culturally
| cleansing the Muslim Uyghur regions. They implemented the
| social credit scoring system. They've entirely taken over
| Hong Kong and are proceding with wiping out its formerly
| independent culture. They've installed direct party control
| over all major private corporations, tech or otherwise.
| They've neutered all of their most prominent business
| persons, one after another. They've purged, vanished numerous
| prominent celebrities. They're in the process of banning all
| negative discussions of anything economic/financial. They're
| initiating an effort to prevent any consequential companies
| from publicly listing stock overseas, looking to increase
| economic control and reduce foreign influence. They're wiping
| out private education (classic cultural revolution move on
| education). They're about to flip to a digital currency, to
| further increase the ease and application of economic
| controls over individuals. This is the short list of what
| they've done since Xi took power, and they're only just
| getting warmed up.
|
| It's a science fiction nightmare, set to become real. This
| gaming restriction is just one little drop in the ocean of
| what they're doing broadly, it's all moving in concert.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| And if that wasn't bad enough, then they banned Winnie The
| Pooh
| md5madman wrote:
| thanks for scaring the shit out of me
| [deleted]
| kevbin wrote:
| | "The global scale of the China challenge is not just
| about China's rise, it's not just about the genocide," says
| Josh, "It's about what kind of world we want to live in."
|
| https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcG
| h... https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZ
| WdhcGh...
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Thinking about this a different way. We have seen the games
| that come out that exist to get you to play as long as possible
| look like.
|
| What will the games that exist to be so awesome that if you get
| to play only an hour a day that want you to come back again
| look like? Will they make sure that hour is highly enjoyable
| and engaging instead of grindy? Is that a more sustainable
| model for game devs?
|
| At least its a change from the current skinner boxes....
|
| Maybe it will just be stronger skinner boxes. "Tune in next
| week for the exciting conclusion!" or "Get X Bonus if you log
| in tommorow!" is probably what will happen....
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| For me the prime example of good, challenging, but non-
| addictive game is GCompris, a collection of kids activities.
| Open source as well.
| iszomer wrote:
| Sure but there wasn't a monetary incentive path like we have
| today with the Internet and livestreaming. I still remember
| picking up my first copy of DOOM and playing with friends on a
| 28.8Kbps dialup modem.
|
| This comic sort of represents those childhood sentiments
| experienced today:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDG_IEDc9A
| fridif wrote:
| You shouldn't have mixed feelings. This is an attack on human
| free will.
|
| UK lets children drink.
| riffraff wrote:
| In UK you can't buy alcohol if you're below 18. You can drink
| alcohol in a public place if you're 16 and there is an
| accompanying adult buying it for you.
|
| It's not quite a "free for all", but anyway, I doubt it
| relates to the issue at hand.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age#Europe
| nybble41 wrote:
| Those rules are for _public_ drinking. There doesn 't seem
| to be any age restriction for _private_ alcohol consumption
| in the UK, or for that matter most of Europe.
| adventured wrote:
| The US similarly allows private underage consumption of
| alcohol - with more restrictions than in most parts of
| Europe - with parental consent and oversight. This varies
| from state to state in how it works and the limits, of
| course. Most states draw a strong legal distinction
| between underage drinking parties vs moderate underage
| consumption outside of a party context.
| lhorie wrote:
| 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 is often believed to translate to
| improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't
| actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the
| same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't
| necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever)
|
| This line of reasoning is also supported by research on
| correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is
| that no such causation relationship exists).
|
| All of these suggest (to me) that gaming is just its own
| activity without much impact on life other than opportunity
| cost itself.
|
| However, there _are_ some aspects of gaming that can affect
| overall well-being, specifically aspects related to
| repetitiveness (e.g. grinding). Repetitiveness is something
| that does come up in a lot of disciplines (e.g. its soothing
| effect in autist kids, or repetitiveness as tool in the context
| of meditation, etc).
|
| The "addictive" aspect isn't necessarily a bad thing either,
| IMHO. Games are, almost by definition, _supposed_ to be
| engaging. But that addictiveness may come in a form of trade-
| offs, for example, back in the day of grindy RPGs, delayed
| gratification was basically the entire point of grinding. The
| one aspect that I think is justly vilified is monetization
| strategies that tie to addictive elements of gameplay
| (especially the gacha variety) and this is something that I 'd
| actually commend China for trying to address via regulation.
| everdrive wrote:
| Video games work best as a lesser of many evils, and come
| with a few caveats: If you watch a lot of TV, it's hard to
| argue that video games are a worse use of your time. Video
| games do have some legitimate benefits, but it's probably
| hard to say that they are more beneficial than other things
| you could be doing with your time. (ie, reading difficult
| literature or articles vs. reading RPG text.)
|
| However, people aren't robots, and can't spend 100% of their
| time doing things which are strictly beneficial. Sometimes
| you just have to relax and do what you like. Further, not all
| worthwhile activities truly benefit you in some measurable
| way. All those "play Mozart for your child to increase his
| intelligence" CDs were completely fraudulent. And by
| extension you could claim that listening to beautiful
| classical music does not actually really benefit you. But of
| course beautiful music is one of the best aspects of life.
| The only difference I would say is that it seems impossible
| to become addicted to classical music in the same way that
| someone might become addicted to video games.
|
| In this sense, I agree with the parent that video game
| addiction is the greatest concern here, and is a direction
| video games have been moving in for a long time. It's
| interesting that he mentions very easy gameplay mixed with
| behavioral feedback loops. I can get QUITE wrapped up in Dark
| Souls, but I am never just playing it on autopilot. It's too
| hard, and requires too much of my focus. It's not to say that
| it's necessarily all that difficult, but I can't just zone
| out. If my mood is wrong, if I am impatient, if my focus is
| poor, I will play badly. This is explicitly not the case with
| addictive gameplay-loop games which approach television-
| levels of sloth in the sense that you can play them
| indefinitely with any amount of focus.
| true_religion wrote:
| Sure but I'm not really comfortable with this level of
| government interference with peoples lives.
|
| No one ever stopped me from playing soccer for 5 hours a
| day when I was younger, and in high school sports practice
| was a 3 hour minimum.
|
| This restricts game play to 3 hours per week. That means
| essentially you can't play video games for leisure ...
| while at the same time you are forced to do a minimum of 40
| hours a week in education (normal school + cram school +
| homework).
|
| If you can only play a video game for 25 minutes a day, you
| might as well never play.
| gallamine wrote:
| We restrict our kids to 30 min /day of screens. Try
| telling them it's not worth it. They are absolutely rabid
| about it.
| marcod wrote:
| Assuming your children are not 17 ...
| Marcus316 wrote:
| 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 that time for whatever reason, and constantly
| be trying to make sure they get their screen time, rather
| than the current state of affairs where missing their
| screens for a day or two doesn't phase them one bit.
| spoonjim wrote:
| 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.
| FooHentai wrote:
| I'm reluctant to invoke the 'kids nowadays' trope.
| However - While there's a lot someone can do with a
| computer, the days of picking up marketable skills due to
| having to fight through technology to get a game to work
| are long gone. Portable touch-screen devices are tuned
| for content consumption and not content creation. Large
| industries exists today with refined abilities to grab
| and hold the attention of young minds.
|
| All of that taken together means the odds of 'screen
| time' being a productive endeavour are IMO much smaller
| than they once were. If the overwhelming odds are your
| kid is going to be sucked into a skinner box for the
| duration of their screen time it seems prudent to put
| limits on that which might limit the damage being done.
|
| Of course none of this is a substitute for knowing your
| kid as an individual and tailoring conditions to what's
| best for them, versus any kind of blanket rule stuff.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Who gives a crap about marketable skills? My 5 year old
| understands what derivatives are because he scrolls
| through math content on YouTube. There's a lot to learn
| out there and more accessible than ever. Obviously the
| parent has to be involved as they do with everything. The
| screen is not a babysitter.
| onli wrote:
| Strictly limiting screen time fuels addiction. I'm
| utterly convinced about this and speak from experience.
| They can't learn to properly manage the ups and downs
| that way, all that remains are the ups, making it the
| best thing ever. That's why they are rabid about this.
|
| It's also not something only I think, but I don't have a
| good resource at hand. Questions like this are always
| disputed anyway. When books came out they complained
| about the youth wasting their time reading books! (so
| much to the "reading a book is so much better" comment
| above.)
|
| Half an hour is also completely unreasonable for playing
| most games. It rules out playing the good games, leading
| them to play the pay2win gambling bullshit. If the kids
| are very small, ignore what I write, but if they aren't
| think twice about this.
| pizza234 wrote:
| There's screens and screens, they can't be really lumped
| them into a single content.
|
| I place TV at the absolute worst of the spectrum, so I
| don't have one. But there are a lots of interesting stuff
| to do with a screen; most importantly, they can be done
| together.
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm in no way supportive of China's actions here, and was
| just commenting on video gaming and addiction in general.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > 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/
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >_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.
| cercatrova wrote:
| You may not buy it but that's what the data shows. Now,
| you buying it versus you wanting to not believe it is
| another story. I too drink in moderation but that doesn't
| mean I'll act like it doesn't have negative consequences,
| however slight they may be. The study is not
| prescriptive, it's not saying people should give up
| alcohol, it's merely descriptive, in that it's telling
| the reader what's happening as a result of any level of
| consumption.
| yitianjian wrote:
| (forgive me since I did not read your reference) but I
| recall there were some studies showing that the "health
| benefits" touted by the "glass of wine a day" studies were
| strongly correlated with:
|
| - being middle to upper class (can afford a glass of wine
| daily)
|
| - having good self control (drinking one glass of wine a
| day instead of many)
|
| which are both good health outcomes
| cercatrova wrote:
| Even controlling for those factors, there is no health
| benefit to alcohol, ie a middle to upper class person
| with self control does not fare better drinking alcohol
| versus not drinking alcohol.
| andrepew wrote:
| 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. In the early
| 90's when I started computer gaming, you actually needed to
| know how to use a computer and understand them to some
| extent. Half the time I spent gaming was spent figuring out
| how to get the computer to do what I wanted which lead to a
| life long interest in technology. Sadly, like the parent
| poster mentioned, that is probably no longer a thing.
| aeternum wrote:
| For some games sure, but those games now make up a subset.
|
| Look at the 'casual' games which are optimized via AI to
| hold attention and trigger repeat use. It may not be much
| of a stretch to consider these drugs for the human
| visual/rewards system rather than videogames. And these
| attention-grabbing tools are only getting better as we
| collect more data and develop better algos.
| lhorie wrote:
| > If a game is providing reading material and motivation to
| read, it will improve reading skills.
|
| Eh. No, that's not quite how that works. If you look at
| north american elementary school level reading, you may
| notice that books are often categorized by levels. Some of
| this has to do with complexity of sentence construction,
| some has to do with vocabulary, and some has to do with
| subject matter. The gist of the educational philosophy
| around reading is that one doesn't get better at reading by
| plowing through reading material at high volumes, but
| instead one needs to gradually level up by going through
| materials of appropriate complexity. One specific problem
| that teachers look for - especially in kids that advance
| quickly - is "skimming without understanding", for example
| (i.e. reading words/sentences phonetically, but without
| understanding their meaning/context).
|
| Game text is usually not structured with any didactic value
| in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of furigana in
| Japanese in consideration of target audiences). A lot of
| game categories don't even require any reading beyond
| recognizing words (which is somewhere between kinder and
| 1st grade level reading skill)
|
| Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're
| typically spending a large amount of time doing other
| things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the
| notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly common
| phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to skip over
| dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off gimmicks that
| rely on reading the text carefully for instructions or
| clues.
|
| To be clear though, practicing pre-acquired reading skills
| can help in the sense that repetition legitimizes, but IMHO
| that's a bit different than _improving_ beyond a current
| level, and not necessarily all that different from what you
| get from reading cereal box /shampoo labels or reading
| comic books.
| lizard wrote:
| > Game text is usually not structured with any didactic
| value in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of
| furigana in Japanese in consideration of target
| audiences). A lot of game categories don't even require
| any reading beyond recognizing words (which is somewhere
| between kinder and 1st grade level reading skill)
|
| > Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're
| typically spending a large amount of time doing other
| things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the
| notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly
| common phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to
| skip over dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off
| gimmicks that rely on reading the text carefully for
| instructions or clues.
|
| This is a consequence of modern gaming trends and by no
| means an issue with video games themselves.
|
| There are a lot of game categories that provide or even
| require extensive reading. We don't have to accept _all_
| games a beneficial; it's not like we use magazines and
| tabloids to teach reading comprehension either.
|
| There are games where killing monsters isn't the primary
| goal, or even if it is a significant aspect of game play
| can be averted by finding alternative solutions, usually
| through the in-game lore.
|
| Deus Ex was a great example where several bosses could be
| entirely side stepped by reading emails throughout the
| game (though to be fair, only a few of them actually
| required _reading_ the email as opposed to simply
| discovering it). Arcanum is another that if you pieced
| together enough of the backstory and paid attention to
| the dialog you could talk the final boss down. There are
| even more out there, as you mention, that offer hints to
| puzzles and gimmicks, some of which even present it as a
| riddle ensuring you read and understand the text rather
| than just found it.
|
| Sure, a lot of people will skip these things and save-
| scum or post on message boards to get the answer, but
| that's not much different than CliffNotes everyone used.
|
| If you want to use video games in school do the same
| thing we do for books: Select the games the offer quality
| reading and evaluate based on comprehension rather than
| completion. You can even require students submit save
| files to verify they took the reading path.
| t-3 wrote:
| Grammar/spelling/usage is almost all about memorizing and
| copying others, so engaging in tasks that use those
| skills will definitely get you further faster than a
| step-by-step progression. I was reading and writing at a
| level far beyond my peers in elementary school, not
| because I was smarter, but because I actively read books
| for fun.
| appletrotter wrote:
| So what I think is a really strong counterpoint to your
| argument is the simple fact that watching movies in a
| language is generally considered a great way to learn
| said language. That's passive learning in a similar
| manner to what you would get out of reading in a video
| game.
|
| It fails to train you in actually synthesizing speech
| though. So you need a structured approach as well,
| similar to what you describe, to fill out the many other
| facets of learning.
|
| But it's still insanely valuable to do so.
|
| reading things likely makes you better at reading things
| lhorie wrote:
| Well, I think doing things way above your level "works"
| sometimes in the sense that there's a subset of things
| that a learner happens to be most receptive to at any
| given time, and immersing yourself at the deep end is a
| bit like brute forcing through the entire subject matter
| until something happens to stick. But this is inefficient
| and not guaranteed to yield any results at all.
|
| I have some insight into language learning myself, having
| had both positive and non-positive experiences. On the
| one hand, yes, games and movies did help me pick up
| english vocabulary, but this is because I also studied
| english from an early age in school, the fact that
| English borrows vocabulary heavily from romance languages
| (with which I am fluent), and perhaps most importantly,
| the fact that I've immersed myself in it quite deeply
| during my teens, often preferring to read and write in
| english. Ironically, though, learning through
| entertainment media left me with some curiously weird
| learning gaps. For example, I only learned in my 30s that
| "down" (as in Final Fantasy's "Phoenix down") refers to a
| type of plumage and not some weird in-universe usage of
| up/down/left/right.
|
| Now contrast this experience with this: As a kid, I also
| learned Japanese (though not to the same extent as
| english, let alone the extent required to master it
| coming from a romance language). At one point, my dad
| brought over some Japanese RPG games from a business trip
| to Japan, and while I did have basic schooling on
| hiragana/katakana, the teen-level kanji from the games
| was way over my head at the time, and I ended up learning
| virtually no Japanese from those games (I had to quite
| literally sit down to actively study kanjis to make any
| sense of what the game text said). I also consumed quite
| a bit of anime and not a whole lot stuck with me either,
| due to a lack of what I can "active practice" (i.e. my
| exposure to the language was mostly on a as-needed
| consumption basis, with little to no active effort to
| write or speak).
|
| In short, I do think games can _help_ nail down stuff you
| 've learned elsewhere, but upleveling language skills
| from games alone is very difficult.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > For example, I only learned in my 30s that "down" (as
| in Final Fantasy's "Phoenix down") refers to a type of
| plumage
|
| For what it's worth, that's not at all what I'd consider
| a weird gap. As an educated 40-year-old native English
| speaker, I think it's possible I've gone my entire life
| without speaking aloud the word "down" in the sense of
| plumage. I'd only expect a non-native speaker to know it
| if they spent some time focusing on animal terminology.
| imtringued wrote:
| Video games gave me the motivation to learn English, about
| machining, CAD, PCB design, economics and programming.
| Anyone who is against leisure is falling into the
| existential trap of capitalism. What is the meaning of
| doing productive work inside a video game? Since productive
| work is now leisure you actually run into the existential
| problem all the time. The video game runs into deflation
| all the time. People are highly productive, reducing the
| need of other players to be productive.
|
| In fact, the very thing we beg for is an increase in the
| money supply. We are hoping for inflation. Meanwhile in the
| real world everyone is scared of that inflation thing. My
| latest project is literally pumping NPC vendors with basic
| resources to create money out of thin air to generate
| inflation. The paradox of creating money is that it makes
| people work and end up doing more "productive" work.
| epr wrote:
| > My latest project is literally pumping NPC vendors with
| basic resources to create money out of thin air to
| generate inflation.
|
| Giving NPC vendors basic items is an increase in supply,
| but also a money supply sink as well assuming the items
| are sold. If the basic items are overpriced by the npcs
| then it would cause price deflation, and the opposite if
| they are underpriced.
| kiba wrote:
| Lot of things improve reading skills, like reading novels.
|
| Arguably, writing video games and novels would seem to be
| more useful way to improve skills. That's how I got started
| in programming at all.
|
| However, video games just doesn't seem life changing at all
| compared to all the things you could do.
| andrepew wrote:
| If your goal is to learn a skill, there are better ways
| to go about it than gaming. The problem in learning that
| gaming helps with isn't learning efficacy --- it is
| motivation.
|
| As a child, I simply wasn't interested in novels and
| enjoying playing games would be a prerequisite to having
| the motivation to write one.
| meristohm wrote:
| I agree. Games feel like chose-your-own-adventure books,
| which were novelties and not nearly as engaging as a
| well-written book to read and visualize and anticipate.
|
| A great way to help a child read throughout their life is
| to read to them every day, enjoy stories together and
| apart, and not to push too hard in any direction (they
| may enjoy different things, no problem). Asking open-
| ended questions helps, too, with time to consider and
| respond.
| Jensson wrote:
| When playing various games you have to manage a budget,
| reason about logistics, get an intuition for basic
| physics, understand numbers and basic math formulas etc.
| There are so many skills you learn there that are seen as
| very important. How can passively reading a story book
| even compare to actively being forced to practice and
| learn these things?
| tester756 wrote:
| english english english english english
|
| A lot of people learned english via games
| [deleted]
| miohtama wrote:
| 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.
| steelframe wrote:
| > I learnt English thru video games
|
| To be honest I don't find this argument particularly
| convincing.
| miohtama wrote:
| Haha, gotcha
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Half the time I spent gaming was spent figuring out how
| to get the computer to do what I wanted which lead to a
| life long interest in technology.
|
| I remember the old days of "extended memory" which meant
| you needed slightly different configuration files for each
| game. That meant if you wanted to play a bunch of games, it
| made sense to learn how to write a bat script to config
| according to what you wanted to play.
|
| You also had a terminal which gave a "computery" vibe, like
| you were doing something serious, because why else would
| the interface be so austere? Command lines are like magic
| incantations, and some people are just drawn to learning
| how they work.
|
| Nowadays that entry route is gone, there's not much peeking
| below the OS desktop anymore on something like a phone or
| tablet. On desktop it seems like Steam just abstracts away
| everything else that you'd care about, though I'm not a
| heavy gamer anymore.
| II2II wrote:
| 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 said, people rarely discuss technical skills
| as a benefit of gaming. Things like resource management
| are more often brought up. Maybe there's some benefit to
| games in that respect, but I suspect most people learn
| about resource management within the context of games and
| very little of that is transferable to the real world.
|
| This isn't to say I'm opposed to using games for
| education. I have certainly taught concepts in
| mathematics using Minecraft. Yet it does take a higher
| level of awareness of what you are trying to learn (or
| teach) than going through the mechanics of playing.
| hnjst wrote:
| Understanding low level architecture of that time (and
| early memory management) and first steps of the boot
| process is definitely something that has been useful to
| me since then. DOS batch files scripting no so much...
| eric-hu wrote:
| 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 industry is.
| hnjst wrote:
| My childhood story too. We ended pretty knowledgable,
| effective and borderline dangerous when the watered down
| systems arrived later.
|
| I'd put in the same category the edition of saved games
| to change your amount of money to FFFFFF or the epic
| shenanigans required to setup a LAN party.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| 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 it I owe her some
| "interest" on how much she invested in my career. :)
| jmfldn wrote:
| Hah! You've just described my childhood, hacking
| autoexec.bat and config.sys to get games to work. Each
| game needed a different hack. Had no idea what I was
| doing back then, it was more a case of discovering the
| correct incantation until stuff worked without the
| graphics juddering too badly.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| +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 more prone to break your
| operating system, because it makes kids smarter.
| marcod wrote:
| I have definitely lamented how easy it is for my kids'
| generation to play games, compared to the memory
| optimization techniques I had to employ to even get them
| running ;)
|
| > Ooh, if I LH the mouse driver and allocate a little
| more EMS it should work, but don't forget to load
| DOS=high,umb!
| rightbyte wrote:
| On the other hand NES etc was way simpler to get going on
| than eg. todays mobile games or a Playstation.
| prewett wrote:
| That's an interesting idea. If I have kids maybe I should
| tell them "you can play any game you can run on Linux.
| Here's an Ubuntu CD, helpdesk is at google.com. If you
| get really stuck tell me what you've tried so far and
| I'll give you some suggestions on what to ask Google. Oh,
| by the way, if you'd like to write your own games, I'll
| be happy to help you."
