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.
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.
That's so funny this exact thing happened to me at the same age, and with Zelda as well. I was 6 years old when Ocarina of Time came out and had this exact experience of my parents getting fed up with reading the text to me and being forced to read it myself. I definitely think it helped me become a strong reader early in life. Good for you, I think this is a good idea.
What other games do you recommend? …uhhh asking for my 6 year old son who loves Super Mario 3D World… Zelda BoW is my next purchase
I fortunately bought a used Wii U bundle with a stash of games and controllers off eBay pre pandemic “for the kids” and I realized while playing with them that I far prefer them playing games than staring at the TV. We are talking and laughing and arguing and explaining the whole time during Mario. Kids TV shows just seem to send kids to this zombie state. I hadn’t considered the reading aspect of certain games.
Identical thing happened between me and my younger brother. He'd use me to read game text to him for a while until I got fed up with it. I had learned to read from the game text myself. (The game was an old space RPG-like game called Escape Velocity.)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 café, 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 café. 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 café and not finding the motivation to stop.
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.
All good points, but the main issue here is the government, in this case the CCP, dictating game play. It's the parent's responsibility to dictate when and how their children play games not the government.
If the government wants to go after game developers because their games are addictive that's one thing. Dictating to the players is a level of control free citizens should never experience. Although, in this case, citizens of China are hardly free in the first place.
OTOH an individual parent has to expend a lot more effort to create controls than a government. An individual parent can't mandate technology companies install controls that automatically regulate their child's play; they have to manually monitor+manage it at some cost of time+effort to themselves.
A wonkish trick would be for the government to mandate controls with sensible defaults but allow parents to tune them I guess?
> 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.
Is this actually going to be enforced somehow? And if so, how is that enforcement going to be different than what happened over the last two years?
The regulated game are mostly online game.
It's like social media, sometimes kids have to play it to be in part of the community. Individual parents can't change this.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.”
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.
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....
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.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
League of Legends suffers from a problem no one's figured out how to fix yet, or that would require so much effort, anyone capable of figuring it out would rather work for a FAANG, which is: How do you separate people who want to excel from people who just want to have "fun"?
You can't mix people with a hardcore attitude with people with a casual attitude. It'll result in disaster every single time, without fail, in any endeavor, ever. It never works, no matter what, and no one is going to be able to make it work. You have to separate them.
What's worse, the ban system for League of Legends favors shitty people over the people who actually want to do well. Someone can intentionally troll, die 29 times in a game, have 0 kills, 0 assists, and nothing happens. When the other four players try to win, but get frustrated at this single shitbag, and then say something, they get banned... instead of the obviously troller catching an instant permanent ban to teach them a lesson.
I don't. This isn't about just video games. It's about the CCP controlling everything down to the most minute aspect of everyone's life in China. At some point the people will revolt and it won't be pretty with a nation of 1.4 billion in civil war. I don't see how anyone in the west could think this is a good thing. I can understand this from parents, not from a government.
This. Old Games had lots of work from History, Mythology, Science and all sort other details in it. I mean even old Diablo I and II had a whole story book that came with it. Was it Lord of the Rings quality? No. But it is so much better than not reading a story book.
All the history lessons from games like Civilisation, Sim City helping you imagining a whole new world. RPG had lots of story telling.
Heck even MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you have to learn team building before any shit could get done. I often thought it as the ultimate leadership testing. Motivating people without any usual tools like promotion or salary rise.
Modern Mobile Games are bad. VERY bad. I would even argue it is worst than Social Media for kids. Some of them are designed to cause rage so your kids would rage spend to win. There is a reason why Nintendo thought it was wrong to do Mobile Games. It is simply not the type of games they want to be in.
I could go on, I have been ranting about Mobile Games for more than half a decade. Wishing Apple would do something about it. But 80% of all App Store Revenue coming from Games were too lucrative for them.
> 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
> 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.
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?
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.
Such a good point. As a burgeoning dramatist (lol) Square's SNES RPG work did so much for me. Massive, sprawling stories made very engaging by interaction. Point of fact, a Chrono Trigger fanfic was one of the first stories I wrote.
On the other hand, my numerous hours spend playing WWE Attitude and Goldeneye probably wasn't exactly expanding my horizons.
I'm a new parent so I'm not sure how I'm going to navigate this myself but I assume the above will guide my own rule-making.
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:
I would say china is well placed to be producing excellemnt content for the world. Like the japanese have done for decades with their videogames and animation. China has some excellent video game content largely consumed within china. These kids are the future Game Designers, Programmers, Architects of this Industry. Its a tragedy and would have economic impact in future.