| bdamm wrote:
| By the time you have kids that are old enough to play
| games, if you do, then you'll probably know that this is
| an impossible conversation. The process will instead be
| to create a mystique out of your own habits, which the
| child will find intriguing.
| lrvick wrote:
| For the last 15 years or so I have insisted most people I
| mentor, even young teens, build a new primary computer
| from parts and build Gentoo on it including the kernel.
|
| When it boots successfully and can connect to the
| internet we then move on to helping them do any daily
| task they once did on Windows or MacOS, including gaming,
| art, schoolwork, etc on the new system.
|
| Most choose another distro eventually once they know how
| to patch any software when needed, but some stick around
| and go on to develop operating systems themselves.
|
| Many are doing very well in the industry today.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| That was me. I was given a Linux laptop, shown how to
| connect to the Internet (from a terminal), and basically
| told "good luck". 15 years later, I am happily working on
| embedded Linux systems.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I would encourage you to also spend time teaching and
| mentoring them even if they havent tried. Kids thrive on
| this kind of attention, and feelings of support.
| johncessna wrote:
| I had printouts of autoexec.bat and config.sys for this
| exact reason.
| powerapple wrote:
| 1/6 of my friends (we all own 286, 386 and play computer
| games) got into programming and became a software
| engineer. The policy is against online games. I am
| actually looking to setup a computer without internet for
| my 8 year old. I want him to learn about computers, but
| internet is definitely not something I want him to
| explore now.
| mc32 wrote:
| >"research on correlation between games and violence (i.e.
| the consensus is that no such causation relationship
| exists)."
|
| If there were no correlation, then is the perception of in-
| game abuse such as sexual (and other) violence, or milder
| sexism and "bro" culture exaggerated (including misogynism)?
| Is the view that there need to be more inclusivity (of many
| sorts) in games then unsupported?
|
| I see people wanting it both ways (from both political
| spectrums).
|
| It either affects us, so we need to be conscientious about
| what we put in there.
|
| Or it doesn't affect us and it does not matter what we do in-
| game (violence, sexism, etc.)
| daveidol wrote:
| I don't think anyone in this thread has discussed one of the
| other important aspects of gaming: the social aspect.
|
| Especially in an era of "quarantine at home" - online gaming
| can be a very social activity and a way to make/grow
| friendships and play with others.
|
| (Obviously I think getting outdoors and being active instead
| of staring at a screen all day is probably even better, but
| that is one benefit of games over just "grinding")
| martinmakesgame wrote:
| > ... correlation between games and violence (i.e. the
| consensus is that no such causation relationship exists).
|
| I feel that the connection between violence and violence in
| games is far more subtle than a direct connection.
|
| Video games are not real life but the thoughts and feelings
| we have when we play games are real. When we experience
| anger, sadness or joy in a game, all of these emotions are
| real for us.
|
| When we have experiences pathways are laid down in the brain
| through the process of myelination and these pathways get
| reinforced over time by having the same experiences.
|
| When we hit, shoot or kill something in a video game and get
| feedback, sound, visual or music, our brain starts to become
| conditioned to those experiences.
|
| Our brains are plastic and flexible in that they can learn
| that hitting, shooting and killing, being violent can feel
| "good". It is possible that this can happen even being
| completely unaware of it happening.
|
| If you make games, and there is violence in your game, I
| would seriously take a moment and consider. Is this violence
| in the game really necessary? There are many other options
| for different types of gameplay.
| ajuc wrote:
| In developing countries games in 90s were a big avenue for
| kids to learn English. Mostly we had pirated games (a game
| costed 50-100 PLN, people earned 400-500 PLN a month, nobody
| used original software) without translations and with ripped
| cutscenes. So you had VERY big motivation to learn English to
| understand what is even going on.
|
| I remember playing Betrayal At Krondor and Albion - story-
| heavy RPGs - understanding maybe 10% of words in any
| particular dialog or description :)
|
| Additionally games train trial-and-error approach to
| technology which is why I think almost every software
| developer older than 30 that I know started as a gamer.
|
| Nowadays it's a different world and I'm not sure games have
| such effects anymore, because it's much less demanding
| entertainment. They work out of the box, are translated into
| your language, affordable so no need to mess with virtual
| drives, keygens or copying cracks over game files.
| tdsamardzhiev wrote:
| Ditto. Games certainly helped develop my problem-solving
| skills, but I reckon I'd have gotten 90% of the benefit in
| 10% of the time, and the remaining 35 hours a week would have
| been better spent elsewhere.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| > This line of reasoning is also supported by research on
|
| > correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus
|
| > is that no such causation relationship exists).
|
| On the face of it, this can't be true in all cases. Even
| Radio can be used to incite violence. A much less imersive
| medium.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib.
| ..
|
| "Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to
| July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the
| Rwandan genocide that took place from April to July 1994, a
| and has been described by some scholars of having been a de
| facto arm of the Hutu government."
|
| Games influence culture. The modern permissiveness to "punch
| a Nazi" has been very well conditioned and permitted. Often
| in games. "Nazi" can be easily redefined to include modern
| political opponents, at anytime in the future.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| That seems like a false equivalency, clearly your radio
| telling you to kill your neighbors is a much stronger
| incitement than a game where you run around shooting at
| imaginary people.
| jstrH wrote:
| Surely a lot of these "behaviors observed after X hours of Y"
| studies are subjective to the researchers and broader social
| opinions on what "normal" is.
|
| I don't disagree on the monetization part, but daily life is
| an implicit game of risk avoidance. We are cognitively tuned
| to play a cognitive simulation.
|
| My hesitancy is social belief we all must be on board with
| playing "the real world" simulation as dictated by
| traditional political beliefs, which heavily influence which
| studies get funded.
|
| Maybe utilitarian day jobs aren't the only busy work we
| should expect of each other.
|
| Frankly as a social scene, I'd rather people argue over DND
| rules than how much profit they can make if more people went
| hungry or died rather than get their insurance benefits they
| paid for.
|
| Perhaps the behavioral economics math we use to advertise and
| market tribal belief in our teams superior product or service
| should be set aside to let folks navigate the sim as they
| wish and real economic activity must adjust to satisfy that?
|
| Social norms have always followed technology. Maybe the
| perspectives we apply are no longer correct in this
| contemporary time.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| 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 and Chrono Trigger got an easy novels
| worth of reading in. Getting 10 years old to WANT to read is
| HARD. Anything that encourages that is good.
|
| 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.
| Filligree wrote:
| > 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 that is what you want. The Atelier
| games, for example. Certainly those have voice acting, but
| not everywhere--and if that 's a problem, pick the Japanese
| VAs.
| mywittyname wrote:
| 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, not 10 year
| olds.
|
| The games kids are playing today involve very little
| reading.
| megameter wrote:
| 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.
| prox wrote:
| One game that improves problem solving skills is Space
| Engineers.
| Filligree wrote:
| Soooorta?
|
| Stationeers does much better.
| prox wrote:
| That's way too taxing on my brain! :)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Obligatory Disco Elysium mention, but it still proves your
| point, because it is considered so unusual by today's
| standards.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Though Disco Elysium is now almost-totally voice acted as
| well.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > a glass of wine with every meal
|
| There's an apt outcome of the analogy too. It's likely the
| grapejuice is better for you before fermenting it, oh and the
| grapes themselves are better for you than removing all the
| fiber and the physical bulk that can help satiety.
|
| I feel the same way about games. They may have positive
| effects over a null control (like sitting and staring at the
| paint on the wall), but reading a physical book is probably
| better for reading skills than an RPG.
| keerthiko wrote:
| This assumes the participant is equally motivated and
| emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar flow
| state through both paths.
|
| Flow state increases retention and positive benefit, and
| flow state is often a function of motivation (fun), and
| more importantly, level of challenge. The benefit games
| have over nearly every other medium of experiencing a
| concept, is that the level of challenge is highly
| personalized.
|
| If you spend a lot of time in one area of an RPG trying to
| comprehend the plot and thus solve the puzzle, it's still
| fun because you are moving around and performing more
| interactions and gathering small bits of context. Compare
| that to if you are stuck trying to comprehend one page of a
| difficult book as a 7-year-old.
|
| Playing games allows our brains to catch up to complex
| concepts through (simulated) movement much the same way as
| going on walks allows us to process a difficult problem or
| complex system that is on our mind.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > This assumes the participant is equally motivated and
| emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar
| flow state through both paths.
|
| Also worth adding to this thread that motivation is a
| feedback loop mechanism. If you're super stimulated by
| these slot machine like games, you're not going to find
| the long rewards of completing a book a week/month a very
| "motivating" option. So it's also worth looking at the
| motivational damage these things do to a person and how
| it's eliminating the motivational possibility of doing
| something of higher value. Cue the "dopamine detox" part
| of the internet.
|
| > is that the level of challenge is highly personalized.
|
| I agree and this is a good observation, which maybe can
| be had IRL, but i agree that it can be easier implemented
| and more granular in the digital realm.
| m4rtink wrote:
| It's only quite recently that we can get fresh grapes off
| season, that's why people used to drink wine with food - it
| stays consumable for much longer thanks to the alcohol it
| contains.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| > ... it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale
| linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption.
|
| Is there anything that actually scales linearly? I thought
| the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much
| anything you do.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to
| pretty much anything you do.
|
| IMO, the interesting part of many things in life comes
| after a significant time/difficulty spike. Think of music,
| art, programming, athletic performance, etc.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Sure, nobody is worried that if you eat healthy food every
| day or sleep 8 hours every night, it may eventually turn
| into life-impairing addiction.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'd argue that benefits from games - at least from games in
| the 90s - scale in a weird but, to a degree, superlinear
| way. That is, if you do it only a little, you may as well
| not do it at all.
|
| Come to think of it, quite a lot of things in life scale
| like this. Software development being among the well-known
| ones for this audience - e.g. if you'd be given only a 30
| minute window for writing code during a day (or even a
| couple such windows spread out), you'd likely not even open
| the editor, as there's no point in even engaging with the
| task in such short window.
|
| I'd go as far as saying that, in order to realize the most
| non-enjoyment value of a game, you not only need long
| enough sessions to fully engage with a game - you need long
| enough sessions to _get bored with the game_. But, that may
| be impossible with modern gambling-for-chindren-but-legal
| style of games.
|
| You can imagine this as an "S-curve" model of value, where
| with games, the point most people consider "too much" for a
| kid is barely on the ramp-up part of the curve.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| personal anecdote: I've played hundreds of hours of driving
| games, my girlfriend has never touched a controller. When we
| got our Tesla, the backup camera view was perfectly intuitive
| to me and I was immediately comfortable driving the car
| backwards using just the display, but she was not. As we go
| into the future of computer driven everything, people
| comfortable with controlling things via computer interface
| will have a significant advantage over people who've only
| used analog control.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Videogames are addicting as all hell and create NEETs. End of
| story. Parents who are lazy and just want their kids to stop
| bothering them just give them to their kids without realizing
| it can destroy their early socialization skills. I love
| videogames, but jesus I'd limit my kids use of it to either
| playing socially or with family. If it's alone, it had better
| be for short amounts of time.
|
| Videogames should be social events. Not solitary escapes that
| cause people to become schizoids.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > Parents who are lazy and just want their kids to stop
| bothering them just give them to their kids without realizing
| it can destroy their early socialization skills.
|
| These hypothetical children have spent all day socializing at
| school- if that gets "destroyed" by a few hours of being left
| to their own devices, better stop them from reading and
| playing with Legos alone in their rooms too. Claiming video
| games ruin social skills because playing them is an activity
| performed alone is utter nonsense.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| School is the most garbage area to foster socializing
| children. Not only is it in a controlled environment, but
| it has nothing to do with learning how to engage with
| people on a personal level outside of work.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Kids need socializing with other kids beyond the 9-3 school
| days.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've mentioned this view a few times: computers are the modern
| double-edged sword.
|
| On one hand you can learn pretty much anything academic just by
| sitting in front of one. Quantum physics, history of Rome, food
| chemistry, and so on. Use it right, and you can really have
| access to a huge amount of knowledge that I never could as a
| child.
|
| On the other hand, it is the biggest addiction danger in the
| house. It's legal for you to invite corporations into your home
| to try to persuade you to sit and grind away at some game,
| forever. You can waste your whole life in the comfort of your
| own Skinner box. All your opportunities to go and socialize
| with real people, out in society, you can just skip. What to
| exercise? Meh. Want a nice meal with family? Meh. Want to look
| at nature? LOL no.
|
| Anecdote:
|
| A friend of mine was playing very heavily for some time, maybe
| a couple of times a week. He goes into a cafe, sits down next
| to another fellow, who'd been there far longer: "oh hey man,
| I've been here for two days. My boss will get pissed off if I
| don't show up to work tomorrow. But Everquest..."
|
| My buddy comes in two nights later, guy is in the same seat
| playing EverQuest. "Shit man, I got fired. He called me and
| told me. Anyway I gotta level up." At that point my friend got
| quite scared of the power of this stuff. Me as well, nearly 20
| years later.
|
| To cap it off, the dude's job was to be the attendant at
| another computer cafe. Yes. He could have just sat his ass at
| work and gotten paid for it, but somehow he'd lost his job by
| sitting at a different cafe and not finding the motivation to
| stop.
| MandieD wrote:
| I remember an acquaintance calling it "EverCrack" 20 years
| ago...
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Personal anecdote. For a couple of years, I was deeply
| addicted to early version of Final Fantasy 11. Thing was
| hard, punishing and effectively required dedicated player
| base. I have some great memories, but there was a moment,
| when I started calling in sick to camp a monster.
| Fortunately, I eventually managed to stop on my own, but I
| still get occasional pangs ( but thankfully today's FFXI is a
| shell of itself for a variety of reasons ).
|
| I was lucky. I am certain there are people way more obsessive
| than me.
| [deleted]
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _To the point where when a game comes along like Dark Souls
| that asks you to learn the game systems to beat it, gamers go
| gah gah over "how hard" it is._
|
| Please, PLEASE, _please_ let 's not derail this thread to "Dark
| Souls players are the REAL skilled players and the rest of you
| all are crybabies" or something? I get PTSD reading any DS
| player's "opinion" these days.
|
| DS doesn't require skill. DS is brutal and semi-random on
| purpose so you sink the maximum amount of time to beat it. Not
| much skill is required there. You have to invest the time to
| learn the moves and their patterns. After that happens beating
| the boss in question just requires you to be in non-vegetative
| state.
|
| --
|
| On topic: I too am with mixed feelings over this news but if
| this is going to stop the hyper-predatory mobile game companies
| from almost literally turning young people into zombies then I
| support the decision.
|
| I worry what happens when inevitably they start saying "but
| CS:GO, Quake Champions and Deep Rock Galactic are addictive as
| well and we will prohibit them too!" but... we can't have it
| all at the same time, I suppose. :|
|
| Really can't find a good balanced solution out of this jam. Can
| you?
| auiya wrote:
| > Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as
| addicted as possible and to play as long as possible to an
| extent that made the old school 90s RPGs grinds look tame and
| mild.
|
| You do realize the term "quarter muncher" isn't a modern one
| right? We had plenty of those types meth-level-addiction games
| back in the early days of gaming too.
| ecf wrote:
| > Modern games though are clearly designed to get you as
| addicted as possible and to play as long as possible...
|
| The de-facto example of this nowadays is World of a Warcraft.
|
| For those unaware, WoW charges you $15 per month play, as well
| as $60 every two years for the latest expansion.
|
| This has resulted in a company that designs every last detail
| to be completed at the pace they determine to be correct, with
| a "story cliffhanger" at the end of each patch.
|
| An applicable quote from one of the largest WoW content
| creators goes along the lines of "WoW used to be a game that
| made you want to waste your time. Now it's a game that simply
| waste your time."
| meristohm wrote:
| As much as I've moved on from solo games (Atari 2600 &
| Commodore 64 & Nintendo scarified the seed, then it grew roots
| into Lemmings on my 386, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Command &
| Conquer, Diablo 2, Morrowind, World of Warcraft [after 2005 it
| was mostly a solo experience] and Hearthstone, for examples), I
| can think of better activities in hindsight. Games were largely
| an escape for me, as were books, but at least with many books
| there's more exposure to what it means to be human. Brainstem
| wrapped in the hydrostatic comfort of a videogame meant I could
| avoid observing my emotions and deciding what to do. I'm still
| learning to take responsibility for my own actions.
|
| I'm not alone in this relationship with games, nor am I
| necessarily representative in my experiences. I'm sharing as a
| caution to others for whom videogames are all-consuming.
|
| Healthier alternatives that scratch the itch for me are co-op
| games that aren't great solo (I only play with close friends
| now, as a way to keep in touch and work together), tabletop
| RPGs like Mouse Guard, and physically exploring outside, as I'm
| thoroughly an Explorer on Bartle's chart[0]. Also
| reading/listening to stories, playing music (another form of
| story that isn't so far removed from our physical existence as
| videogames are), playing physical games/sports,
| drawing/painting (but not in Skyrim, etc :), and gardening,
| etc. I won't bar my child from videogames, because they can
| backfire. Instead I'll try to model healthy use of the pass-
| time as a brief mental gear-switch.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > at least with many books there's more exposure to what it
| means to be human.
|
| Games _could_ do this as well as books. (And certainly not
| every book does it much). Occasionally games do. Mostly not.
| ezconnect wrote:
| When you were a kid you had a lot of extra time and video games
| fill that voids.
| pojzon wrote:
| As that kid I now regret not spending that time on something
| productive like reading interesting books or having a unique
| hobby (carving/skating/guitar etc)
|
| Now I dont have time for anything and reflecting at that void
| space - it was filled with garbage - like running pokemon
| yellow 7 times in a row.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Hmm, my problem with Dark Souls like games is mostly that it
| becomes easy when you understand the mechanics, but immediately
| also starts to be annoying because now your biggest enemy is
| timing issues and enemies just materializing behind you.
| swman wrote:
| 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'd always refuse
| and prefer to play some MMO and get high level loot there.
| Personally, the people I used to play some MMOs with were huge
| into merchanting and controlling the in-game economies, and I
| think there's a different complexity involved in running
| spreadsheets and following trends vs following what an addon
| tells you to press next. These guys were much older than me,
| and they taught me a lot about basic economics. Most games are
| designed to have people keep playing an endless grind, but
| purely focusing on in-game money and controlling the economy
| was not something the games would have designed by default.
|
| I think by default, most young people would benefit (esp mental
| health wise) by having their video game usage cut down. As I
| grow older, it is insane how cigarettes or gambling aren't the
| only addictive things. Kids are exposed to it from a young age
| by trading their time for something meaningless. And I'd argue
| that people like you and me who feel they learned problem
| solving or how economies work (through gaming as kids) are
| quite rare.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| If you want to get your message across to these types of
| people, you should first consider MMOs IRL. The friends, the
| responsibility, the schedules, and the socio-political skills
| are all very real.
|
| It's better to refer to hiking, etc as AFK.
|
| Credentials: I grew up on 40+ hours a week of video games.
| I've played more than a year worth of screen time in World of
| Warcraft, I've gotten a Bachelors of Computer Engineering,
| and worked at Amazon for 8 years.
|
| Meanwhile, I'll tell you first hand, playing WoW from 16 to
| 19 prepared me more for being successful and getting promoted
| at Amazon than my 4 years of university.
| bluishgreen wrote:
| This is hacker news self selection talking. The filter: The
| few who found computer science through gaming and made a
| cushion of a life which let's us the time luxury to post on
| an online forum in the middle of a Monday(at least it is
| the middle of a Monday for me). Meanwhile countless lives
| went into backbreaking labour work if that in the "below
| the API" sort of uber and amazon delivery work. These lives
| and their stories will rarely be represented here. I am
| speaking for a friend who went into construction and got
| injured and is on disability at the age of 35. He said he
| could have made so much more of his life had he not played
| 24/7 video games for several of his most precious formative
| years during high-school and early college (of which he
| dropped out).
| TillE wrote:
| "Gaming addiction" is 99% depression and similar disorders.
| It's just not a thing on its own, it's a symptom.
| m4eta wrote:
| Undervalued comment that doesn't vibe with mainstreams
| interpretation of "gaming addiction." I only became
| "addicted" after both my parents almost died of medical
| conditions. It's easier to write it off as "gaming
| addiction" in the same way certain drugs are "gateway
| drugs."
| caddemon wrote:
| The vast majority of depressed people do not demonstrate
| symptoms of gaming addiction. Even if one were to accept
| the argument that gaming addiction is always caused by
| underlying depression, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be
| considered separately from garden variety depression -
| there is often a nasty positive feedback loop between
| depressive symptoms and addictive symptoms. Besides,
| psychiatry in general needs to be increasing the precision
| of its definitions if we are going to get anywhere with new
| treatments.
|
| Ironically, depression is often caused by other underlying
| disorders (e.g. Autism), yet if the symptoms are met there
| will be a comorbid diagnosis, rather than saying that
| depression is just a symptom. It can be difficult to
| disentangle cause and effect for a lot of comorbid
| diagnoses, and also many existing treatments address
| symptoms rather than causes. So the distinction you are
| making hardly exists in the field at large (at this time).
|
| As for the deeper question, "could an otherwise healthy
| person develop gaming addiction?", I'm inclined to answer
| yes. It of course depends on how you define "otherwise
| healthy", as I'm sure we could identify genetic risk
| factors for gaming addiction, and I bet they will correlate
| with risk factors for addiction, ADHD, etc. However I've
| certainly seen people who were functioning well but perhaps
| a bit bored at school/work or a bit anxious in social
| situations take a complete nose dive when they got hooked
| on the "right" game.
|
| I'm curious if you would say the same thing about gambling
| addiction?
|
| Edit: just to add I am 100% against anything like what
| China is doing. I think we need more resources to help
| those who are spending more time gaming than they would
| like, which involves recognizing it as a legitimate issue.
| I also wouldn't mind some restrictions on the tactics game
| companies can take to make their games addictive, although
| the details of that would require careful consideration.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Was this Runescape per chance?
| swman wrote:
| Runescape and World of Warcraft :)
|
| I learned about contracts and hiring people when I was a 9
| year old running a lobster fishing company with contractors
| haha.
| jliptzin wrote:
| If someone is putting off other important things in their
| life to play video games then that's definitely a problem.
| However, if people want to set aside 100% of their free time
| to play video games, I don't think that's any worse than
| other things people do with their time that we (as a society)
| hold in high regard such as becoming a chess grandmaster,
| practicing violin 12 hours / day, watching football games
| nonstop, etc. None of these things are actually "productive,"
| the sole purpose is to spend time having fun.
| meristohm wrote:
| South Korea has built a collective sense of value around
| Starcraft, but it feels too far removed from meatspace
| where we will likely occupy for a long time yet. Music
| seems more valuable, along with the ability to tell a good
| story. Sometimes they overlap. I've been enjoying Fire Draw
| Near, a podcast by Ian Lynch about the folk-music tradition
| of Ireland. "Work, Rest, Play, Die" by The Subhumans has
| melodic roots in an old tune, and he makes similar
| connections with "One" by Metallica.
|
| A value-test I use is: "how useful/feasible is this
| activity if I don't have a computer or similar technology
| that is predicated on significant infrastructure?"
|
| Telling stories, playing physical games, making music (with
| our bodies, at least; humming, whistling, drumming,
| singing); these are elegant, as in = depth / complexity
| (per James Portnoy of Extra Credits, RE games).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _A value-test I use is: "how useful /feasible is this
| activity if I don't have a computer or similar technology
| that is predicated on significant infrastructure?"_
|
| That would discount most hugely important activities
| like, say, _medicine_. In general, I don 't think testing
| against dependency on modern infrastructure is useful,
| except when you're preparing for a post-apocalyptic
| world.
| pmontra wrote:
| By the way, is playing chess online or against a local AI
| regarded as a video game or is there an exemption for
| traditional games? For sure Chinese professional weiqi (go)
| players played a lot of games online when they were younger
| than 18.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Struggling to come up with a logical counter argument but
| learning a musical instrument is deeply satisfy as is
| listening to someone live who is good. Also maybe just in
| terms of being attractive to other people saying you are a
| level 122 mage in world of ever crack does not quite have
| the same allure as being able to captivate a room with your
| piano playing.
|
| Edit when I was about 12 I started playing the guitar non
| stop, I remember clearly thinking to myself this is way
| better than playing the super nes. I didn't touch games for
| another five years, I gave Goldeneye a go at a friend's
| house and reignighted that addiction.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is a real difference between the two. The primary
| goal of playing an instrument is to make something that
| sounds good. The goals of video games are generally
| manufactured.
|
| The exception are games like Minecraft. But if someone
| builds a computer in Minecraft or finishes a beautiful
| build that can actually be captivating to people that
| don't play it.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I play piano too, and also find it deeply satisfying but
| I also have friends who find playing video games deeply
| satisfying and I don't think one is worse than the other.
| As I am not a professional musician at the end of the day
| I only do it for my own enjoyment and if viewed through
| the lens of "productivity" it is a complete waste of
| time, anyone could just find the songs I play on spotify,
| played by someone far better than me.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Also maybe just in terms of being attractive to other
| people saying you are a level 122 mage in world of ever
| crack does not quite have the same allure as being able
| to captivate a room with your piano playing.
|
| That is really the main gist of it, women don't care much
| about video gaming and therefore society condemns it.
|
| Men on the other hand will probably be way more excited
| about your skills and endeavours in a video game than
| your ability to play piano, you can listen to the best
| pianists in the world at any time but sharing stories and
| thoughts about games is something you need friends for.
| Evidence: There are tons of discussions about games and
| gaming everywhere, in youtube channels, outside
| classrooms etc, while basically nobody talks about how
| piano practice went. Piano is good to show that you are
| fit and attract a mate, it isn't good to make friends.
| And therefore piano is seen as a noble hobby while gaming
| is seen as a waste of time.
|
| Even listening to music is seen as better than gaming, so
| the mastery or creative or productive aspects has nothing
| to do with it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not really about women. The levels in video games
| are manufactured goals. Making music sound good is an
| innate goal. In the same way making a beautiful build in
| Minecraft is also an innate goal and so is finding a
| creative way to optimize your factory in Factorio, which
| is why that's a lot more impressive to people outside the
| game than becoming a level 121 mage.
| Jensson wrote:
| There is no difference really, becoming level 121 isn't a
| difficulty goal and doesn't matter but getting into
| masters league in Starcraft or similar will impress a ton
| of people since it is really hard. Similarly nobody will
| care about you spending a year learning Piano if can't
| play anything decent afterwards. And most people who
| practice instruments don't learn how to play well so
| their efforts were in vain, and unlike the level 121 mage
| they didn't even have fun doing it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Getting into master's league on StarCraft is only
| impressive to people who play StarCraft. Being able to
| play beautiful songs on the piano is impressive to
| everyone.
|
| You're comparing achieving a goal to working towards it.
| It will take roughly three to four years to reach
| master's league on StarCraft for even talented people.
| Meanwhile, almost everyone can play the piano or the
| guitar well enough to impress laypeople after 2 years of
| lesser daily effort.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Meanwhile, almost everyone can play the piano or the
| guitar well enough to impress laypeople after 2 years of
| lesser daily effort.
|
| I don't see this. Lots of kids were forced to learn an
| instrument but I don't know many who plays an instrument
| well enough that anyone would want to listen to them.
| Sure people get a bit impressed that you can play
| anything at all, but it isn't like they find it enjoyable
| to listen to it.
|
| > Getting into master's league on StarCraft is only
| impressive to people who play StarCraft
|
| This isn't true, most gamers who are loosely aware of
| what StarCraft is would be very impressed. Like people
| read articles about starcraft pros and talked about how
| impressive/insane those were without ever playing the
| game. Being really good at any game at all will impress a
| lot of people and especially so for the more famous ones.
|
| But of course they would just be impressed and end it at
| that. Similarly being able to play piano really well
| would just impress people, very few actually wants to
| listen to piano music as an activity. Piano might impress
| a few more, but I doubt it would make you more friends
| and conversations than being good at Starcraft, at least
| among young men. And if we instead take some more popular
| game today like Fortnite then 100% being good at Fortnite
| will be way more important for your male social life than
| being good at an instrument.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Kids that are forced to do piano once a day do not expend
| anywhere near the effort that someone trying to get to
| master's league on StarCraft does.
|
| It's not true that few people want to listen to someone's
| music as an activity. Just go to most parties where
| someone can play the guitar or piano well and if there is
| such an instrument you'll see people play them. Happens
| very often in my friend groups.
| Jensson wrote:
| A guy playing guitar surrounded by women, yes that is
| even a meme, but I've never seen that happen at a party
| with mostly men nor have I seen a woman play an
| instrument at a party. It seems to mainly be a way for
| men to demonstrate value to women. There are of course
| other situations, but this is what I've seen and this is
| what most of the internet have seen since it is even a
| meme as I said. Example of guitar guy meme:
|
| https://everythreeweekly.com/2013/12/that-guy-who-brings-
| aco...
|
| Another example:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/starterpacks/comments/76k1c0/guy
| _th...
|
| To me it doesn't look like people appreciate them, at
| least not the men.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No, not surrounded by women. Just guys, one or two with a
| guitar, playing music while the rest sing along.
| Sometimes next to a campfire with beers in hand. It's
| genuinely very fun.
|
| I'm sure some people try to force it and it gets
| annoying. Humans love being musical in groups though and
| always have.
| ohyes wrote:
| As a man, I don't want to hear about your video-game
| exploits either. I play, but I definitely don't want to
| define my personality or hear/tell stories about it.
|
| I think the difference is that a video-game is (as you
| said and viewed by me at least) as mostly consumptive
| rather than creative or constructive. I'm playing a game
| I know I'm dicking around and wasting time, the same as
| if I'm watching a movie or (even) reading a book for fun.
|
| I'd say that some games are more constructive, like
| Minecraft or other games where you're building something
| or creating a story yourself... but I think what's being
| targeted is largely RNG lootbox online grind games.
| There's also an argument that top tier professional
| gaming isn't really that much different than being good
| at some other sport... and that's kind of an unfortunate
| side-effect.
|
| The title is a bit misleading as there's no provision for
| 'offline' games.
|
| Culturally for me... regulating media time seems like a
| parent's responsibility, and maybe this does give parents
| the tools to do that as the child could use their
| parent's account with their permission fairly easily.
|
| I'd be against a similar thing where I live, but as I am
| not a Chinese citizen nor do I plan on living there, I
| can't say my opinion is worth much.
|
| However, I think people are making this out to be much
| worse than it is as there's (for a long time) been a
| provision that children under a certain age can't sign up
| for online accounts (in the US) without a parent's
| explicit permission (with the implication that that the
| parent takes responsibility for monitoring the child's
| activity). This makes that implication more explicit as
| the child must use the parent's account most of the time.
|
| This is one way of solving the 'online games have
| predatory practices against children / teens,' I don't
| think this is how I'd solve it, but again, not really my
| business.
| true_religion wrote:
| So I ski. I don't really define my life or personality
| around skiing, but I would be a little miffed if I could
| only ski for 3 hours a week in the winter because the
| government thinks I'm not being productive enough.
|
| For children, it's common to participate in sports for
| way more than 3 hours a week, and yet the government does
| not feel inclined to involve itself there.
|
| Allowing leisure time to be dictated by the government is
| not a good path to go down.
|
| No matter the health benefits, allowing people to go down
| a suboptimal path that makes them happier is the essence
| of a free society.
| xtian wrote:
| Actually the Chinese government is cracking down on
| excessive homework and after-school tutoring programs
| since they create an overly competitive academic
| environment and prevent kids from participating in
| activities like sports. So they are getting involved
| there. https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/chinas-private-
| tutor-ban-kills...
| rabite wrote:
| > Piano is good to show that you are fit and attract a
| mate, it isn't good to make friends. And therefore piano
| is seen as a noble hobby while gaming is seen as a waste
| of time.
|
| I met two young women once who played Soul Calibur
| obsessively. I visited their house once and they asked if
| I wanted to play and I beat them both with my Voldo. They
| could not win a single round. So they spent a couple
| weeks really trying hard, reading Shoryuken forums,
| watching top tier players, really doing their best to
| really show me up. Then they invited me back again, and I
| promptly handed their asses to them a second time. Then I
| impregnated the hotter one.
|
| Women in the tail end of millennials and zoomers do play
| video games in fair numbers. I'm an early millennial
| (born in 85) and it was not a cool thing to be be good at
| games when I was in high school, but it is now. Streamers
| have done wonders on this. Exhibiting competence and
| dominance in gaming can be a positive mating strategy, I
| got some wonderful children as proof.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| The difference, for me, is consumption vs production.
|
| If you spend tons of time learning an instrument, you
| will probably find yourself interesting in creating
| music. Maybe it's not going to be playing in a band, or
| recording albums. It might just be playing music around
| the campfire. But that is an activity in which you are
| producing something, bringing music into the world. I
| feel the same about any of "the arts". You're inherently
| going to be engaged in the act of creating something.
|
| With gaming, consumption is more the rule. You play a
| level, a campaign, a story. If you create something,
| bring something new into the world, it is most likely
| going to be external to the game (like the posters who
| mention that they built websites and utils for their
| favorite games).
|
| There are obviously exceptions on both sides. Games like
| Minecraft, Factorio, etc are obviously creative. Games
| like Roblox or Mario Maker allow people to create content
| and put it into the game. Game review videos, Twitch
| streaming, etc, allow people to build content with games
| at the center. These are creative/productive pursuits,
| and I think they have some inherent value (even if it's
| kind of a bummer that these creations are largely limited
| to being enjoyed within the game).
|
| As an exception on the musical side, you could, for
| example, learn guitar exclusively through Rocksmith, and
| only ever use your guitar as a controller for a game.
|
| I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with
| using your free time to do "consumptive" stuff. I enjoy
| gaming here and there. I listen to music. I watch TV. But
| for me personally, I find that I get a lot more
| satisfaction out of "creative" activities.
|
| One last point - you get good at what you spend your time
| doing. I tend to really enjoy games that ask a lot of
| skill from their players - roguelikes, tight platformers,
| Souls games, Doom on nightmare mode, etc. But when I
| finish a game, I no longer have any use for the skills I
| developed. Whereas skills I develop in the pursuit of
| something creative/productive can be used in all kinds of
| situations for the rest of my life.
|
| Edit: I started rambling and forgot the point. With all
| of this said - I would never want the government to limit
| how I spend my time. That's a job for parents when you're
| young, and it's a job for your own sense of what makes
| you happy when you're an adult. These kinds of lessons
| aren't things that can be downloaded into you from
| outside. Realizations about what makes a person fulfilled
| tend, in my experience, to come from within.
| jliptzin wrote:
| And if you personally don't care about being attractive
| to other people for a variety of reasons?
| JCharante wrote:
| 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 limits when you're trying to scrape
| mass amounts of data, validating inputs to guard against bad
| actors, reading api docs, etc all to help make more in-game
| currency by exploiting inefficiencies in the world market to
| make profits from trading or creating internal tools. I
| learned about chain of command, opsec, and dealing with HR
| within my "guild."
|
| Minecraft also helped to that regard with creating mods &
| server plugins for friends.
|
| Sadly I think these opportunities are decreasing with the
| shift to mobile gaming. How are you supposed to mod a mobile
| game? How are you supposed to open the game's jar file and
| overwrite some files when you can't modify the download from
| the iOS store? How are you supposed to play with spreadsheets
| on an ipad?
|
| I can see how my unhealthy 8-9hr/day addiction during my
| teens could have turned out terrible if I was born in this
| current generation. Thankfully it built a good foundation for
| a career.
|
| I don't get kids these days with being able to play mindless
| mobile games. The closest thing to a game I have on my phone
| to a game is AnkiDroid (spaced repetition notecard software).
| jimbilly22 wrote:
| mixed feelings because it's under 18, and therefore you dont
| feel that freedom of self is as important? Would you feel
| differently if this was for adults?
| namelessoracle wrote:
| I think it's important to realize that children dont have the
| cognitive ability to resist certain things. Gambling skinner
| boxes are those things.
|
| I would be completely oky with my kid binging on the latest
| Mario or Mario Kart. I would love to see them playing an RPG.
|
| I dont want them playing Fortnite and other skinner box style
| games. They have teams designed to addict kids.
|
| This probably sounds silly but i would be ok with a kid being
| "addicted" to something because its fun and enjoyable. But
| being addicted because a team of scientists designed it be
| maximally dopamine inducing doesnt seem ok to me. Maybe there
| is no difference at the end of the day.
|
| But it feels like the kind of games that Nintendo puts out
| and the kind of games that EA puts out are VERY different.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Kids don't play EA games, however Fortnite, CoD warzone,
| Roblox ...
| vmladenov wrote:
| Apex Legends is EA
| prpl wrote:
| Our biggest problem with Fortnite is that it's where the
| friends are so it's a way, probably the primary way, for
| them to socialize - especially as some friends are on
| different continents.
|
| I wish this wasn't the case, but fighting a network effect
| is hard as a parent.
| bserge wrote:
| I haven't played a good game in nearly a decade. I used to play
| them for the story, then it all became too grindy, trainers
| became moneymakers (yeah I used cheats, sue me, I played for
| fun), everything needs a fking Internet connection and
| anticheat software that does god knows what. Kinda sad.
| darknavi wrote:
| There are still plenty of non-garbage games if you wade out
| further than AAA.
|
| My friend group played Valheim a few months ago and it was
| spectacular (for the weekend anyways). It's a great game to
| lose your self in the environments and doesn't have any IAP
| rubbish.
| katbyte wrote:
| Even some AAA games have amazing story, but few and far
| between and a good number of the ones i'd point someone at
| are exclusive to ps4/ps5
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I haven't played recent games, but are they really more
| grindy than e.g. EverQuest or the NES Square/Enix games?
| Rapzid wrote:
| Most high-budget, high-profile games coming out these days
| are not grindy at out. I'm sure you can find grindy games
| within certain genre niches, but there are good not-very-
| grindy games in just about every genre right now AFAIK.
|
| Unless the genre is grindy, micro-payment games in which
| case... Consider not playing them.
| Jensson wrote:
| If you want to unlock everything without spending real
| money, then yes they are often by far more grindy.
| Companies realized that putting huge grinds which you can
| pay to skip is by far the best way to make money from games
| so today this is in most games. This is the modern slot
| machine equivalent.
| tapoxi wrote:
| There's plenty of exceptional story-based games out there.
| Personally I loved The Last of Us Part II last year, which
| has none of the issues you mentioned above. I'm currently
| playing Disco Elysium, which I also highly recommend.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to find free cheat engine tables for any
| single player game for free. Paid cheats are really multi-
| player things, where you really shouldn't be cheating anyway
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I highly recommend you dive into the indie and small-medium
| sized publisher world. There are a lot of games out there
| made by passionate individuals who are succeeding at creating
| enjoyable experiences. There are great stories, beautiful
| art, and interesting gameplay. You just have to dive a little
| deeper to find it.
| hkt wrote:
| I can strongly recommend mining old 90s titles. Homeworld
| remains the best RTS I've ever played by miles and that's
| from 1997 or so.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh yeah, I have food memories of it. Nexus the Jupiter
| Incident was also great.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| You have to differentiate real games from casino games. Many
| popular games have a substantial casino element and are
| basically skinners boxes and need to be controlled like casino
| games. I saw job postings a little while ago for mobile games
| that require experience making slot machines
|
| There are a lot of games that fall into grey areas, possibly
| accidentally, and those are harder to deal with. Loot boxes and
| mmos are so obviously gambling that I don't even know what to
| say
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Not knowing much about the great firewall, but taking in
| context from the article, it seems like they'd only really be
| able to limit "modern" games, which are always connected.
|
| If you can somehow get your hands on an SNES and FF6 cart, or
| (more likely) figure out how to get an emulator and ROM to your
| computer, no one will be the wiser. So, if anything, this will
| be a boon to older console games.
| victor106 wrote:
| The feelings you (I have the same feelings about his as you do)
| have about this are at an individual level.
|
| State mandating how much time someone should spend doing a
| particular activity is a totally different topic.
|
| Even though I agree with the overall intention of this rule/law
| I vehemently oppose a state imposing such restrictions.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| On top of the fact no kid is every going to be legally liable
| for the breach and therefore no overly unfair oppression is
| applied on them, you say "someone", but kids have to be
| taught how to become someone.
|
| Look it's clear it's not their fault the parents are so busy
| and exhausted by the rat race they cant handle properly their
| only child they made under family pressure. The gov regulates
| the consequence of years of inaction while trying to fix the
| root cause maybe.
|
| I live in China, I m happy kids waste their intelligence and
| tuition fee on addictive lootboxes game, but mine, ill be way
| more strict than the government. No way he gets exposed to
| this kind of shit. Whatever it takes.
|
| My parents threw the computer out when they saw me at 12
| playing (addictive for the time but nowhere near what they
| have now) online games, which forced me to read because
| nothing else, well if that s what it takes, that s what it
| takes.