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.
If I haven't played Runescape my life for sure would be different now. Most likely worse. Had lots of fun, learned english, enjoying the grind, market economics,and got inspired to learn to program similar games. IMO sandbox games should be even encouraged.
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.
2. Effort is rewarded. "Effort" is a very vague thing. It could be not dying/luck (roguelikes, Hearthstone), it could be clicking a button 1000 times. It could be problems (Factorio) or wiki games (DF, Stardew Valley). The reward is sometimes satisfaction (Factorio/chess), sometimes a movie-like denouement (FF), sometimes a thing of beauty (Civ, DF)
3. Socialization, e.g. Roblox, Minecraft, Among Us. Solve a problem together.
4. Actions lead to consequences, e.g. D&D, Reigns, AI Dungeon, The Sims.
The last one is the "purest" form of gaming, in that it's a medium that only games can do well. But it's also the hardest to do and difficult to make money off.
I'd hope that this kind of restrictions will lead to China making more Type 4 games. Hopefully games that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion within 2-3 hours like the average movie.
Your category (2) is extremely vague and all-encompassing. I'd split off at least two distinct categories:
5. Games that are about providing a certain experience: walking simulators, horror games, casual adventure games, story focused games. Here there, effort is often not really a focus at all and while you could say that you are "rewarded" for simply playing the game that is stretching it and could be applied to any game that is enjoyable in some way.
6. Puzzle games - here the challenge itself is the reward but unlike (1) the challenge is problem solving and not competition.
Of course like any genre system real games will not fit neatly in one of these categories but have aspects from multiple of them.
> The last one is the "purest" form of gaming, in that it's a medium that only games can do well.
Yeah no. While the interactive medium is a great tool for showing consequences, it is not required. Meanwhile many things in the other categories also benefit greatly from it.
> Hopefully games that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion within 2-3 hours like the average movie.
I wouldn't really want to hold the "average movie" as something games should strive for. I'm all for cutting down on grind, 2-3 hours is a really short time to learn complex mechanics or get immersed in the world and characters.
This is an absolutely insane government overreach and unacceptable.
Micromanaging what people can do with their time like this is 1984.
I grew up, sometimes skipping school and playing games all day, I still passed school, I have a good job in software and a healthy happy life.
I’d prefer the following question is asked, why do these kids require “spiritual opium”? Maybe living in a polluted authoritarian genocidal hell hole makes people want to escape reality ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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
That's on you. There are tons of amazing new video games with a good plot and a great gameplay. I'm not a huge gamer myself but the last one I did that checks those boxes was Horizon Zero Dawn.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
If one were to have an addiction, I'd pick video game addiction for them - the side effects are not like drugs, and it's possible to recover from it without major side effects, and in addition you can get a penchant for solving problems and learning quickly if you break out of the addiction cycle.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Exactly. I want to let my kid experience something similar. So I gave him (6 years old) my desktop pc. He is now playing around with windows settings. Of course looking for games on Steam. But he at least doesnt touch his Nintendo switch anymore.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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].
(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)
>_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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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")
Might be relevant to point out here that China has largely avoided adopting the remote work culture as most people were back in office in summer last year.
>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)
Lots of unchecked assumptions. I'm only taking issue with the music assumption. Do you have a counter to the studies you have read?
I do know of many studies that suggest the existence of a correlation between music education and academic achievement, but the gist of the argument against those studies is that they aren't well designed: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X1...
I think regulation on past time activities isn't the appropriate approach. It's a slippery slope, are they soon going to regulate the amount of time someone can watch television, or the number of times one may go to a movie theater?
Knowing china's history, it doesn't seem too far fetched and sounds like we're slowly evolving into an episode of black mirror.
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.
> ... 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.
How about that old timeless classic pricipal of "my time is my time and not my government's" . We're not talking about parents limiting VG time, this is a government controlling the most minute details of everyone's social life.
Board games are far better brain exercise. You’re forced to compete with other people and the games usually enforce time limits. Or if they don’t, your opponent will force an end if you want to win.
> solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math
That's not how improving through games works at all.
The things you understand through games are much more general than the surface of the gameplay.
Total War (or Starcraft) won't teach you anything about commanding armies. But if you're observant enough it will teach you a difference between level-1 versus level-2 strategies. It will definitely teach you about the impact of timing on execution. It will show you complexity, risk, loss aversion, and how battles are usually won or lost before the first shot is fired. All these are useful things to experience so that you are better equipped to deal with them in real life.