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| But do you really not know anyone who plays video games who
| is as successful as you are?
| welshwelsh wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about whether or not restricting a
| child's video game usage is a good idea.
|
| However, I think that the state imposing these restrictions
| is vastly superior to having parents impose the same
| restrictions. The amount of time a kid is allowed to play
| games should not be related to what family they happen to be
| part of or which parents they happen to have.
| beaunative wrote:
| Technically, the state doesn't place restrictions on the
| kids, which is legally impossible, they place restrictions on
| the digital entertainment business where they are required to
| allow entry for kid for no longer than said duration.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Technically, the state doesn't place restrictions on the
| kids, which is legally impossible,
|
| What makes that legally impossible in China? ( _edit_ or do
| you just mean hard to enforce? I thought you meant
| something different by "legally impossible", I may have
| misunderstood).
| ummwhat wrote:
| The hills are high and the emperor is far away.
| beaunative wrote:
| Kids can't be criminally punished/sued, not for things
| like these.
|
| Kids can be sued for damages to others which ultimately
| their parents/guardians would be required to pay which
| doesn't exist in this case.
|
| This is similar to how age restriction for alcohol is
| enforced in the US, interestingly, age restriction on
| alcohol consumption wasn't enforced in China, though made
| into law.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| thanks!
| danudey wrote:
| My 6yo son really, really wanted to play Breath of the Wild. He
| loves Zelda, my wife loves Zelda, my best friend's girlfriend
| is over the moon with Zelda, etc. I always played Link in Mario
| Kart, to the point where, when he was 2 or 3, he was in Best
| Buy with my wife and saw a Breath of the Wild Switch case and
| said "is daddy!"
|
| Of course, after a few requests a year and a bit ago, my wife
| had to give him an ultimatum: "I'm not going to come over here
| every time there's words. If you want to play this game, you
| have to read it yourself."
|
| Apparently, it worked; he's about to go into Grade 2 but
| already has incredibly strong reading skills, including about a
| grade 2.5 reading level in French (we're English-speakers but
| he's in French immersion).
|
| I didn't like how much Switch he was playing last year when the
| pandemic started and schools closed, but he wouldn't have
| learned to read nearly as fast if it weren't for Breath of the
| Wild. He seems to be well ahead of his classmates, and he's
| only getting stronger (and more independent as a result) as
| time goes by.
|
| We're pretty particular about what games he plays, but the ones
| he's interested in typically have a substantial amount of
| reading involved (compared to, say, Doom when I was a
| teenager).
|
| I'm excited that he'll be able to (if not willing to) play my
| old favorites; Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of
| Mana, to name a few. I guess we'll see if he's interested.
| cvdub wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| auiya wrote:
| There's PLENTY of jank in Dark Souls, don't kid yourself.
| fullstop wrote:
| I wouldn't say 100% your fault. I'm going to blame the camera
| for a few of my deaths!
| tgv wrote:
| Anyone want to argue why this would be bad, apart from
| restricting freedom?
|
| BTW, nothing in the article about limits on TikTok or YouTube or
| whathaveyougot. That's as much opium as gaming, IMO.
| superkuh wrote:
| I really hate when people compare normal environmental stimuli
| that come in through our senses to highly addictive drugs that
| directly modulate our brain's mechanisms of determining
| salience and want.
|
| It's damaging to perpetuate this no matter how common of a new
| wives tale it is.
| TroisM wrote:
| > It's damaging to perpetuate this no matter how common of a
| new wives tale it is.
|
| Probably not
| rehitman wrote:
| Freedom is extremly important. The point here is not that Video
| game is good or bad or how many hours of it is OKay. The point
| is this is something that must be enforced at family level, or
| at most at school level. Government forcing this for more than
| a billion people is just wrong and most likely hurt them in the
| long run. For example, Who said those days are okay, maybe
| someone has to work on Weekend. Maybe some kid function better
| if she plays an hour of game at lunch time. Everyone is
| different. China has done similar things few decades ago in
| other industries (e.g., enforcing farming policies). The result
| was millions of people starve to death.
| duxup wrote:
| Probably for the exact reason you note.
|
| The idea here is they should be doing something better with
| their time right?
|
| But as you note no limits on other time eating activities with
| their own negative effects.
|
| I think it would be better to use a carrot here and hopefully
| encourage / try to encourage better choices... or even if they
| want to target games just outlaw the specifics of the problem,
| loot boxes, and so on.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Anyone want to argue why this would be bad, apart from
| restricting freedom?
|
| Why would it be good? I played a lot of computer games as a kid
| and loved it. Why should it be restricted to just 3 hours a
| week? So children can grow up to be really good cogs in the
| system, thinking what politicians want them to think, working a
| "proper" job, having exactly as much children as party wants
| them to have in that particular period, etc.?
| moogly wrote:
| Deathknell for esports.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Maybe the opposite. China isn't banning kids from _watching
| people_ play video games. Substitute drug.
| moogly wrote:
| Uh, I'm talking about _competing_ , not just _spectating_.
|
| Like how, currently, a Chinese team (PSG.LGD) is the
| favourite to win The International in Dota2 in a month's
| time (prize pool: 40 million dollars).
| kcb wrote:
| Where will the esport players come from?
| koboll wrote:
| Lots of reasons this might be a shortsighted, footgun decision.
| Kids might use drinking or other more actually-damaging vices
| as substitute goods. Has the potential to generate mass
| resentment and foment agitation for political freedom. Et
| cetera.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Other than restricting freedom? I do not see a downside. In
| fact- it makes me nervous. That's a lot more time to be
| productive compared to their western counterparts.
|
| And I think gaming in moderation is very positive.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > apart from restricting freedom?
|
| Do you need any more than that? From the western point of view
| this is the apex reason.
|
| EDIT: To add - it is true in the west that minors don't enjoy
| all the same freedoms as adults. However for most things those
| decisions are made by the parents and not the state.
| [deleted]
| allannienhuis wrote:
| Not saying this is a good thing (in fact I think it's a silly
| rule), but: kids in the western world have their 'freedoms'
| restricted all of the time. There are plenty of things that
| kids can't participate in or see. Those are mandated by
| various levels of the state, for the safety/benefit of the
| child (ostensibly).
|
| And parents are constantly adjusting the things their kids
| can or can't do, often requiring kids to ask permission to do
| most things. Its a way of protecting them from their immature
| decision making ability (with functional parents anyway).
|
| So I think the aversion is more based on the surprise that it
| seems to go 'further' than we'd expect in the west, and
| politics/culture turns that into something to criticize the
| CPC (or whatever governing body responsible) for because
| COMMUNISTS!!!
| Xplune13 wrote:
| The main problem here is shoehorning of government between
| people's lives. Every parent has their own way of doing
| things. Some parents may allow kids to play longer, some
| may not but government should not be involved in this
| matter.
|
| I don't think this is a case of "because..... communists".
| This move is rightly criticized in my opinion.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > government should not be involved in this matter.
|
| But this is just a declaration, not an argument (there's
| nothing wrong with that.) Should parents be able to let
| their children smoke or do porn?
| gmadsen wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that US parents do have the ability to
| give their children tobacco and porn. They just can't
| purchase it themselves
| ragnarok451 wrote:
| Depends on the state but at least in TX parents would be
| liable for a fine if caught giving their children tobacco
| (https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/tobacco/regulatory.p
| hp). Of course that's not enforceable but it is a limit
| the state is attempting to create. Wrt porn the parent
| comment was referring to "creating" porn, which is
| certainly illegal for a parent to facilitate in the
| entire US
| hollerith wrote:
| Individual freedom might still be the most important
| organizing principle in the US, but in Western Europe?
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted, there's something to
| this comment. Western Europe is where Judeo-Christian
| values married up with Greek and Roman societal models and
| produced (yes, there are obvious exceptions like religion)
| democracy, free speech, and capitalism. I also understand
| that this particular statement is a blanket statement open
| to nuance and is partially incorrect, but it's mostly
| correct. However in very recent times (hate speech
| mandates) this seems to be changing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Just because you have one reason doesn't mean you shouldn't
| have others. There's nothing to discuss about whether it
| restricts freedom or not; not even the people who instituted
| the restriction would deny that it was a restriction.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Would you mind giving some examples of that? Sure I
| understand the classic "you can scream FIRE in a crowded
| theater" case, but what else are you thinking?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Here are a few things commonly limited to Western minors by
| the state or a reasonable proxy; alcohol, tobacco, movies,
| video games, being outside(curfew laws), pornography, music,
| fireworks, driving.
|
| And much like with this new Chinese law, many minors violate
| all of those restrictions often with parental approval.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| We restrict a _lot_ of freedoms for the under-18 crowd
| though.
|
| Purely in terms of freedom -- without arguing for any other
| pros and cons -- is this worse than mandatory school
| attendance, or not being able to vote, or take medical
| decisions for themselves, or whatever else kids cannot do
| these days.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| The big difference is that those decisions are pushed to
| the parents and not the state. Minors are not fully
| mentally equipped to make some of the decisions that adults
| have the right/ability to make.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Parents in many Western countries do not have the choice
| of what their child spends most of their day doing, as
| well as some medical procedures.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Parents don't get to decide whether their kids get to
| vote (or whether they go to school, in most of the west,
| without having to at least fill out some complicated
| forms or having to go to court.)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| There are economic reasons for this (most minors aren't
| mentally fully developed enough to make some life
| changing decisions such as in voting/medical
| decisions/etc.)
| ngngngng wrote:
| Do you have evidence that most adults are mentally
| developed enough for this?
| overgard wrote:
| Because play is important for children, and video games provide
| play? There's a WIDE variety of what you can find in video
| games, not all of them are casino like skinner boxes, many of
| them can provide good and even educational entertainment.
|
| I know for myself, the reason I work in tech is because of my
| love for video games as a kid got me into computers. Being a
| programmer is a huge blessing economically, and I never would
| have done it if I hadn't spent all that time lost in video
| games.
| floatboth wrote:
| Since this is aimed at online, it's probably aimed at casino
| style ones.
| overgard wrote:
| I think that's a fairly misinformed statement, there's a
| vast library of online multiplayer games that are not
| casino like in the least bit.
| floatboth wrote:
| Yeah, like, Quake 3/Live, CS 1.6, MTA/SAMP...
|
| Unfortunately even the current Counter-Strike incarnation
| has a fucking casino in it. Arguably more optional than
| in other games but still there.
| hn8788 wrote:
| It should be up to the parents, not the government. And like
| you said, it's banning one form of entertainment that is no
| worse than the others.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > It should be up to the parents, not the government.
|
| I mean, isn't this what Korean and Japan's policies
| effectively are as well? Doesn't seem to help much.
|
| Children were not raised in isolation with two parents for
| most of history, an entire community was looking out for them
| as well that was incapable of being overwhelmed with that
| responsibility partially owing to higher child/birth
| mortality rates. But now we've put the onus of rearing
| functioning adults on precisely two people whose own
| personality and parenting traits are widely variable to begin
| with, if not influenced by the side effects of this two
| parent only viewpoint themselves.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Unfortunately, especially in China, government is not the
| equivalent of tribal community.
|
| Government is instead made up of a tiny number of
| politicians who are even more poorly equipped to make such
| personal decisions for millions of children.
| obmelvin wrote:
| An obvious difference between many modern games and video
| platforms are the micro-transactions, which I think do clearly
| put them in a different category.
| npteljes wrote:
| And offline games. I was perfectly addicted with 0 internet,
| thank you very much. Although I do understand that the world
| wasn't ever-connected back then.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I would be shocked if that wasn't in the works, fwiw (YouTube
| obvious is banned, but whatever the native equivalent is).
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Anyone want to argue why this would be bad, apart from
| restricting freedom?
|
| Children don't have freedoms, they have whatever their parents
| decide they can have. As a child in the US, your parents can
| legally assault you and can send you to what is effectively
| prison ('military schoool,' but same concept). You rarely hear
| any complaints about this being a crisis.
|
| If parents in China want their kids playing more video games
| they can just create an account for them and it's business as
| usual. This is more of a signal from the top that excessive
| screen time for children isn't a thing that society approves
| of.
| jimbilly22 wrote:
| apart from freedom...just a little human right. no biggie.
| gwright wrote:
| I have no opinion on whether playing games for 3 or 5 or 8
| hours a week is good or bad for people under 18.
|
| I do feel like a government (never mind central government)
| having the power to legislate at that level of micro-management
| is very bad. There would seem to be absolutely no limiting
| principle to what is appropriate or not appropriate to be
| legislated if you accept this level of government oversight as
| acceptable.
| [deleted]
| brundolf wrote:
| The time I spent in virtual worlds as a child remains one of
| the most cherished experiences of my life. They brought me
| happiness at times when nothing else did. They stoked my
| imagination and gave me a sense of wonder. They were one of the
| few avenues I had for connecting with my peers. It wasn't some
| waste of time that I regret when I look back as an adult.
| tgv wrote:
| Reading did that for me.
|
| > They were one of the few avenues I had for connecting with
| my peers
|
| Three hours a week isn't much, but it doesn't have to be
| gaming to connect with people of your age, isn't it?
|
| > It wasn't some waste of time that I regret when I look back
| as an adult.
|
| I don't think it's what worries the Chinese government. Or
| me.
|
| I'm quite sure that e.g. a 1 hr/day limit would be a good
| thing. You can say "parents", but at one point children stop
| listening. Then what do you do?
| falcolas wrote:
| Reading books is not all that different from gaming from
| the point of view of value to a child's development. It's
| escapism, it's a much more solo activity than many online
| games today, and the primary skills it encourages - reading
| and imagination - is available in most games to one degree
| or another.
|
| To put another way, they could limit reading to 3 hours a
| week for mostly the same reasons.
| brundolf wrote:
| > Reading did that for me.
|
| Reading decidedly did not do that for me. I didn't have the
| attention span for/interest in most books.
|
| > but it doesn't have to be gaming to connect with people
| of your age, isn't it?
|
| Socializing was always difficult for me. Gaming was one of
| the few things I could mention and my peers would say "oh,
| me too!"
|
| > I'm quite sure that e.g. a 1 hr/day limit would be a good
| thing
|
| That would be more than twice the limit described
|
| > You can say "parents", but at one point children stop
| listening. Then what do you do?
|
| My parents actually did limit me to 30m/day on weekdays
| (they took the limits off on weekends). I don't know why
| you suggest that I could've simply ignored them (but
| somehow couldn't ignore a government mandate?).
|
| When I would reach my limit for the day I'd generally do
| what homework I had (fair enough), and then... do nothing.
| Mindlessly watch TV out of total boredom. Looking back, I'm
| not sure why they thought that was better.
|
| Anyway: the common theme for this and all other
| totalitarian ideas is that individuals are different people
| with different needs, and what's best for one isn't best
| for others.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I assume a government mandate would be controlled at the
| ISP level. Most parents aren't tech savy enough for that.
| As a child, I was easily able to hide playing games.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| I spent a lot of time hiding away in my room - up late on the
| internet, playing video games, reading books, listening to
| music - often the kind aimed at the alienated. I felt alone,
| like i didn't belong.
|
| Some of it was my personality, some of it was how my parents
| raised me. Some was how that was juxtaposed against the
| culture/environment i was raised into.
|
| My parents pushed a lot of sports and i grew out of it -
| favoring poetry ( that i didn't have thick enough skin to
| ever better myself at), dreaming of being a rock musician
| (see former), watching hours of scifi and fantasy.
|
| And i dunno. Now I'm 40. And all my life i've almost prided
| myself on my introversion, my anti-social aspects, my quirky,
| sometimes cynical view of the world, my constantly ability to
| not want to be locked into the major binaries and choices
| society sets out for you.
|
| And after coming down with severe anxiety.... something about
| it just flipped in me that made me realize how valuable human
| connection is.
|
| how much family matters. How much connections with your
| community does. Not some online community of people who only
| get in contexts you can easily block or mute.
|
| How much.. being outside in sunshine and nature and being
| active, matters.
|
| I look at this boring cyberpunk world i was a part of, and
| there's nothing there but isolation and depression. There's
| nothing there but bad habits preventing you from being your
| best, healthiest, happiest, you.
|
| And it's one of these things you don't realize....until
| something happens that forces you to need these things. Then
| you look back and be like.. would i ever be right where I'm
| at, right here, right now.. if i didn't do all this mentally
| unhealthy shit for 25+ years?
|
| There's lots of reasons i wasn't positively engaged with my
| peers - there's blame to go around to me, my folks, and even
| externally to just the way society was and increasingly is,
| but I take responsibility for my portion and i say my
| reaciton to it all was wrong.
|
| And don't want my kid getting lost in digital worlds (and
| jesus - it's so much scarier today that it was 20-25 years
| ago), hiding away, brooding to depressive and aggressive,
| mad-at-the-world music and basically being someone who's
| unreachable unless you're some underdog geek or "wrong crowd"
| peer.
| woah wrote:
| Honestly, it sounds like your current attitude is as
| extreme as your former one.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| I spent 25 years online. I'm now 40 with a family of my
| own.
|
| I don't have the time in the day to find some happy
| center. I'm happy to cut out video games and wasting my
| time online except for the odd Hacker News break while
| I'm at work.
|
| The pendulum might be swinging, but i have a lot less
| free time now than I used to and I chose to use it more
| precisely and with more conscious intent rather than just
| letting the hours waste away clicking around in a digital
| wonderland.
|
| If i want to read - then i make time for that. I make
| time for alone time, exercise, being outdoors. I make
| family time. I do this around work, taking my kid to
| sports events, school drop offs and pickups.
|
| I look back and see the 20k posts i made on Vbulletin
| forms and all the reddit accounts I had and all the hours
| logged on video games and it all just seems like a waste
| of life looking back..
|
| When i think about the things that enriched me, these
| things did not.
| brundolf wrote:
| If they didn't enrich you then they didn't enrich you,
| but don't overly project your own experience onto others.
| Many (not all) video games have been enriching and/or
| healing experiences for me personally.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Human beings are social creatures and it's a
| psychological need whether people recognize this or not -
| and this is still considering some of us are introverts
| and it takes more out of us to be social.
|
| 40-50+ years ago, all the way back to the dawn of man -
| so most of human history, this conversation would be
| completely irrelevant.
|
| Technology changes us an individuals and as a society,
| it's broken our bonds, ruined out communities, destroyed
| our connections to each other, increased rabid
| individualism - not just in the political sense but in
| the sense of consumer identities and lifestyle brands and
| hyper-specific cultural balkanization and what do we have
| to show for it?
|
| mass increases in anxiety and depression levels.
|
| The average high school student today has the anxiety
| levels of a person being seen by professionals for the
| disorder in the 90s.
|
| As a parent... you are going to project one way or
| another. I'll project the way that'll more than likely
| build a stronger, happier, more resilient child.
|
| This love affair with the people who give you likes and
| retweets being the only ones who really get you, is
| poison. Relating to digital worlds more than the real one
| - sitting around for hours upon hours "consooooomnig"
| digital goods from your phone or laptop, is not life.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm just saying bud, you're voicing some really black-
| and-white views that paint in broad strokes and are
| pulling together some pretty disparate things under an
| oversimplified umbrella. Good as your intentions may be,
| extremes and dogmas rarely help anyone to be happier or
| more resilient, especially children.
|
| I'd advise you to take a step back and unpack the baggage
| you clearly have around this stuff. Not just for your own
| sake.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I've had the same realisation aged 25. Reality is
| underrated, assuming you live in a nice place. That sadly
| isn't the case for everyone.
| brundolf wrote:
| I don't think it's helpful to "take pride in" introversion
| any more than it is to demonize it. Human connection is
| important, and so are many solitary activities. They aren't
| mutually-exclusive. And each of them can take many
| different forms.
| Kiro wrote:
| I feel the opposite. I'm a very social and active person
| but recently I've realized I don't enjoy it. I have been
| wasting my life on stuff I don't care about. Now I just
| want to sit inside and dive deep into this "boring
| cyberpunk world". I wish I came to this realization sooner.
| jacknews wrote:
| I'm quite happy for my kids to spend hours playing online
| when they are playing together with friends. They start up
| discord audio rooms or whatever and play as a team.
|
| Of course, playing with a ball in a field might be better,
| but, covid.
|
| I don't allow them to play single-player games so much,
| unless it's something original, story or experience-based.
| Undertale, Braid, Journey, etc.
|
| Certainly nothing 'infinite scrolling', with in-app purchase
| level-ups, etc, which are obviously just calculated to be
| addictive.
| falcolas wrote:
| > playing with a ball in a field might be better
|
| I categorize this as "maybe". If you're a physically fit
| child with good hand/eye coordination, playing ball is fun.
| If you're not, due to genetics, weight, or illness, it's
| closer to torment.
|
| Also, playing ball is almost always going to be competitive
| - there are no bots and only rarely cooperative objectives
| involved.
| brundolf wrote:
| For me it was just always boring. I played pee-wee sports
| for a few years and I spent most of the practices and
| games staring up at the sky daydreaming. I couldn't
| relate to my peers over their interest in it (though I
| did relate to some of them over Pokemon when we had water
| breaks)
| falcolas wrote:
| I'll agree with this. Being in left field was bo-ring. It
| was being up at bat, and knowing that I was going to rack
| up an "out" for our team, which was agonizing.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| > Of course, playing with a ball in a field might be
| better, but, covid.
|
| Depending on the kind of "ball", but your kid goes to
| school., no?
|
| that's way more dangerous than playing outside in the
| sunshine. from a covid perspective.
| brundolf wrote:
| I would probably ban my kids from playing anything with
| those gambling-style mechanics, yeah. I think it's a
| disgusting trend that's turning a wonderful medium into
| digital cigarettes. I might make an exception for something
| all their friends were playing together, but I wouldn't pay
| for any loot boxes.
|
| But I would caution against being too picky about single-
| player experiences. The most meaningful games for me were
| not generally story-based, they were "play-based".
| Exploring mechanics, exploring a world, seeing what might
| be possible, what might lie out there to be found. Zelda,
| Pokemon, etc. A game doesn't have to be a work of
| literature to be meaningful and worthwhile; children in
| particular benefit from play. I would cite Minecraft as a
| good modern example of this ethos (which can of course be
| played either alone or with others, and is valuable in both
| modes).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That is interesting. I have a family friend, 20-years old and
| in college, who has maybe 1 or 2 friends in real life. All
| others are online gaming friends that he's had for years.
| Never met them. Of course he's gaming all the time because of
| that social network.
|
| I wish I knew the implications to such people when they are
| older. Is it a good influence? bad influence? doesn't matter?
| I don't know. Do you have any insights?
| brundolf wrote:
| It wasn't even online for me as a child, it was just a
| common ground I had with others at school that served as an
| avenue for friendship (such avenues were uncommon for me)
|
| But I also know people like you describe, and I think
| that's perfectly legitimate too.
| zachlatta wrote:
| I think online friendships can be just as meaningful and
| important as real-life friendships. I know they were / are
| for me.
| bradlys wrote:
| Doesn't matter. Probably positive if anything.
|
| A lot of children don't hermit up and play video games
| because it's better than being with friends - it's because
| they don't have any friend options in real life.
|
| Where I grew up, I was shunned, bullied, and neglected by
| pretty much everyone. It became apparent I was actually
| quite social, funny, and pleasant to be around when I was
| online. I made a lot of friends quickly when I was online
| playing games. But in real life I struggled because I
| wasn't the right race, didn't look the right way, wasn't
| willing to throw out homophobic and racial slurs, and
| didn't enjoy the same activities as everyone else.
|
| I'm really surprised HN has such a myopic 80-year old take
| on video games. Must be because it's early still...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well yes that's true. But at the same time a lot of your
| potential real life friends are also going to be playing
| video games instead of being sociable in real life.
|
| I do empathize with you a lot having had a very similar
| experience in my youth. But ultimately finding people
| that were like me in real life was crucial.
| bradlys wrote:
| > I do empathize with you a lot having had a very similar
| experience in my youth. But ultimately finding people
| that were like me in real life was crucial.
|
| Sometimes it's better to accept that those people don't
| exist where you live. Where I grew up - they really
| didn't exist. I'm fortunate now to live in SV where my
| interests and what not align more - but in rural
| America... I do not exist. (People like me _leave_ that
| place)
|
| I went to small schools (<100 people per grade, sometimes
| less than 60). If you didn't make your friends in that
| group - SOL. There weren't other schools to make friends
| at, social activities for kids, etc. You were stuck with
| what you had at school and that's about it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I was in a very similar position. I didn't grow up in SV
| either and I went to an elementary school with 400
| students over 7 grades and a high school with 700
| students over 5-9 grades).
|
| It's probably because I'm younger than you but nowadays
| there are a lot more people like us thanks to the
| internet than there were before.
| willis936 wrote:
| The famous Rat Park [0] studies imply that addiction is
| caused by an unfulfilled life, not substances. Why ban
| video games or drugs when the thing that leads to addiction
| isn't being addressed? Treating a symptom won't solve
| anything.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
| exolymph wrote:
| Not reliable research alas: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-
| Utopia
| xeromal wrote:
| While it's hard to make large generalizations, some people
| just don't make friends easily in real life and gaming/the
| internet give them a means to be themselves without having
| to worry about being awkward so taking that away is almost
| the same as telling them to not make any friends.
|
| On the other hand, I've definitely seen an echo chamber
| effect where some people have negative growth socially due
| to the internet/gaming. E.G. The red pill or incel
| channels.
| scythe wrote:
| The biggest problem with this legislation seems to be not its
| intended target (youth gaming), but the fact that, since it is
| likely to be very difficult to enforce and a lot of kids will try
| to break the rules, it opens up a wide opportunity for selective
| enforcement - $opposition_politician lets his kids game too much,
| $foreign_company has ineffective age verification for their
| online servers, et cetera.
|
| With that said, I'm not surprised to find people in the West
| wondering what else we're going to do about "artificial
| addictions".
| honkycat wrote:
| Bad law, this basically kills the online gaming hobby for people
| under 18. I think there is a lot of value in online multiplayer
| games, personally. People aren't robots, they need a way to
| relax, and I find it an amazing way to have a bit of competition
| in my life when I struggle to fit in anything else.
|
| I watched an interview with David Harbor and he made a really
| amazing point. ( David is an avid poker player ): D&D is a lot
| like poker, in that it doesn't get REALLY good until you've been
| doing it so long that you get the feeling you should REALLY be
| doing something else.
|
| I feel the same way about gaming. I play a lot less anymore, and
| that is because the way to play a game is to dive in and really
| immerse yourself in it for a few hours straight.
|
| Hell, you can't even get warmed UP in an online FPS game in under
| an hour.
| Kiro wrote:
| There are already many restrictions imposed for people under 18.
| To circumvent them kids link their parents' QQ when gaming so
| don't know how much of an impact this will actually have.
| artur_makly wrote:
| Finally I have an official excuse to tell my 9yr old why he must
| curtail his addiction. "You want daddy to go to Chinese jail???"
| coolspot wrote:
| Rule #1 of parenting 2020+:
|
| "Don't stand in a way between a 9yo and Roblox"
|
| They will absolutely send you in jail rather than give up
| Roblox/MC/Youtube.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| To note, this only applies to online games. The restrictions are
| supposed to be server side only.
| falcolas wrote:
| Tencent is implementing facial recognition on phones to enforce
| this. I don't believe we can realistically claim it's server-
| side only.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/business/video-game-facia...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The facial recognition is in order to make sure the user of
| the game corresponds to the ID they logged in with. It still
| only applies to online videogames.
| falcolas wrote:
| Mobile games, actually. No specific word of whether they
| have to be online games (whose definition is pretty vague
| these days - singleplayer games like Diablo III require a
| login and internet connection to play singleplayer).
|
| > The new functions will initially be used on around 60
| mobile games, including the massively popular "Honor of
| Kings" multiplayer battle game, which boasts over 100
| million daily users.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If you read the article, you will see that the ID is
| specifically to link users to the already existing player
| ID verification system. That system applies only to
| online games. Purely single player games are exempted
| from the ID system, so the facial recognition system is
| not useful.
|
| Diablo III is a bad example in that it's actually an
| online multiplayer game now. It didn't use to be, but I
| think it was planned all along.
|
| Beyond that if it means kids won't play online-only
| single player games with all of the economic impacts that
| has on these games I think that's a very different thing.
| But that's not actually the case rn.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Diablo III is a bad example in that it's actually an
| online multiplayer game now. It didn't use to be, but I
| think it was planned all along.
|
| Multiplayer has always been included with D3. And
| singleplayer mode still exists. But, let me add a
| different examples.
|
| Doom Eternal's campaign can be played offline, but only
| after you've signed into your account.
|
| Genshin Impact is online only, even though you can play
| it alone.
|
| AFK Arena, a mobile singleplayer-only game, requires you
| to be online.
|
| Crash Bandicoot 4, a singleplayer-only game, requires you
| to be online.
|
| > That system applies only to online games.
|
| I don't know a lot about the system, so you are likely
| right. But I have to ask, is there anything that
| restricts it to multiplayer online games only - aside
| from the current policy?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Doom Eternal would be excluded, unless you're connected
| all the time.
|
| Point taken for all of the others. The law will force
| them to provide a true single player mode, which is good.
|
| As far as single player games, it's technically
| infeasible. People will just pirate games and nothing can
| be done about that.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Haven't we been through at least two generations of ubiquitous
| video games in the west? Is society noticeably different?
| pphysch wrote:
| Sexual inactivity among males 22-35 has skyrocketed since the
| late 00s when social media and online games started getting
| really big. From ~7% to ~14% [1]. Similar explosion in
| depression/self-harm among both sexes.
|
| [1] - https://ifstudies.org/blog/male-sexlessness-is-rising-
| but-no...
| saxonww wrote:
| Are you kidding? Look at the US in 1980 vs. now. There has been
| a lot of societal change. I don't think it has much to do with
| video games, though.
|
| Nationwide BBSes (Compuserv, AOL, etc.) and then the Internet
| have made or accelerated societal change. People can congregate
| and share information at a scale that wasn't feasible before,
| and in particular marginalized groups have found strength in
| numbers that just wasn't possible before.
|
| I think the 24 hour television news cycle (and the advertising
| it takes to support it) has also had more of an impact than
| games.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Technology has progressed, obviously, but I don't see any
| reason to assume video game addiction has had any real
| impact.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| China is also cracking down on the kpop/jpop style in the
| entertainment industry as well.
|
| https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=...
| justicezyx wrote:
| It's about banning feminine characters and ultra youth idols.
| rank0 wrote:
| 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?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I'm not in favor at all - but it doesn't seem like a massive
| overstep.
|
| I honestly don't see what the big difference is between online
| games and weed.
|
| It doesn't really seem off-brand for governments these days to
| be making these kinds of decisions.
|
| I mean, if they decided to make coffee illegal for kids - yeah,
| that seems dumb, right? But is that REALLY that big of a
| difference than making tobacco illegal?
|
| I just don't see a huge difference with online gaming.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Is this...are you being serious?
| t-writescode wrote:
| So, in the US, we have freedom to assemble and associate with
| other people. Some people are turning to VR Chat and MMOs to
| congregate. This is especially a thing during a pandemic when
| we can't physically come together to do things.
|
| Video games aren't all mindless watching of bibs and bobs and
| dodads and shinies. They're often organized groups of social
| activity.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| 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 China - lifting
| millions and billions of people out of poverty is an
| achievement that shouldn't be denied because they're an
| authoritarian government.
| president wrote:
| > 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.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| It's a fairly valid argument imo. The idea that liberal
| ideals is the best way to organize markets is good - but
| you can't just ignore the outliers.
|
| If it was easy to fixing it - every country that has been
| colonized should be at least middle income by now right?
| powerapple wrote:
| A good policy is a good policy, a bad policy is a bad policy,
| how hard to think this way. People are not talking about great
| firewall. So next time when people talking about election in
| US, I should say "killing Iraqis is perfectly fine as well"?
| xster wrote:
| I'd also be careful with the labels based just around the
| flavor of authoritarianism you're used to for all your life.
| FWIW, drinking age is generally customary rather than codified
| in practice in China, as is public drinking.
| sk2020 wrote:
| I've skimmed the comments with the same dismay until I read
| yours. The lack of concern about using coercive force to
| control how people dispose of their leisure time is disturbing
| to say the least. Maybe that over a billion people out there
| who are living with the same freedom as inmates in a minimum
| security prison in the US should be a more pressing issue than
| the nuances of the normative value of video games.
|
| It does seem like there has been a lot of news lately about
| curious social engineering policies coming out of China. I
| wonder if the politburo suspects trouble.
| toxik wrote:
| A lot of these people would much rather live in what you
| disparagingly call a minimum security prison than the
| comparative anarchy of what we call freedom. Freedom to get
| stabbed if I don't give the junkie my belongings.
|
| I don't think well of the CCP for many reasons but please,
| this is a very superficial understanding of China on display.
| It seems more well suited to Soviet about half a century ago.
| actacntact wrote:
| Really? I can't name a democratic government that _doesn 't_
| restrict/ban things they consider harmful to minors. If the CCP
| or Sweden or whomever else has come to the conclusion that the
| "excessive modern online gaming" is tantamount to gambling,
| it's a reflection on their values / evaluations (or even just
| the differing characteristics of popular games in their
| country), not the relative reach/control exhibited by their
| governmental system.
|
| > It's about more than just online games. It's about control.
|
| Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Politics and governance is
| about compromise and deciding where to draw lines, not
| slippery-slope absolutism about vague ideals and fervent dogmas
| that are all-too-easily impinged.
|
| > I'm sure the great firewall is perfectly fine as well?
|
| If you can't differentiate between "control of information and
| discourse across the entire population" and "control of how
| long (not even 'whether or not') minors can play online
| videogames" that's your problem.
| ip26 wrote:
| _It's about more than just online games. It's about control_
|
| Isn't this more likely to provoke the opposite? Addictive time-
| wasters are an _aid_ to authoritarian government.
|
| Assuming this policy is effectively enforced, Chinese youth
| suddenly have a lot more free time on their hands.
| solatic wrote:
| > Addictive time-wasters are an aid to authoritarian
| government.
|
| They're an aid to control; however, the government has
| interests apart from control. If the government feels that it
| has sufficient control, but worries about economic output, it
| may prioritize economics over control. Ultimately government
| needs to achieve both.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This isn't any more authoritarian than the US banning alcohol
| and cannabis for people under 21. At least China is allowing
| kids to do a little bit of gaming. Meanwhile in the US young
| adults and children are outright forbidden from intoxicating
| substances (as opposed to many European countries where teens
| can buy low-alcohol beverages.)
| jackconsidine wrote:
| Weed is illegal in China and they do have a drinking age
| there, albeit 18 not 21, so this seems like a false
| equivalency.
| beaunative wrote:
| Drinking age in China exist only on paper, and it doesn't
| exist for most people. If you call the police in China for
| drinkning age violation, they would probably think you are
| insane. Hardly can be said in the US.
| skystarman wrote:
| Alcohol has been scientifically proven to cause long-term
| health consequences to children. It is also an incredibly
| addictive and dangerous substance that often results in
| lifetime debilitation, cancers, and other deadly diseases.
|
| This is not in any way similar to video games.
|
| This entire thread seems to be overrun with Tankies or CCP
| bots.
| beaunative wrote:
| Governments are always about control, that's why they exist,
| the question is, to what extent?
| lhorie wrote:
| 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-being).
|
| 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.
|
| Since you mentioned the great firewall, I think it's
| interesting to bring up some perspective I've heard from
| various Mainland Chinese people: that many of them thinks
| western media brainwashes us (think the thing about Olympic
| photo coverage of Chinese medalists) and many condemn westerner
| take on social matters (the US' handling of Covid, for example,
| is seen as a "proof" that the our infatuation with freedom has
| severe failings). I've even heard someone once say that
| "American egos wouldn't be able handle Chinese opinion if the
| firewall was lifted, because it's a voice 1.4b people strong -
| intellectuals, trolls and everything in between - who
| disapprove of American ideologies".
|
| To be clear: I'm not attempting to inflame, I'm merely bringing
| up what I heard from their side, for your edification. My
| advice is to be careful of using loaded terminology such as
| "authoritarian"; you don't own objective truth, and humility
| might go a long way in dispelling animosity from both sides.
| bogwog wrote:
| > 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_Drin
| king_Age_...), not because our supreme leader decided he
| knows what's best for us.
|
| Not sure where you're coming from with calling the two
| situations similar. They're obviously entirely different.
|
| > My advice is to be careful of using loaded terminology such
| as "authoritarian"
|
| How is that a loaded term? What other word would you use to
| describe the Chinese government?
| nearbuy wrote:
| > Our restrictions came about through a democratic process
|
| A democratic process where most of the people affected
| weren't allowed to vote.
| joshschreuder wrote:
| 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
| wellbeing of their citizens" in the same way as restrictions
| on the other things you mentioned.
| gnull wrote:
| If there is no extensive research on gaming, it doesn't
| mean gaming should not be limited. Since we don't know how
| harmful gaming is, keeping it widely available might be as
| dangerous as limiting it.
|
| Keeping games available is as much of a decision as
| limiting them. Why do you think picking the former option
| requires extensive research and the latter doesn't?
| lhorie wrote:
| They cite myopia as a specific clinical reason and while
| there is _some_ evidence correlating "near-work"
| activities (screen time, studying, etc) and
| nearsightedness, I personally think that's a weird way to
| slice a policy (especially considering the correlation
| isn't very strong). To be fair, it's not the only factor
| they cited, so I'm willing to concede it's an attempt at a
| "two birds with one stone" sort of policy.
|
| The other major factor that was mentioned was addiction.
| I'm not sure there are studies on this, but at least
| anecdotally, a lot of people seem to think it is a problem.
|
| Some other comments are also mentioning that this is more a
| restriction on _companies_ providing services to underage
| audiences, and we do have a bunch of legal restrictions on
| how companies are allowed to interact with children; see
| COPPA.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| Not to mention dumping video games into blanket "addictive
| gambling" is a very tenuous argument. Plenty of games that
| don't have lootboxes, require creative problem solving that
| can be played for hours on end with socialization elements
| mixed in too.
|
| I'm really shocked by the somewhat puritanical take on
| video games at hacker news of all places.
| minusSeven wrote:
| People don't care about what China does inside China as opposed
| to what it does outside.
| birbs wrote:
| Just because an authoritarian government made a decision
| doesn't necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian.
|
| In the U.S., it's somehow become popular opinion that the
| government shouldn't do anything. Without the ability to make
| coordinated decisions, the U.S. has predictably fallen behind
| on a wide variety of metrics (income equality, health care,
| education, mass transit, etc.)
|
| You should reflect on why you view a government making a
| decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Because in the US a large number of us value the freedom to
| live our lives as we choose. Given that a policy like this
| one effectively allows the government to intervene in an
| activity that does not harm others (only oneself) it stands
| that we in the US view it as appalling.
|
| Other societies may look at it differently and feel ok
| delegating decisions about how their lives should be lived to
| their government. I, for one, would never be OK with that.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| If what the article says is true, this is the definition of
| authoritarianism.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| But this is authoritarian.
|
| Why should the government control how I manage my time? I'm
| pretty sure this site would be pretty outraged if the
| government decided we could only code 3 hours a week.
|
| And please don't use the "but coding is constructive!1!"
| argument. A good use of time is defined by whoever spends it,
| not whatever someone else's idea of wasting time is.
|
| As a case in point, playing hours of Splitgate has kept me
| _sane_ during the pandemic as a college student locked in a
| room for 1.8 years. I meet on Discord with friends and
| discuss topics while playing. I 've made more friends gaming
| than physically in the past year. That's pretty constructive
| if you ask me.
| birbs wrote:
| The government is controlling how children spend their
| time. In the U.S., the government mandates a lot about how
| children spend their time. They need to go to school and
| they aren't allowed to buy alcohol or tobacco. Children
| under 16 aren't allowed to spend any time driving an
| automobile, etc.
| rank0 wrote:
| So why can't you use the same logic to justify any
| arbitrary regulation?
|
| I don't agree that having SOME laws means that the
| government should be able to pass ANY law.
| solatic wrote:
| To justify any arbitrary regulation _imposed on
| children._
|
| No child owns his own life or decision making. Typically
| parents make most decisions, the government makes some
| others e.g. mandatory schooling, setting standards that
| parents most abide by if they don't want their children
| taken away from them (sufficient food and shelter etc.).
| fma wrote:
| I live in the state of Georgia where most of the state
| belives in the "smaller the government the better". Alcohol
| sales can't happen during certain hours on Sundays...all
| because of...wait for it...religion. LOL.
|
| Why should the government tell stores & restaurants when
| they can or cannot sell alcohol? How can the government
| tell me when I can, or cannot buy/consume alcohol. How is
| that a benefit to society? Why is it in a country codified
| for separation of religion and government are they allowed
| to have this in law?
| yuy910616 wrote:
| People can't be left to their own accord.
| ericmay wrote:
| If you believe this then surely you'd want less
| government since you can't leave these people to their
| own accord and also _making decisions_.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| there is a strong correlation between strong government
| and higher GDP. Weak economies are weak because of
| corrupt and weak government. So that would be my case for
| government action - collectively or through a good
| dictator.
|
| Your logic seems good but is removed from history and
| reality.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Life is about more than GDP, and childhood should be
| about more than being trained to follow orders.
| pojzon wrote:
| This whole discussion is slowly evolving into a
| discussion about ,,what it means to be successful in
| life" and its completely subjective..
| analognoise wrote:
| Why is GDP implicitly the thing we should maximize? It's
| like this weird unstated thing everyone agrees on without
| critical examination.
|
| I'd rather have less GDP and no CCP; I'd also "sacrifice"
| max GDP for universal healthcare, fewer wars, jail
| reform...all kinds of things.
| dlp211 wrote:
| I don't think that was the statement made, just that
| strong government is correlated with strong economies.
| Strong economies/governments are a necessary, but not
| sufficient requirement for those other things.
| l332mn wrote:
| But China is better than the US in all of those things.
| They don't wage war, they have better health care (no
| massive drug monopoly charging obscene prices for cheap
| insulin), higher life expectancy, way fewer people in
| jail per capita, less of a drug problem (no opoid
| epidemic), less obesity, not nearly as much violence,
| practically no school shootings (as opposed to weekly
| shootings), etc.. this iist is LONG.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea. Also if you want to look at GDP - US is #1. And on a
| per-capita basis we're just below Norway and ahead of
| countries like Denmark and the UK.
|
| Personally I'd propose things like longevity, obesity,
| parks per-capita, household wealth, etc.
| analognoise wrote:
| Yeah infant mortality, press freedom, corruption index,
| childhood educational rankings? There are a TON of things
| I'd put over GDP.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| And if you look at the past 200 years that we've made
| large progress towards all the things you mentioned, with
| each of those accomplishments have been enabled by...GDP
| growth
| dorgo wrote:
| >I'd also "sacrifice" max GDP for universal healthcare,
| fewer wars, jail reform...all kinds of things.
|
| Because GDP pays for universal healthcare, for
| example...?
| analognoise wrote:
| Not in our case, so apparently not - it COULD but it
| obviously doesn't.
|
| Also countries "worth" less seem to pay for it, so maybe
| it's that we have fucked up priorities?
| yuy910616 wrote:
| These are minor details - US probably should pay for it.
| But directionally, if you're a developing country, you
| can't afford it.
|
| The best way to progress has been GDP growth - modern
| medicine is not driven by good-will, kindness, or faith.
| It's driven by profit
| yuy910616 wrote:
| GDP is the thing we should measure because without it,
| you can't have all the things you mentioned - you might
| be able to not start wars but you still need a strong
| army.
|
| To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury
| analognoise wrote:
| I never said it wasn't important, but we literally have
| the largest GDP - we won, game over! And we don't have
| universal healthcare.
|
| It's like we've confused a metric (GDP) with success; we
| maximized the metric and can't even wake up and realize
| it's not what we were actually trying to accomplish.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| what is success then? what are you trying to accomplish?
|
| I'd argue the best way to accomplish whatever you're
| thinking about that we should be accomplishing -
| something that is hard to measure - is by maximizing GDP.
| Because GDP is correlated with everything you're thinking
| about accomplishing.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought here.
| Maybe you can help?
|
| You say that people can't be left to the own accord, but
| then you also want people that you can't trust (leave to
| their own accord) to be in charge of you and managing a
| country?
| yuy910616 wrote:
| Yes, I do think people can't be left to their own accord
| and some people should be allow to make rules for others.
| How we determine who those `some people` are is a matter
| of what we tried already and what was effective.
|
| What would you suggest?
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't really have a good suggestion. I wish I did. I
| kind of believe in the "democracy is the worst form of
| government except all of the others" statement because it
| appears to be so. You can probably make better
| democracies though but they require education and
| participation. Education you can do at scale, but
| participation is hard to achieve amongst heterogeneous
| populations, especially when they're large.
|
| IMO that's why we're seeing problems with the U.S. that
| simply will never resolve. The long-term future is
| balkanization in some fashion. Either outright via
| secession or implied via arbitrary restrictions that make
| certain places undesirable to go to. Contrast that with a
| country like Iceland where the population is more
| homogenous and the democracy seems to work better.
|
| And it's not a race thing so much as a belief/culture
| thing. Just in case someone mistakenly believe that was
| what I was implying, it's not.
|
| But I do think it's hard to reconcile saying that you
| fundamentally mistrust people but then you still want to
| give them power to make rules for you. The safer bet
| would be to have less or no government in that scenario
| unless you trust that you can create a process that
| really weeds out those who are not trustworthy. It's hard
| to do that too. Even people who are highly credible
| (scientists, doctors, etc.) often aren't people you would
| want making rules for you because they're not
| philosophers...
| pojzon wrote:
| I know why you made this comment about race, but even
| Aristotle hundreds of years ago noticed that multi-culti
| does not work with democracy, simply because it breaks
| homogenousity of citizens.
|
| Its not so uncommon belief/opinion.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I disagree that the safer bet is to have less government
| - look at the macro picture, things are better than ever
| as governments are exerting more controls, so there must
| exist a process of which allows for better prosperity for
| all by allowing government to modify our behavior.
|
| Making rules is a function of government, and government
| is a function of the collective will of the people. So
| rules are nothing more that what I, and most of my
| neighbors, believe how everyone should behave, and the
| process is ultimately a trial and error; an experiment.
| [deleted]
| actacntact wrote:
| > Why should the government control how I manage my time?
|
| It doesn't. Unless you're under 18.
|
| > As a case in point
|
| Age aside - as this law is worded, Discord wouldn't be
| restricted, offline games wouldn't be restricted, non-
| gameplay-as-a-service online gaming like voice-chat DND or
| P2P fightcade matches wouldn't be restricted, other forms
| of media aren't restricted, and you still have 3 hrs/week
| for the restricted subset if you must. I don't see why your
| stated benefits require a majority of your time to be spent
| on a gameplay-as-a-service game, so I don't see anything
| constructive in your life that would be prevented by this
| law in particular.
|
| And it's this law in particular that positivity is being
| expressed for. In light of the recent (read: ongoing over
| the past decade+) design trends of gameplay-as-a-service
| games in East Asia regions, which something like Splitgate
| doesn't fit the profile for.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Just because an authoritarian government made a decision
| doesn't necessarily mean the decision was authoritarian.
|
| True.
|
| > In the U.S., it's somehow become popular opinion that the
| government shouldn't do anything.
|
| Amongst some people and some topics. Liberals don't think the
| government should do anything about heroin needles and
| homeless people, and conservatives don't think the government
| should do anything about gay conversion camps (arbitrary
| examples). This is the core of how democracy works. What
| you're seeing here actually is a breakdown in homogeneity
| when you have 300+ million people trying to make decisions
| when they have different values.
|
| > Without the ability to make coordinated decisions, the U.S.
| has predictably fallen behind on a wide variety of metrics
| (income equality, health care, education, mass transit, etc.)
|
| Which depends again on factors such as demographics, etc. and
| is largely a function of the lack of homogeneity. Not to
| mention all sorts of compelling arguments. Like we have
| people who won't take a vaccine, but we were also one of the
| first countries to roll out mass vaccinations. It's not
| simple.
|
| > You should reflect on why you view a government making a
| decision for the health of its citizens as a bad thing.
|
| I think many people _do_ reflect on that. It 's a precarious
| balance of liberty, management of a nation state, and many
| other things. I don't think it's wise to try and over-
| simplify these things into "well the government just wants
| you to be healthy". Ok. Let's ban all junk food, alcohol,
| cars, high-end restaurants, skydiving, and make everybody
| walk 10,000 steps/day or else they go to jail. I mean, why
| would you view the government making a decision for the
| health of its citizens as a bad thing?
| enkid wrote:
| Your examples are awful. Liberals, if there was such a
| thing as a monolithic block, are the ones that want to use
| government resources to combat people using dirty needles,
| and want to provide shelters for the homeless. Some
| conservatives probably want to make conversion therapy
| mandatory, some want it to be allowed, and some probably
| want it outlawed. I think I understand what you're saying
| with the rest, but you're overally generic and incorrect
| examples makes it really hard to actually support your
| point.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| zerocrates wrote:
| 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.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Buying is completely different from playing.
| Aerroon wrote:
| In practice there weren't tools around to actually stop you
| from getting and playing D2 when you were a teenager. There
| are now.
|
| I do agree with you that a lot of rules on kids even in our
| "free countries" were hypocritical and didn't actually work.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Taliban just banned music recently, again. There are two
| topics here, one is authoritarianism and the other is
| parenting.
|
| Kids shouldn't be playing games 5 hours a day and looking up
| to streamers. The government shouldn't be involved in this.
|
| I think the larger threat of gaming in today's society is
| that we have a situation where the standards have gone up
| dramatically for everyone to be an average mediocre person.
| You will have to do something serious if you want a real
| career in the future. You will have to be social and socially
| astute to navigate social networks (pretty much as early as
| 10). The pressure is much higher at a much younger age, and
| chronic gaming is going to be the goto escape. We don't have
| a reasonable enough society where gaming can just be an
| innocuous past time. It's going to be a hideout for people
| growing up under the enormous pressure of this new world.
|
| I expect drug use, and prescription medication use to be
| going up on exactly the same curve.
| make3 wrote:
| you can be supportive of a policy without being supportive of
| the type of government that runs it. I'm for it if it was done
| in a democratic way.
| Revenant-15 wrote:
| 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 hoping to see more discussion about the
| (potential) effects of (excessive) gaming or the
| potential/unforeseen consequences of the ban, but apparently
| people here seem to go braindead the moment China, government
| or freedom is mentioned. It feels like I'm back on Facebook or
| Reddit again. Has the level of discourse really become that
| much worse on HN over the years?
| president wrote:
| > 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?
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Some people don't like this move personally, but at the same
| time appreciate diversity of value systems around the world.
| Its a hedge. If the whole world followed the same value system,
| a systemic flaw could result in much disaster.
| yumraj wrote:
| So the whole country of 1.3-1.4B people has the same value
| system?
|
| This is more like the CCP imposing its value system on them.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| By that same argument, it would be better not to have all of
| China forced to follow the same "value system", yet that is
| exactly what authoritarian policy like this intends.
| president wrote:
| Most people assume governments are benevolent. The rest are
| bots and/or promoting a political agenda.
| woofie11 wrote:
| I'm no more or less comfortable with authoritarian government
| than I am with an authoritarian market-based corporatocracy.
|
| Odds are that you are under an NDA which limits your freedom of
| speech. Odds are that if you refused to sign one, you couldn't
| afford a mortgage in a place with a lot of tech. Odds are you
| will sign more NDAs so your kids can keep going to the same
| school. The freedom of no regulation is an illusion.
|
| Companies will keep making what sells, even if it's bad for
| you. Without regulation, video games will become more and more
| addicting. Without regulation, companies will keep running
| advertising, even if ads harm culture and the overall economy.
|
| To manage all of this, we need a better system. I, for one, am
| excited about countries trying something different. The CCP
| seems to be implementing a lot of measures which stand to
| increase overall quality-of-life, from limiting stress on kids,
| to workforce stress, to limiting unhealthy activities. I'd like
| to see how that plays out.
|
| As a footnote, I'd even be excited about a fundamentalist
| Muslim government in Afghanistan, if it wasn't expansionary,
| and if people were free to emigrate if it was't working for
| them.
| skystarman wrote:
| I'm not sure a country that commits cultural genocide and
| sent a million or more Muslim Uighurs into reeducation camps
| is where you should be looking for a "better system". Forced
| sterilization, forced labor...
|
| Or a country that has no freedom of the press, savagely beats
| or murders political dissidents, will take away your job and
| livelihood if you dare question CCP orthodoxy...
|
| The fact that you think is somehow morally equivalent to an
| NDA is just absolutely astonishing.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Well, the US did kinda oops away a million Muslims in
| response to 9/11, and over a half-million Americans in lack
| of response to COVID19. And we do have that whole gitmo
| thing. Plus, we had the whole slavery bit we keep
| forgetting about. I could list this stuff for a while, but
| that's besides the point.
|
| It's not the current state that matters, but possible
| future outcome.
|
| We're both hill-climbing trying to improve systems from an
| imperfect present. The US is higher up its hill than China
| right now, but it's not clear that China won't pass the US
| in a few decades. Or the US will race ahead. Or how other
| systems will fare.
|
| It's also not clear how those will change as the world
| itself evolves.
|
| I like having a diversity of political and economic
| systems, even is some are better than others. I also like a
| diversity of cultures, even if there are ones I strongly
| disagree with.
|
| #simulatedannealing #geneticalgorithms
| mcdonje wrote:
| What's astonishing is how thoroughly you missed their
| point.
| skystarman wrote:
| OP was quite clear there NDAs and authoritarian,
| genocidal, CCP are morally equivalent. Not sure how you
| missed that.
|
| Tankie is also really EXCITED about Muslim fundamentalist
| Afghanistan!
| simonh wrote:
| >Odds are that you are under an NDA which limits your freedom
| of speech.
|
| These are mostly very specific, very limited and largely
| perfectly sensible. Yes some NDAs are onerous but they're
| quite rare. China has no concept of freedom of speech at all.
| It simply doesn't exist. I don't see how that's better.
|
| >Companies will keep making what sells, even if it's bad for
| you.
|
| We actually do have market regulation in the west, more in
| some countries than others, but it's a well established
| principle. You may disagree with the regulations we have,
| that's a matter of opinion, but we do have regulations on
| safety, quality, etc. If you want further regulations you are
| free to campaign for them, but the lack of any relations you
| might want is not a flaw in the system, it's just a consensus
| choice you disagree with.
|
| >The CCP seems to be implementing a lot of measures which
| stand to increase overall quality-of-life...
|
| All western states, even the US, have regulated labour
| markets including controls on working hours, minimum wages,
| mandatory breaks, etc. 996 is in practice illegal in almost
| every (possibly actually every) western country already. We
| are way, way ahead of China on this, so much so that you
| thinking China is breaking ground is frankly laughable.
|
| Many countries already have guidelines in place on activities
| like video games. Public health systems recognise, provide
| advice and support, and even treatment for games addiction.
| The CCP is not breaking any novel ground on any of this. The
| fact is it has a woefully inadequate public health system and
| primitive social services that are so bad they have to resort
| to crude dictatorial mandates like this because it's all they
| have left. That is not a good thing.
|
| >As a footnote...
|
| Oh good grief.
| woofie11 wrote:
| There's a famous quote attributed to Churchill: "Democracy
| is the worst form of government, except for all the
| others." The only way we'll find better ones is if we keep
| exploring.
|
| It's not so much that I want more or fewer regulations, as
| I want to explore systems other than market-based
| incentives. I'm not sure that regulations + free markets
| will get us to a place where people aren't addicted to
| video games, eat healthy, exercise, have quality education,
| and generally lead the good life. In 1930, there were a lot
| of ideas for how to get there, and a lot of those seem
| plausible. I'd like to see how some of those play out in
| practice.
|
| I'll mention that I'm aware of where China is with regards
| to labor practices, freedom-of-speech, and so on, but with
| regards to public health systems, China is way ahead of the
| US. Everyone has access to decent, affordable healthcare.
| It's not at the same level as $50,000 procedures in the US,
| but it's good enough, and everyone has it.
|
| It's also not really fair to compare countries with $64k
| per-capita GDP to ones with $10k per-capita GDP. It's even
| more unfair if one considers where the per-capita GDP was a
| decade or two ago. 25 years ago, China had a per-capita GDP
| of under $1000 -- that's less than Nigeria today. I think
| that's a more fair comparison between systems of
| government. Would you rather live in Nigerian democracy or
| Chinese CCP? That's not a loaded question -- they're quite
| different.
|
| > Oh good grief.
|
| Islam has a lot of good ideas too. For example, it has a
| wealth tax, and it discourages debt-based economies. You
| don't need to swallow political and economic systems
| wholesale.
| simonh wrote:
| >I'll mention that I'm aware of where China is with
| regards to labor practices, freedom-of-speech, and so on,
| but with regards to public health systems, China is way
| ahead of the US.
|
| This is not true at all, I know because my wife is
| Chinese. Almost everyone is covered by health insurance
| in theory, but in practice this has limited use by most
| people because it only covers 50% of costs, and less than
| that for serious illnesses. Those on low incomes simply
| can't afford it anyway and there is nothing comparable to
| the level of cover under Medicaid or CHIPS, or Medicare
| for the elderly. Everyone under the public system has to
| pay up or not get treatment. Employer plans are better,
| but still very basic compared to typical US corporate
| plans. Waiting lists can also often put treatment out of
| practical reach unless you are willing to pay a lot of
| money to the right people.
|
| It's also very scammy. They charge for everything they
| do, from painkillers, saline drips, blood tests, being
| hooked up to a blood oxymeter. On arrival they will set
| up all of that, the works, whether it's necessary or not
| so they can charge you for it. There is little to no
| regulation to prevent such abuses, and no practical way
| to get redress for malpractice.
|
| On experimentation, communism and authoritarianism have
| been tried many, many times. There's nothing novel or
| experimental about it. We know it sucks. We know what
| Taliban style Islamic theocracies are like too,
| Afghanistan has been under one before remember?
| jpambrun wrote:
| 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.
| coding123 wrote:
| 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.
| luckylion wrote:
| 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.
| sbarre wrote:
| You don't consider Europe stable or successful?
| [deleted]
| finiteseries wrote:
| You don't consider an age minimum of 18 to purchase
| alcohol an age limit?
|
| The link they posted even has a pretty picture within of
| the areas without age limits. They're all mostly in
| Africa, Vietnam has a shout at stable and successful
| though.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Equivocating alcohol with video gaming is ridiculous. One
| is a toxic chemical that has physical, neurological
| effects on an individual and easily kills tens of
| thousands of people a year. The other is watching and
| interacting with pixels on a screen as you're doing at
| this very moment.
| SebastianKra wrote:
| It's well known that gambling- and gaming addictions
| exist.
|
| And more and more online games use psychological tactics
| to encourage spending.
| finiteseries wrote:
| The dose makes the poison.
|
| Emphasizing the physical effects of alcohol, and reducing
| the mental effects of _any_ human computer interaction to
| "watching and interacting with pixels on a screen" isn't
| the right way to go about it.
|
| There's a difference between checking your feed and doom
| scrolling, there's a difference between playing fortnite
| with friends, maybe even a little too late into the
| night, and compulsively grinding.
|
| The dose makes the poison.
| sbarre wrote:
| Sorry I misread age of purchase with age of consumption
| (which can effectively be the same thing in most modern
| countries).
|
| My bad.
| concretemarble wrote:
| Governments have responsibility for the wellbeing of the
| citizen, but they also have responsibility to stay out of the
| way of the citizen's personal behaviors unless it is really
| needed. These two interests are always conflicting so the
| government shouldn't just limit things in the name of
| citizens' wellbeing without careful consideration.
|
| Also, not all potentially addiction forming behaviors should
| be regulated. By this standard, masturbation could be
| addicting and destructive too, should the government regulate
| the number of times it can be done a week? In china, it's
| legal to have sex at 14, does that mean sex is not addicting?
|
| Personal anecdotal story is close to useless. Freedom
| regulation policy needs to be backed with strong data.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I'm very far against alcohol being restricted for consumption
| by minors. I think it's completely ridiculous and almost
| completely counterproductive.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| 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 drugs that these kinds
| of things don't really work. There's always some deep
| psychological and/or physiological deficit whenever there is
| an "addiction" at play. And you're trying to treat the
| disease by treating the symptoms. You can try to tighten
| control so that you can try to force that "ideal" society,
| but when you do that, things have a way of becoming
| authoritarian in a handbasket. Everything messed up about
| China is about socialist idealism turning authoritarian, and
| you can say that about other countries too.
|
| People should have figured that out when they did that study
| on rats, where the rats that lived in some enriched
| environment, with plenty of playtime, did not get addicted to
| sugar water the way that the rats trapped in cages did.
| coding123 wrote:
| So, in a way, you could be seen as arguing for
| authoritarianism.
|
| > And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the
| symptoms
|
| So, for example, Opiods. In the United States we're
| treating the symptoms by banning it (and this is pretty
| much supported by both political parties). Yet we know the
| root cause: People that are effectively feeling worthless,
| do not feel connected to a specific social group and/or
| disengaged from culture.
|
| Other aspects of our entire culture is causing people to
| feel like that: 1. Changing family values, 2. Disconnected
| from people, connected to devices and online popularity, 3.
| Impossible to succeed and feel valuable.
|
| I feel like we have a really weird problem: Our
| capitalistic environment or, greed in general, are driving
| these problems. So the solution is authoritarianism.
|
| Sorry that's just the way my mind works. I see right
| through issues to their root causes and it makes my
| worldview weird.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| 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.
| kevbin wrote:
| Historically, totalitarian "experimentation" hasn't gone
| so well.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| For the last 30 years they've produce some miracles.
| herendin2 wrote:
| Ethyl alcohol is easy to define: C2H6O
|
| There's no such clear definition of 'games'. So there is
| potential for interpretation and overreach.
| turbohz wrote:
| Would reading too many books be destructive?
|
| Edit: and too many newspapers?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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.
| rank0 wrote:
| Lots of others ITT are expressing the same view, and I
| understand the logic behind it.
|
| Alcohol is an addictive, psychoactive, carcinogen. The
| difference between drugs and "online game time" is pretty
| stark from my perspective.
|
| The essence of your argument seems to be: "we already give up
| some control for other health-related regulations and online
| game time is no different."
|
| I have to admit, drawing the exact line is difficult and I'm
| unable to create a clear definition of government overreach.
| This specific example is obvious to me, but clearly some
| people disagree.
|
| Where do you think the line should be? Would you be okay with
| CCP mandated exercise, sleep time, or diet? Do you believe
| there should be a line at all?
|
| Not trying to be adversarial here, I am genuinely curious.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| I don't think a perfect line exist - a perfect line that
| maximizes a country's output, for example. Laffer curve is
| real.
|
| But it's more of a experiment - life is an experiment.
| solatic wrote:
| > Alcohol is an addictive, psychoactive, carcinogen. The
| difference between drugs and "online game time" is pretty
| stark from my perspective.
|
| Requires elaboration. When "online game time" is
| intentionally designed to be addictive, its affects on
| addicts need to be critically examined - loss of physical
| fitness, loss of social fitness, loss of motivation,
| agoraphobia. That both can be consumed responsibly in small
| quantities does not preclude that addiction is a serious
| problem and too often not treated like a serious problem in
| Western countries.
| occamrazor wrote:
| The state mandates physical exercise for children in many
| countries (PE classes) and most people support it.
| jpambrun wrote:
| This line is indeed hard to define. I am not sure that such
| a limit would be enforceable even in China. However, it
| will have the side effect of making time gated games and
| other addicting dark patterns illegal or impractical, which
| it probably a net good thing.
|
| To your last question, many jurisdictions are making fast
| food or sugary drinks illegal thus imposing a diet. I am
| fine with that. Some company are lowering health premium to
| those who do exercise, imposing exercise. I am fine with
| that too..
| [deleted]
| throwawayswede wrote:
| It's not the support that I find appalling, this is fine in a
| free-speech society, but the issue i have with modern HN is
| that any sort criticism of censorship as an act regardless of
| the content or who's the person on the receiving end gets a
| tremendous amount of downvotes (almost instantly), which makes
| me think that the majority of people here (or those who read
| comments) believe that censorship is OK depending on the topic.
| For example: censoring Alex Jones is OK no matter what the
| context is, but censoring criticism of North Korea is not ok.
| So they clearly understand the concept, they just choose to
| apply it selectively and think that's fine. This varies
| depending on the person and the circles the go in.
|
| Almost every single comment I make with that sentiment gets
| instant downvoted or flagged.
| madrox wrote:
| To play devil's advocate for a moment, is this different from
| age-gating we do anywhere else on the internet? We require you
| to be 18 or over to look at adult sites or view particularly
| edgy stuff on youtube. Is the difference just that there's an
| implicit wink going on because it relies on the user being
| honest about their age? I'm sure if we had a real ID system
| like China in place, laws would mandate its use given US
| attitudes about porn and gore.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| There is no difference; it's evil and needs to die.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Why are HN users so comfortable with authoritarian
| government?
|
| Organic users or paid ones?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yep, the policy itself isn't _necessarily_ an issue, but the
| fact that it 's being imposed by _the government_ is a huge
| problem. (Especially since it 's not even a democratically
| elected government. Taxation without representation and all
| that.) If a parent instituted the exact same policy for their
| kids I would have no problem with that.
| treebot wrote:
| If it were imposed by a democratically elected government,
| would it still be a problem?
| Tade0 wrote:
| Would any government risk to antagonize its future voters
| like this? I imagine teenagers hit by such regulations
| would remember who made these decisions and vote
| appropriately.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Yes but a smaller one
| dimgl wrote:
| The correct answer is no, it'd still be a massive problem
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Please reread what the question was and what I said. You
| have the question backwards.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yes, in my opinion. If a law like this were passed in the
| United States I'd be vocally campaigning to get the law
| repealed and the people who voted for it replaced in the
| next election. Sadly, the Chinese people don't have that
| option, which only makes the situation _that_ much worse.
| maccolgan wrote:
| I'm placing my bet on the fact that vast majority of
| Chinese people probably support this, and that's fair.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| If only there were some political system by which we
| could find out if this were true.
| [deleted]
| grecy wrote:
| Do you vocally campaign to repeal the law that bans under
| 18s from consuming alcohol and cigarettes?
|
| Do you vocally campaign to repeal the law that prevents
| you buying and using asbestos in their buildings?
|
| Do you vocally campaign to repeal the law that prevents
| you from buying and owning an anti-aircraft missile
| system?
|
| Our democracies have plenty of laws about things we're
| not allowed to do. Some of them are for our own good,
| some are for the overall good of society.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| And there's no definitive evidence that playing _any_
| video game for more than 3 hours a week is in conflict
| with our good or the good of the society.
|
| Not all regulations are born equal and some of them are
| definitely not worth fighting against.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| 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.
| ezekg wrote:
| It's crazy to me because I would have thought the last year
| or so would produce the opposite effect. But a fearful
| populace is a malleable populace, I guess.
| keyb0ardninja wrote:
| This is exactly what F. A. Hayek warned us about in his book
| The Road to Serfdom.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Australia seems to be rushing toward that future at an out of
| control pace.
| AustinDev wrote:
| 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.
| theintern wrote:
| What about their covid measures put you off? When for so
| much of the pandemic they were seen as absolute world
| leaders and were living as normal when the rest of us
| were in lockdowns?
| majani wrote:
| That's an opinion from your filter bubble. Try get some
| info from conservative and libertarian sources. The
| results may shock you.
| gorwell wrote:
| You're not kidding. Notice the language they're using and
| how the government is granting "new freedoms".
|
| "From September 13, NSW residents that are fully vaccinated
| against COVID-19 _will be given new freedoms_.
|
| Residents of hotspots _can leave home for an hour of
| recreation on top of their exercise hour_ , while people in
| other areas can meet five others outdoors.
|
| Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the vaccination milestone
| of six million reached this week _would allow for a small
| renewal in freedoms_ for residents with the jab. "
|
| https://twitter.com/9NewsSyd/status/1430707532134236163
| knownjorbist wrote:
| This is comparing apples and oranges, frankly.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| I would say in both cases it's the government exhibiting
| control over its citizens lives under the notion that it's
| for their own protection. I think everyone has a point at
| which government control becomes tyranny. For some it's
| lockdowns during a pandemic, for others it's time-limits on
| video games. Seems like all apples, to me.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Your kid playing videogames 12 hours a day has no impact
| on my life. You giving me Covid does. These situations
| are not the same and the complete lack of nuance on when
| government authority is good and needed, and when it is
| bad and harmful is...well, I don't have the word(s),
| perhaps disappointing.
|
| I don't get the desire to see everything as black and
| white and boil everything problem down to a slippery
| slope fallacy.
| echelon wrote:
| > I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the
| Western world has made people more comfortable with
| authoritarian governments and actions.
|
| Half of the US is up in arms about it, for better or worse. I
| think you'd have a hard time imposing anything on the US.
|
| The other half doesn't think immunizations are authoritarian,
| just science.
|
| Maybe 1% of the loud and attention grabbing people on either
| side of the isle wants to impose things on the other just for
| the sake of imposing them.
|
| So not exactly.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| That 1%, if they are loud enough, can move overton window
| for the whole society. Recall how fast vaccine passports
| moved from a crazy right wing conspiracy theory to an
| obvious and necessary measure. Last year is full of such
| examples.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I think you have it backwards. In the last year, vaccines
| passports (in other words, immunization records) went
| from an obvious and necessary measure to a crazy wight
| wing conspiracy theory.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| A year ago in my country, vaccine passports were very
| much a conspiracy theory, and back in 2020, our PM
| assured us they wouldn't be coming. [1] A year later, as
| the GP mentioned, this has instead become the standard to
| expect going forward. [2]. Exactly what they described
| has happened, something which was once considered an
| irrational fear of libertarians has become reality.
|
| [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-
| vaccine-passp...
|
| [2] https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-
| proof-of-v...
| staunch wrote:
| _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.
| pageandrew wrote:
| 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).
| nightfly wrote:
| I mean, delta changed the math of how effective the
| vaccine was at preventing spread and mild illness. This
| is why the idea of a _novel_ coronavirus epidemic was
| bad, we had no idea where it was gonna go.
|
| In Oregon we were on a very bad trajectory in the last
| two weeks with hospitals full and "elective" medical
| procedures suspended in some areas (my family being
| directly effected by this), that is now being deflected a
| bit by the renewed mask mandate. And in America we're
| very fortunate with how easy access we have to vaccines,
| other places aren't as lucky so they have to enact
| harsher measures...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is all true, but at the same time, it is a
| legitimate question to ask 'when does this stop?' I think
| we can all agree that it can't last forever. But Kate
| Brown mandated masks even outdoors, and while her
| intentions may be pure, she didn't provide any metrics
| that she will use to decide the mandate can be dropped.
| We are past the 70% vaccination threshold she originally
| used. Even then, the metric was created well after the
| mandates, and I disagree with that. When we are going to
| put such rules in place they should be defined from the
| beginning as temporary or permanent, and in the case of
| the former should come with a definition for the end. A
| date, a set of metrics, something specific.
| nightfly wrote:
| It will stop when our hospitals aren't stretched past
| their limits. I don't think anyone knows when that will
| be right now.
|
| I've complained in other spaces about this, but it really
| feels like we're reliving the 1918 flu again. People
| dealt with restrictions the first year, but got fed up
| the second year. Costing lots of human lives.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It will stop when our hospitals aren't stretched past
| their limits. I don't think anyone knows when that will
| be right now.
|
| My problem is simply the loose definition. Kate Brown
| didn't even say that much, I don't think. But if that's
| the metric, it should be easy enough to say so, and
| define it. E.g. "When ICU bed occupancy is below 90% and
| has declined for three consecutive weeks, the mandate is
| lifted."
|
| I think many people would quibble less about the mandates
| if they weren't open-ended.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end
| game.
|
| Your argument is already flawed. We don't have vaccines
| available to everyone in the US yet.
| goostavos wrote:
| >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."
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Temporary
|
| "Ahh, they fell for the temporary fallacy!"
| nickff wrote:
| Which libertarians are you talking to? Every libertarian
| I've read or heard from has been against these "
| _[t]emporary_ and _mild_ authoritarian measures ". The more
| popular libertarian publication/website, "Reason" has been
| against (all?) these measures.
| abecedarius wrote:
| 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,
| reading https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Leviathan-Critical-
| Government-...
| m0zg wrote:
| LOL at people still thinking any of this is "temporary" or
| it will stay "mild". You're looking at stratification of
| society a year from now where anyone whose mandatory
| booster shot is older than 6 months can't participate, you
| must quadruple mask and wear a buttplug (farts spread covid
| too, you know), and you can't complain on FB or anywhere
| else about any of this because you'll get banned not just
| from FB but from everywhere, and lose your job, too.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| 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-
| authoritarian is actually good in this case.
| nickff wrote:
| 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.
|
| Have you actually seen/heard 'very libertarian people'
| endorsing these measures? Is it possible that the parent
| is projecting their beliefs onto others?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| 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.
| sk2020 wrote:
| >once-in-a-century
|
| There's a newsworthy virus (usually SARS-like) every 2-5
| years. There are notable "variants" every few months. The
| perceived risk of COVID has a lot to do with reporting,
| which is fickle at best. Heart disease kills hundreds of
| thousands and we basically don't care.
|
| >temporary
|
| Nixon's closing the Gold window and Bush's GWOT come to
| mind as substantial counter-examples. I don't foresee the
| US politburo giving up on their newfound unlimited and
| totally arbitrary authority so long as their appointed
| brain trust says it's for your own good. Their subjects
| might start to ignore them, though.
| theintern wrote:
| How many of these variants or noteworthy viruses kill as
| many people? Genuine question, because covid has been on
| a different scale to SARS, MERS or any of the various
| animal flu pandemics, in terms of R number and how
| difficult it is to control.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Perhaps because we've all seen firsthand the reckless social
| irresponsibility of a massive segment of the population.
|
| Faced with this, it's not surprising to me that many people
| would see a more authoritarian government to be preferable to
| a laissez faire approach that requires the vast majority of
| individuals to make reasonably good choices for the
| collective and understand the wider implications of their
| behavior.
|
| It would be ironic if the right wing shrieking for 'freedom'
| ends up backlashing on all of us because they've
| simultaneously demonstrated that we're not mature enough to
| handle that level of freedom.
| ryandrake wrote:
| COVID has convinced me that a functioning society can't
| just throw its hands up and exclusively rely on Nash
| Equilibrium to deal with all problems. If you rely on
| everyone being rational self-interest-optimizing actors,
| you'll never solve problems that require voluntary
| collective, coordinated action. It just ends up as a giant
| game of prisoner's dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT.
| TillE wrote:
| Yeah, there's basically no way the pandemic is ever going
| to end without broad vaccine mandates. I would expect
| China to be one of the first countries to move in that
| direction, but we'll see.
| goostavos wrote:
| I don't even know where people are coming from any more.
|
| Like literally everyone else in tech who knows how the
| sausage gets made, I'm appalled by the teams of Ph.Ds which
| exist solely to exploit the dopamine response of children.
| However, it never would have ever crossed my mind to jump
| from "here's a particular problem" to "the government should
| control how much of a specific activity your child can do at
| home"
| devnulll wrote:
| There are all sorts of things governments express control
| over, even at home.
|
| The obvious scenarios are alcohol, nicotine & drugs. As a
| parent of young children, there are addition parallels
| between Minecraft / Roblox / Alcohol / Cigarettes.
|
| To a real degree, more effort is put into making gaming
| deliberately additive - although flavored vaping (bubble
| gum, cotton candy, etc) would like to enter the
| conversation.
| pluto8195 wrote:
| the US has imposed many rules on the manufacturers and
| distributors of addictive substances as well (banning
| flavored vapes, marketing towards children), I think it
| would be much more constructive to impose some regulation
| on how games are made, and how they are pushed rather
| than the behavior of children.
| goostavos wrote:
| I don't know if we're coming at it from the same angle if
| we're lumping Minecraft in with alcohol and cigarettes.
| To your initial point, though, just because the
| government currently expresses control is not actually an
| argument that they should continue to do so or be granted
| additional powers to do more. Because it's normal,
| doesn't mean it's correct.
|
| Flavored vaping products are _for sure_ bad. I 'll
| happily give you that. I'll also give you sugar,
| processed food, alcohol, cigarettes, McDonalds, and a
| near never ending supply of things we regularly consume
| (food, entertainment, or other).
|
| I wouldn't petition the government to control access to
| any of them. I tend to trust the millions of individual
| personal (or parental) decisions over the long haul more
| than I do centrally planned, top-down mandates.
| xvector wrote:
| Videogame addiction probably stunted my childhood
| development as much as drugs would have, so I can see
| where the Chinese government is coming from if it's from
| an addiction perspective.
| ryan93 wrote:
| You make it sound a lot more scientific than it is.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Seconded. It doesn't take a team of PhD's to run A/B
| testing on features and variations that improve lift. Tie
| performance bonuses to improved engagement and sales, and
| you can motivate many non doctorates to find novel ways
| to make things addictive.
| Jensson wrote:
| Pretty sure Candy Crush has such a team of PhD's though.
| Not all games, but the big games definitely do.
|
| You can read about it here from their own page:
|
| https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/
|
| > That experiment is typical of how we learn from data at
| King. We have about 150 people working in data roles, out
| of a total workforce of 2,000. They come from a range of
| backgrounds. Many are from the games industry, of course,
| but we also bring in lots of recruits straight from
| university.
|
| > These people will have just done their masters or PhD
| in a wide range of disciplines. Many of our team studied
| statistics, physics or computer science but we also have
| people who came from theoretical biology because work on
| DNA sequencing in that field has produced a lot of data-
| sophisticated people. Others are behavioural
| psychologists or behavioural economists.
|
| Now in the specific example they choose to highlight they
| saw that making the game less frustrating made people
| spend more money. However if making the game more
| frustrating turned out to make more money since users
| bought more powerups then they absolutely would do it.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think it's more a response to two decades of corporations
| having free rein to exploit kids (and adults honestly but I
| understand such a policy would be less palatable). We've
| known since forever that the only solution would be
| government intervention since the market will never correct
| a dopamine lever and just .. nothing happened because it's
| profitable.
|
| It's honestly nice to see a not totally incompetent
| government try a novel policy with good intentions. It's
| welcome break from the firehose of our own government
| making policies that seem to only target the poor and
| minorities.
| lvs wrote:
| The analogy doesn't hold. It's hard to say that video games
| are an acute crisis causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.
| [deleted]
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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 tried.
|
| The government has no business doing this, but there's
| something to be said for community / cultural standards and
| leadership. Parents in our society are on their own, fighting a
| tide of digital "addiction" without supports. And in fact key
| pillars of our kind of society (that is, corporations) are
| working to encourage screen time, rather than the other way
| around. A year of COVID isolation has made it so much worse,
| too.
|
| I wonder what the outcome of this policy will be and if it will
| make China's youth more competitive and their society
| healthier. Or if it will be a total an abject failure and
| laughed at in a couple generations (most likely).
| jumelles wrote:
| "You see my son, these children with limited human rights..."
| adamdusty wrote:
| It's a human right to play online video games?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Our amazing world where video games are a human right,
| but health care and housing are not.
| jpgvm wrote:
| 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 like Honor of Kings.
| If a parent is happy for their child to play other games that
| don't require online services they are free to do that.
| em500 wrote:
| I have a feeling that there is a bit of subtle manipulation by
| the framing going on here. The current Reuters article title
| that I get is "Three hours a week: Play time's over for China's
| young video gamers", but the submission's title is "China has
| forbidden under-18s from playing games for more than three
| hours/week". This conjures images of Chinese police raiding
| homes and punishing children or parents who are caught gaming
| too long.
|
| But getting closer to the source
| (http://www.news.cn/english/2021-08/30/c_1310157673.htm), the
| regulation appears to be exclusively targetting the amount of
| _on-line_ gaming services that _companies_ are allowed to offer
| to minors. This doesn 't any seem different in principle to
| various Western regulations attempting limit ads[1] or
| pornography[2] to children. Granted, some people in the West
| also consider these as examples authoritarian government
| overreach. But my guess is that a some people's reactions are
| driven substantially by the specific story framing (and of
| course, China), more than by principled reasoning.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulations_on_children%27s_te...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...
| perlgeek wrote:
| It's not just limiting to three hours a week, but to three
| _particular_ hours a week. Feels even more Draconian to me.
| toxik wrote:
| Imagine the thundering herd problems you experience when
| all of your users have the same three hour time slots.
| user123456780 wrote:
| I'd like this to be honest (from an infrastructure point
| of view). If the time is known for an influx of traffic I
| can prepare for that.
|
| I currently look after a system which gets random spikes
| of traffic thats critical to serve. Which means I more or
| less need to run a huge amount of redundant servers 24
| hours a day incase there is a spike at 2am.
|
| We have horizontal scaling but our traffic has little
| lead time.
| ctvo wrote:
| The thundering herd problem in distributed systems is an
| often unexpected failure mode. This is great, and easy to
| plan for. You'd save buckets of money because most
| capacity is used for spikes, and you now have a good idea
| of when spikes occur.
|
| Every Monday, an hour after school, scale up 5x, because
| the timer has reset for students. Scale down from
| Wednesday to Friday. Scale up 2x over the weekends.
|
| Or whatever your data tells you.
| YinLuck- wrote:
| The sitting president was removed from the de-facto public
| forum, but you're whining about minors getting their video game
| time restricted? Authoritarian government is already here. You
| just missed it because you're on the side of the devil.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Naturally, most of the comments here are expressing dissent to
| yours, simply because there is more to be said on that
| perspective.
|
| Most of the people who agree with you simply upvote your
| comment and move on.
| dorgo wrote:
| >Naturally, most of the comments here are expressing dissent
| to yours, simply because there is more to be said on that
| perspective.
|
| I think HN crowd is more prone to question their own believes
| and playing devil's advocate to just bashing on authoritative
| regimes. It is a blessing and a curse.
| murph-almighty wrote:
| Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
|
| Actually though this is a fucking big brother atrocity of a
| policy that people will inevitably circumvent and the
| government will pick and choose when to enforce.
| eranima wrote:
| "enemy"? What the fuck HN.
|
| edit: Xenophobic mods flagging my comment lol
| godelski wrote:
| Except the people aren't our enemy. We're worried about an
| authoritarian government harming our friends.
| docmars wrote:
| My initial (and final) interpretation was:
|
| 1. The people being enforced will find ways around these
| laws, naturally because it's considered unreasonable and
| overreaching in some regards.
|
| 2. In doing so, the government will selectively enforce
| these rules based on the limited amount of information or
| surveillance used to enforce these rules, so those who are
| busted for breaking them will pay the price, while others
| who are breaking the rules without getting caught will not
| pay the price.
|
| I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence by breaking
| this down, but it's worth clarifying the scenarios.
|
| While I agree with the GP's sentiment (it's very much
| overreaching into the private lives of its citizens who may
| wish to decide for themselves (or their family) how they
| spend their free, recreational time), the argument is no
| different from the fact that _many_ DUI offenders never get
| caught while some do and pay the penalties.
|
| I don't think this is a strong enough argument to mount a
| realistic protest against it, but it's a small factor
| that's unequivocally true -- many will get away with gaming
| longer than 3 hours anyway.
|
| Gaming longer than 3 hours will give youth a good thrill at
| least. ;)
|
| Jokes aside, this policy sucks.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The CCP is the one making the mistake, not the people. No
| one said it was the people.
| nybble41 wrote:
| The people are harmed by the mistake, even if they aren't
| the ones making it.
| godelski wrote:
| It is easy to read the above comment that way. Often
| people confuse governments with people. Americans vs
| American Government. Chinese vs CCP. Etc. We should be
| clear about the distinction because certain factions have
| a vested interest in promoting this.
| keyb0ardninja wrote:
| It's better to give the other person the benefit of
| doubt, and in case of confusion to ask for clarification
| rather than making the more uncharitable interpretation
| of the possible interpretations and thereby questioning
| the morality of the other person.
| godelski wrote:
| > It's better to give the other person the benefit of
| doubt
|
| I fully agree with this and actively encourage this
| behavior, but we also need to be careful with our words
| because 1) we're in a time that we're discouraging this
| kind of practice and 2) as stated above there are
| factions actively promoting confusion about this specific
| subject matter (specifically ones relevant to this
| conversation).
|
| I would love if we could all argue in good faith and give
| the benefit of the doubt, but it should not be a working
| assumption.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Except that the comment itself drew a distinction between
| the government's decision, how the people will respond,
| and how the government will respond to the people's
| response. I could see confusion happening only if the
| reader gave up part way through.
| clomond wrote:
| I can't help but think that this action could very well spur out
| some 'unintended consequences'.
|
| Prohibition can restrict and reduce participation and usage at an
| overall level, but certainly some portion of this will be pushed
| underground, or to unregulated spaces - probably just the thing
| the government WOULDN'T want to have.
|
| Particularly when we are talking about some portion of the
| players being addicts here... how many are going to sign up for
| VPNs, Tor (or some other workaround) and find some other game or
| activity that satisfies that itch?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I guess China really does want a revolt among the youth.
| aazaa wrote:
| > Gaming companies will be barred from providing services to
| minors in any form outside the stipulated hours and must ensure
| they have put real-name verification systems in place, said the
| regulator, which oversees the country's video games market.
|
| Those critical of the Chinese government should take a look in
| the mirror. Governments around the world, including those in the
| US, routinely impose restrictions on minors' ability to access
| online content. These laws are even structured in a similar way:
| hold the service providers accountable for monitoring use.
|
| > "Teenagers are the future of our motherland," Xinhua quoted an
| unnamed NPPA spokesperson as saying. "Protecting the physical and
| mental health of minors is related to the people's vital
| interests, and relates to the cultivation of the younger
| generation in the era of national rejuvenation."
|
| It's a favorite tactic of authoritarians everywhere: "Just think
| of the children!" First get a foothold by selling the thing as
| protecting children. In the US, we have two other options:
| terrorism and drugs. With the precedent set, expand the policy
| and watch opponents scramble to find a foothold.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're ignoring the huge cultural differences. Completely
| seriously, what do you think the endgame is for the Chinese
| government?
|
| In the US there's always the suspicion of ulterior motives
| because that's how our government is structured. The Chinese
| gov't doesn't have to bother. They don't need a foothold, they
| can just do it.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| 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 world a big edge technology wise.
| zachguo wrote:
| 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.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I think they can make an effective offline grind that credits
| you when you log in and still comply with the law.
| kuschku wrote:
| Honestly, it'll just destroy the shitty gambling
| microtransaction games.
|
| Most studios will focus on offline games again, back to old-
| school games.
|
| Honestly, I'm a fan of this. No harm done to anything worth
| saving.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Then just regulate the microtransactions instead of doing
| this.
| qnsi wrote:
| perfect example of a keyhole solution. Also perfect
| opportunity to link to my favourite propaganda site [0]
|
| [0] https://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| There are LOTS of online games that are not "shitty gambling
| microtransaction" games.
|
| Even in the west where traditional, non-microtransaction
| games are very common, having an offline, single player, non-
| cooperative game is increasingly rare.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Tencent et al already get a single digit percentage of their
| revenue from minor users on online games. It will not kill
| them.
|
| There is also a massively underdeveloped market for single
| player Chinese games that is only recently starting that will
| benefit massively from this decision.
| persedes wrote:
| true, but how likely is it that those will get the ax too?
| Judging from past top down decisions like this, it seems more
| likely that companies or parents will over implement this and
| extend it to appease the higher ups. (Until they correct and
| clarify their initial statement... rinse and repeat)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| From the wording of the notice, it seems that the
| government is aware that it's literally impossible to
| regulate offline games. People will just pirate them.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| but there won't be any minor users graduating to of age
| users.
|
| I'm making an educated guess here, but i'm betting you won't
| see a real surge in single player games.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Single player doesn't prevent them from being tied to an
| online service. Even in America, lots of modern "single
| player" games don't run without a connection to the
| internet.
|
| These services could easily institute the same limitations
| on their SP games; forcing them to do online checks on
| certain events. They could even be sneaky about it by
| punishing you if you try to evade the checks somehow by
| deleting your save game, making the game more difficult, or
| employing other techniques used to dissuade pirates.
|
| They can also do forced updates on software to fix any
| exploits, run background services that force kill
| executables, and a bunch of other stuff. Mobile devices are
| especially well locked down. It just depends on how badly
| the company wants to keep kids from playing the games. They
| just need to make it too big of a pain to worry about for
| 99.99% of gamers, then report the other 0.01% of
| troublemakers to the authorities.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Single player games that are always online are subject to
| the restrictions.
|
| People will just pirate other games. Even on mobile.
| Every Android device will happily run pirated APKs.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I would bet money there is going to be a huge surge in
| single player games. Kids will play video games and
| companies want to make money.
| dom96 wrote:
| My question is: how will this be enforced?
| bluishgreen wrote:
| Title should read: China has forbidden under-18s from playing
| VIDEO games for more than three hours/week
| VanillaCafe wrote:
| Title should read: China has forbidden under-18s from playing
| ONLINE VIDEO games for more than three hours/week.
|
| (And even ONLINE may not be quite precise enough.)
| mproud wrote:
| I'd read many kids will just use the ID of an older sibling
| or parent to get around the limitation.
| steve76 wrote:
| The richest boss, the poorest bum, all die the same. I would
| rather focus on something important, not dying, as in curing
| liver cirrhosis or blocked arteries or matted down nerve hairs in
| the brain than try to tell a billion and a half of people what to
| do all the time from far far away. What a wonderful weapon that
| is. Cure disease, and don't give you the cure. How can your
| people excel if they really do not want to do it? If they don't
| like you and want you gone? It will just be contorting yourself
| to the test, a facade without any true knowledge.
|
| People in, and what comes out? Another day away from the gallows?
| Leave other people alone. They're probably going through stuff
| and know what's best for them. You took away their humanity and
| turned them into industrial stock, something to be harvested and
| consumed. No wonder they run and hide from you.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| It'd be a fantastic story if this lead to Chinese kids who are
| interested in gaming developing hacking & programming skills to
| get around the limits.
| pototo666 wrote:
| Wrong title. Online games are forbidden, not all games. You can
| download and play many steam games.
|
| Edit: or pirated games.
| phelm wrote:
| also non-video games are not forbidden
| imbnwa wrote:
| From the perpsective of someone who doesn't know too much
| details, China's ability to nope its way out of the social
| excesses of liberal capitalism is somewhat amazing here.
|
| I'm guessing they took a look at Korea and Japan's well-known
| issues with young men isolating themselves enabled by the high
| availability of online gaming and said "nah". Both of those
| countries are also experiencing widening gaps in hetero gender
| relations whereby there's a big issue with how many people are
| unmarried past their 30s into middle-age, and I imagine the CCP
| is not interested in either unregulated population controls or
| having to erect infrastructure to cater to elderly and middle-
| aged single people as is already happening in Korea. Also related
| to the notion that the real estate game is nominally designed to
| accomodate single people graduating from apartments to houses as
| married couples.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I can see what problem they are trying to avoid, but this is
| treating symptoms and not problems. Why do so many young men in
| Japan and Korea (and heck, the West too although to a lesser
| degree) retreat from society into <insert vice here>? Narrow
| culture ideas of what "success" is, and personal relationships
| being dependent on reaching that definition of "success"? Lack
| of meaning found in career? Inability to find meaning in things
| outside of your career because there is no work-life balance?
|
| Video games are just a popular form of escapism. Limiting
| access will just drive people to other forms of escapism
| (potentially more dangerous ones) unless these underlying
| issues are solved.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You could argue that recent Chinese crackdowns on bad working
| conditions and excessive cram schools do part of that. I
| agree it's nowhere near enough.
| baq wrote:
| it does look like a very small part of their attempt to solve
| the looming demographics crisis - to get men out of their caves
| and have them start families.
| nonamenoslogan wrote:
| Realistically, how will this be enforced?
| bmc7505 wrote:
| Facial recognition:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/9/22567029/tencent-china-fac...
| frashelaw wrote:
| Note that it's specifically Online games, not all games.
| didibus wrote:
| I was just thinking about if I should limit game time for my kids
| or not.
|
| My thoughts were that there are too many kind of video games to
| club them all as "games are bad". And probably I'll focus on
| limiting the kind of games or specific games themselves.
|
| Some games are just elaborate casino games in nicer clothes. I
| really don't see benefits to that. But some offline games offer
| interesting stories and challenges that need brain/dexterity to
| solve. I feel those are probably just as good as books or
| movies/tv.
|
| For online competitive games, that's a harder one. Games like
| Fortnite, COD, online sports games, and all that. Some people say
| it lets kids play together with friends, but I find nowadays it
| can also just expose yourself to kind of bad social interactions.
|
| Coop online games and such, where the friend group is closed,
| like you play within your friends, no other strangers involved I
| feel is probably fine.
|
| Having said all that, I feel that we're missing some actual
| evidence here to say if games are good or bad. Is there actually
| some data on it? Any correlation with kids who spent a lot of
| time playing video games and how they turned out later in life? I
| personally did grow up playing games, and I turned out fine, so
| sometimes I wonder if it's more of a false scare than anything.
| devteambravo wrote:
| I learned English playing Starcraft Shareware with a bunch of
| Canadians. I learned about money, economics, marketing,
| psychology and social skills via Runescape. I used games as an
| escape from my hell on earth childhood. And yet, I see this and
| think... maybe they're onto something. Today's games are
| engineered to rake in and manufacture addicts. People who don't
| know what dark design patterns are. Forgive my French here, but
| fuck the "Freedom" bullshit, this is about the one and only thing
| it's always been about, $$$. I say good for them.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| And yet, this fights the symptom, not the cause. Regulation
| should target companies that manufacture said addictive
| products, not dictate how citizens should behave under the
| guise of protection
| devteambravo wrote:
| I just don't buy the premise. Got it China bad. We're not
| acting better at home here in the US of A. You may disagree,
| but at the end of the day, you're walking with the same style
| of state surveillance in your pocket as any other. We cannot
| both be the cause of the problem and the solution. "not
| dictate how citizens should behave under the guise of
| protection". Do we live on the same planet???!
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Yes, there is just a massive wave of scam artists and other bad
| actors that cry freedom to keep their exploitative practices
| from being criminalized or regulated. We all see it in certain
| online games, certain social media practices, some NFTs/crypto
| ICOs, current wave of SPAC/meme stocks, and it goes on. A large
| portion of them are robbing less sophisticated people. It's a
| major question of how much protection from their own bad
| decisions people get (and how equitable that protection is
| between the rich and the poor).
|
| I also think games and gaming communities have gotten much
| worse in 25 years. I wouldn't want a child I knew to get
| involved in most gaming communities at all, now.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| This comment thread is a really interesting instance of a social
| phenomenon that happens in forums.
|
| The overwhelming majority of comments here are both:
|
| 1. Partially or fully supportive of this policy.
|
| 2. Downvoted to grey.
|
| There seem to be two ways people are engaging with this topic:
|
| 1. Writing a nuanced comment about how this is probably good for
| children or well meaning (to be downvoted by most readers).
|
| 2. Upvoting the handful of comments that point out how this is
| obviously a terrible overreach (but not writing as much in a
| comment because it has already been said).
|
| Because those with an unpopular opinion have so much more to
| express, those perspectives generate the most comments and the
| fewest upvotes/most downvotes.
|
| This phenomenon tends to make it seem like a minority opinion is
| held by the majority present.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I have an idea for Footloose 3: Pacman
| bell-cot wrote:
| "...coaches of the Chinese Olympic volleyball teams decry this
| move, saying 'it will condemn our great nation to certain defeat
| in 2024'". /s
|
| (Though to look at reaction here on HN, doing a 's/games/video
| games/' in the title would be utterly superfluous.)
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Talk about a capacity planning pain for the game companies.
|
| Your entire <18 player-base coming online at the exact same time
| for only 1 hour.
|
| Of course there are solutions like scheduled auto-scaling but
| still, I guarantee that's going to cause some outages at least in
| the beginning.
| foreigner wrote:
| Actually it sounds great - imagine the savings!
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Imagine waiting a week for your weekly allocated one hour of
| gaming, only to have the servers crash for the whole time under
| the load.
|
| Tfw.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Good.
| reversengineer wrote:
| Look for exceptions to this rule in the near future as eSports
| continues its rise in popularity, and even becomes offered as an
| official school activity.
| shahbaby wrote:
| Bad idea.
|
| Scarcity artificially increases percieved value.
|
| This is how you make something more addictive, not less.
| pphysch wrote:
| On the contrary, not having access to a bad habit for 5 days a
| week is a great way to replace that habit.
| criloz2 wrote:
| It is not the work of the government to do those things.
| holoduke wrote:
| I believe we in the west fail in creating a healthy and friendly
| society. I mean today I saw a TV commercial about a state funded
| lottery. In this commercial a well known rich person sits in his
| small boat. Then suddenly a big yacht appears with a not so rich
| looking guy on it. Smiling and overlooking the small boat.
| Obviously a person who won the lottery. The message: bigger and
| richer is better. Promoting this kind of mentality is not good
| for a respectful society. I am not a pro China person. Not at
| all. I am all for a free world in which people can take their own
| responsibility. But is that possible when the government is
| showing bad education? Same for
| persedes wrote:
| 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.
| Guess it depends on how the parents/ companies interpret that law
| (is it a law?). Watching the recent VIPKid / online teaching
| fallout, they just banned online classes very short notice for
| the remaining summer holidays. According to some VIPKid teachers
| however they're not getting new classes booked for september or
| the existing ones are getting cancelled.
| masterof0 wrote:
| 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.
| anovikov wrote:
| But this is silly and unenforceable, you can just as well prevent
| people from masturbating. Of course, people will massively opt
| out of totalitarianism especially as it is going crazier and
| crazier by the day - there are 18 "institutes" devoted to
| "studies" of Xi's personal "ideas" alone - this is literally half
| step away from the ridiculous Mao days.
|
| Those who can leave the country, will do so, and they are doing
| it already and have always been. The rest will simply "lie flat"
| (Chinese term) as a way of passive resistance.
| mproud wrote:
| Online games. Play all the offline games you want.
|
| Or log in with your older sibling's ID or parents ID.
| brokenlantern wrote:
| Wouldn't this also crush their egame industry or is the
| environment there appreciably different from what it looks like
| here?
| seppobi69 wrote:
| I have been playing +12h per day semi casually, taking non-
| scheduled brakes for weeks when it gets boring. For me it is more
| an escape than addiction. I do it because everything else sucks,
| not because I got symptoms if I don't play. I have real
| addictions and gaming is not one of them.
| yellowapple wrote:
| China and heavy-handed intervention: name a more iconic duo.
| doomleika wrote:
| This is actually worse, underaged minors are only allowed to play
| from 2000-2100 in Fri, Sat, and Sun(and holidays). Down from
| cumulative 1.5 hours(3 hour in holidays) per day in 0600-2200.
| There's no clear effective date for this mandate. But many of the
| game I see have those policy in place already.
|
| The restriction applies to "online games", but keep in mind in
| China GaaS games(read: gacha games) are the norm, they are always
| online to fight piracy. So basically, this applies all the games
| that actually matters in China.
|
| This will likely to push the China game industry to a new round
| of battle royal to fight for those little time they have from
| players, I feel bad for small shops, after 10 years of bloodbath
| China games had their monetization pattern in place(gacha/monthly
| passes/daily missions). Now they have to restart over and try
| again.
|
| eSport scene? yeah, gone, but honestly this is probably good in
| the long run.
|
| China shops has been winning this era of gaming and crubstomping
| JP/KR gamedevs with superior gacha models, server stability,
| update quality/quantity. This mandate will likely to halt their
| dominance and gave JP/KR a breather.
|
| and I guess Bytedance's game divisions is a goner now...
| cucumb3rrelish wrote:
| i can't imagine tencent and the like are happy about this in
| the slightest
| doomleika wrote:
| Tencent have been reducing their gaming revenue footprints
| down to single digit %. IMO giant behemoth for the like of
| BATTMD will manage since they have the money to spare. It
| will hurt. but in the long run it won't be a big deal.
| tejohnso wrote:
| With school out for summer, my preschooler is either playing a
| video game or watching youtube for hours on end. We try to force
| some time away from screens but it is a never ending struggle, as
| screen use is the immediate, default state to return to. I find
| most of the youtube content worse than the gaming, but neither
| are all that great.
| dharmab wrote:
| All of my similarly aged parents- most of whom are huge gamers
| and nerds- have instituted some effective policies:
|
| - Strictly limited screen time, replaced with time spent
| reading, playing with physical toys like LEGO and playing
| outside actively. Devices are physically removed from the kid's
| environment when screen time is over.
|
| - Kids do not get full access to the entire content library.
| Approved videos and games only. Most have entirely removed the
| YouTube app from the kid devices in favor of Disney Plus and
| education-focused apps. Some have kids playing more retro games
| rather than current games.
|
| The kids will complain and throw tantrums, but they're
| toddlers, they do that anyway. And eventually they come around.
| Especially if their friends (children and aunties/uncles)
| participate with them as well.
| lvs wrote:
| So control your child, or are you saying you want a central
| government to do that for you?
| piaste wrote:
| Disclaimer: not a parent.
|
| He's a preschooler, not a teenager or even a kid. Can't you
| just... not give him a phone/tablet except at specified reward
| times?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I am a parent. You absolutely can. The kid will make your
| life miserable about it for anywhere from 4 hours to 3 months
| depending on how stubborn they are.
| persedes wrote:
| dito, it's hard, but doable. We've gone cold turkey with
| the TV on our five year old and after a week or two he was
| much more tolerable and plays with legos for hours to keep
| himself occupied. He's still a 5-year old though, so
| removing TV alone won't help with that, you still got to
| parent / occupy him most of the time. It did however get
| easier to connect with him and reason about those
| decisions.
|
| We still watch stuff together every now and then (or if we
| really need to be focused on smth), but he's in a much
| better mood throughout.
| tejohnso wrote:
| >He's still a 5-year old though, so removing TV alone
| won't help with that, you still got to parent / occupy
| him most of the time
|
| Right. There's nothing quite as engaging as tv/gaming
| that he can just sit without guidance and safely do by
| himself for a few hours at a time while his parents are
| busy working. Probably comes down to lazy parenting.
| sfink wrote:
| We do it by paying attention to how the kid's doing with
| it, and going through a cycle. He'll periodically get
| sucked too far into the YouTube (or ...) swamp, and we'll
| notice that he's more difficult to deal with, less
| interested in other pursuits, and is moodier and just
| generally having a harder time.
|
| We'll have a tough conversation where we lay out the
| situation, he'll melt down but will eventually accept that
| it's not working out, and we'll impose temporary
| restrictions until it feels like things are more under
| control. He'll quickly realize that going halfway is way
| too hard, and will regulate himself to a level much
| stricter than what we imposed.
|
| Then there's a fairly long honeymoon period where he's
| getting some exposure but not too much. Eventually the
| beast slowly takes over again, and we repeat.
|
| It's not fun, it's ugly to watch, it's hard to do, but it
| feels like it's working. As in, I truly believe he's
| learning better self regulation than I've ever had, and for
| better reasons.
|
| I'm just thankful my wife is both aware enough and enough
| of a hardass to pull it off; on my own, I'd do things too
| late and too extreme, and we'd just be two monkeys reacting
| to each other.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| I wonder if game addiction is a bigger problem in China, if
| Chinese kids are feeling a lot more pressure compared to the US,
| and if (if both are true) that would explain the addiction
| problem.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Well video game is the new cigarette for Chinese teenagers.
|
| The harder the government bans it, the more tempting it would be.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| My understanding is that South Korea already does this to some
| extent with users having to be over 18 or having a Pro Gaming
| license to play after some hour.
|
| The result has not been that the vast majority of SK gamers
| promptly log off at said hour. The result has been the majority
| of them connect to non SK servers immediately at said hour or use
| a friends account.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| China was already restricting minors to 8 hours a week.
| ihuman wrote:
| That law was abolished a few days ago
| https://www.engadget.com/south-korea-gaming-shutdown-law-end...
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Thanks. Amazing timing!
| make3 wrote:
| Are you saying China can't enforce this?
|
| the difference is that China is able to actually apply the law,
| with it's fire wall and unprecedently separated tech
| infrastrure. It may also threaten the companies to straight up
| boot them from China if they don't comply.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I don't think it's useful or productive to go that far.
|
| But I do think everyone would be better off if any game with a
| cash shop tied to randomness (loot boxes) or an in-game mechanic
| tied to randomness that can be exacerbated with cash shop
| purchases (Black Desert Online's gear improvement mechanic being
| a good example) be limited to those who are of gambling age.
| bserge wrote:
| How are they realistically gonna enforce it?
| jimbilly22 wrote:
| same way it's always done. Pick and choose enforcement based on
| whims, political opponents or anyone otherwise whom they
| target.
| ailun wrote:
| They force the gaming companies to use real-name ID and face
| verification.
| falcolas wrote:
| Look back to July's news of Tencent implementing facial
| recognition via smartphones for an example.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Think about this when you support "sin taxes". At some point the
| "sin" they target is going to be something you partake in. I
| generally dislike any government mandate punishing an entire
| society because some people lack the control to limit themselves.
|
| I understand this is aimed at someone who isn't legally an
| "adult" so I can give some small leeway in that case. However, I
| don't think this enforceable at all and it really still comes
| down to the parents putting in time to limit them.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| This is really difficult for me to have an unbiased opinion on,
| but I think this is an OK decision (3 hours seems a bit too
| little >.>). I've pumped WAY too many hours into online games. I
| played fighting games, dota, starcraft, you name it, I played it
| and I played it before I was 18. I really think that it stunted
| my social growth (though not too much) because I got really
| hooked on the competitive aspect of those games. Those games
| still get their hooks in my once in a while (splitgate I'm
| looking at you). However, another reason I played so many games
| is because I lived in the middle of nowhere in florida and didn't
| have a car. There wasn't much I could do other than go to school,
| exercise, and play games. Everything was 30+ miles away by car. I
| think if China is going to do this, they have to provide other
| outlets for people to interact with each other. Games are a way
| of doing that for many because there simply isn't another option
| for them when they are young and don't have a car and don't live
| in a major city like new york or SF.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| What about edutainment type games? Will there be a censor
| deciding which game is eligible? The loopholes and ambiguities
| are many. This could backfire, especially if not enforced in some
| visibly meaningful and fair manner...
|
| Caveat: I know next to nothing about the gaming universe in China
| :-)
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Wouldn't those kids grow up resenting the CCP? If the CCP keeps
| doing this long enough, they're going to have millions of sullen
| people and then all it takes is just one spark.
| murph-almighty wrote:
| The lay down movement is the start of this, imo.
| dirtyid wrote:
| "When I was young we didn't have..."
|
| That's basically the story of 90% of parents in China pre 90s.
| This is more a continuation than disruption. These kids will
| play games when they turn into adults and enforce same
| limitations on their children. Keep in mind curbing video game
| addiction is something Chinese parents WANT, this is CCP
| listening to their base. Children don't vote in the west
| either, their interest are lobbied by adults.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I don't think so, although I wish it were the case. Kids can
| play outside with other kids, or go do something different, no
| kid will recent anything because they can't play those dumb pay
| to win mobile games. The only looser here will be Tencent and
| the other gaming companies.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Do kids grow up resenting the US government for barring them
| from drinking? Are the acts of the ESRB likely to spark a
| revolution?
| andix wrote:
| They try to create a very tight net to control people. This
| works quite ,,well" in North Korea, China is trying to create a
| ,,better" version of that, by using technology. Creating a
| social scoring system, rating every move you make and
| everything you say.
|
| If people can't express their resent at all, at some point they
| even stop thinking about it.
| root_axis wrote:
| Or they'll just grow up into other hobbies besides gaming and
| not really care in the long run.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If the CCP keeps doing this long enough, they're going to
| have millions of sullen people and then all it takes is just
| one spark.
|
| ...and lots of disaffected people end up dead or beaten or in
| prison or, seeing those options demonstrated vividly, resigned
| to their fate under the CCP's rule, unwelcome as it may be.
|
| It's not like this hasn't played out already several times over
| different issues.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| They have a billion citizens. At some point the few will
| become the many disaffected.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > At some point the few will become the many disaffected.
|
| Yes, we [*] know that, because its happened before, see,
| e.g., the '89 Democracy Movement.
|
| On the other hand, we [*] know how that ended, too.
|
| [*] Unless our information comes exclusively from the CCP-
| filtered internet, in which case, maybe not.
| simmerup wrote:
| That's why the CCP has tanks
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The CCP doesn't keep its power by convincing everyone it's the
| best thing since sliced bread; it keeps it's power by
| convincing everyone it's both A) Inevitable and B) Not that
| bad.
| retrac wrote:
| I fear you being correct as it would greatly erode my faith in
| the human species. Relocation of tens of millions of high
| school students to the countryside to work forced labour? A
| generation later, mowing down young protesters with tanks? Meh.
| But take away people's video games... that is an abuse too far.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Why? As adults they 'll be more understanding of why they were
| forced to stop that addictive behavior. And kids dont start
| revolutions
| S_A_P wrote:
| 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 from parts he started
| researching. If he didnt care about gaming, he would not have any
| of that...
| doomleika wrote:
| 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 used to more productive matter. The damage could be
| justified IF you are the game dev/publisher so your country
| could benefit from all the royalties, but this is not the case
| for many of the countries(of course in China this is a mixed
| case where Tencent holds 100% of Riot).
|
| This is actually a problem in Korea that they have many failed
| eSport candidate that have no proper skill to live in a very
| competitive job market. Although Parasite(2019) is a bit
| exaggerated but not getting in prestigious
| school/company(Samsung) will likely to put you in a very
| miserable economy situations.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just like sports, esports can support only so many coaches
| and managers. If not sufficiently manage career the players
| might even be successful but still end up on nothing after a
| few years of playing a popular game.
| masterof0 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| logicalmonster wrote:
| 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.
| bogwog wrote:
| I agree this is fucked up for a lot of reasons, but I'd take
| point 1 as a positive for the service teams. This gives them a
| way to perfectly predict the load on their servers in advance.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I'm sure I would think differently if I were a parent, but this
| kinda sucks from just the perspective of letting a kid be a kid.
|
| I fondly recall draining days and days and days into online
| multiplayer games, made some of my best friends who are still
| with me to this day across state lines, and came to my wedding,
| while eating all sorts of stereotypically bad gamer junk food.
|
| Other than spending too much time arguing with people online, I
| don't find myself outside of what people would consider "well
| adjusted."
|
| Besides, most people don't spend their entire lives playing video
| games for hours on end. You do get tired of it.
|
| On second thought, maybe such rules would help one keep their
| love of games for longer...
| mproud wrote:
| Only online games. And kids could sign in using their parent's
| account.
| timwaagh wrote:
| 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?
| savant_penguin wrote:
| The state clawing its hands inside families' decision making
|
| It does not matter if you agree or disagree with the proposition,
| this should not be decided by the state
| Dig1t wrote:
| This seems like a good way to breed a generation of kids who are
| good at cracking/circumventing game restrictions, and play more
| offline games.
| hammeiam wrote:
| What are the odds that this isn't an effort to get kids offline,
| and instead an attempt at freeing bandwidth or reducing energy
| consumption? This feels like when they banned bitcoin mining at
| the same time they were having rolling brownouts - the issue
| wasn't the mining but the resources it consumed.
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