What's even more important, the games will show you how YOU relate to these intangible concepts. How loss averse are you? Do you naturally tend to maximize win or minimize loss? How easy it is for you to abandon a pre-established plan? These and more are insights into your own nature that are not easy to get.
Finally, the multiplayer games will show you the human nature. You'll understand, for example, that different people play for different reasons, and just this understanding alone was worth all hundreds of hours I put into M:TG. I guess that most of the multiplayer insights are also available through participation (and/or managing) a regular sports team but I would have never been able to join as many of those as I had gaming teams.
TLDR: Games guide the player to instinctive understanding of categorical truths that underpin the simulations, and that is only possible through countless repetitions of similar scenarios* in different contexts. This is the true value of gaming.
[*] I'm not talking about grinding here[**], but playing same or similar games many times.
[**] although grinding can teach one about how seemingly small process improvements somethimes add up to a qualitative break ... and sometimes not. Figure out the best way to do a cow level run to learn more!
"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.
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.
>"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.)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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?)
It's simple, Every MMORPG or online-game requires a license. The government can fine your company for violations. If you run games through email or IRC, pray your underground game network doesn't attract attentions.
btw there are tons of "grey" area online game services in China.
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.
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."
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)
Yes, I believe playing games with people in the same physical space is fundamentally different than sitting in a room by yourself playing with people online. I look back fondly upon the times in my childhood where we rigged up LAN parties, played console games on a couch or sitting on the carpet, or Pokemon on our Gameboys together roaming around the outdoors.
I don't look back very fondly upon the days when I grinded playing online PC games in a room alone, even though I had a headset and a chat box - that feels more like wasted time.
It's purely personal of course, and I know people who feel differently, but if gaming takes a step back toward anchoring itself in the physical realm, I'm all for it. The arcade heydays of the 80s sound awesome.
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.
> 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.
Does that mean it's impossible, according to your definitions, for the U.S. Congress to pass any bill that is in any way authoritarian? Or, indeed, is it possible for the U.S. government to do anything authoritative, since it is ostensibly democratic?
Authoritarianism and Democracy are two orthogonal things. Authoritarianism describes the degree to which the state regulates the affairs of its subjects. Democracy is a process by which decisions are made.
You can be in a authoritarian democracy, say Iran which is a theocratic republic which obtained that status through a legit revolution, overthrowing what used to be a dictatorial, but fairly liberal society under the Shah.
I don't want to start a us-vs-commies flame war but I'm finding it ironic that not a week ago someone was trying to tell me that american democracy is more of a plutocracy...
Something that people don't seem to realize about China is that CCP values are supported by a majority of Chinese people.
> What other word would you use to describe the Chinese government?
I strongly suggest getting out of your comfort zone and go talk to some mainland Chinese people (preferably not the living-in-america ones). You'll find that they describe it with words like "unified" (which, for record, I also consider a loaded term).
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.
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.
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.
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?
Well. I don't think you need research to know that gaming consumes time, and for those addicted a lot of them. Cigarettes and alcohol on the other hand, is not about the time you put in doing it, it's about the time afterwards. So there is a subtle difference.
Is there research suggesting that the physical and psychological problems caused by cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling are significantly reduced at age 18 or 21?
> 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).
That's clearly anecdotal because I worked and lived there for a year recently and what you said is only what *some* of them think.
I have spoken to many people, particularly those who are yonung and educated, who don't think like what you have said. Many people are also very eager to speak to foreigners about their governments and, in some extreme cases, they openly criticize their own for exactly the same reasons that much of the HN crowd probably would. Also, I was just a regular worker who wasn't anyone's boss, and I spoke to them in Chinese.
I'm not interested in debating against anecdotes with more anecdotes, but I think what you said is not the whole story of "their side" and is potentially manipulative even if it wasn't your intention to be.
I also don't think "authoritarian" is a loaded word, it's just an indication of how likely or unlikely someone is willing to work with others openly. The important thing is what to do to fix it, hopefully, together, after realizing what the issues could be, not toning in down and making everyone comfortable with some illusions in the first place.
What I'm reacting to is the general tone that the CCP just forces draconian measures down everyone's throats as if no one could possibly ever agree, but also not dare speak up. What I mean is that the characterization that the whole populace just puts up with crap is a bit inaccurate because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.
As someone else pointed out, these initiatives get passed precisely because there's enough support for it at some relevant branch of government, rather than being some sort of dictatorial whim of the party leader. And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.
It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers. Also, southerners tend to be less nationalistic than northerners, so if you are in Beijing it is very different than if you are in Shanghai or Shenzhen (though if you are working at a tech company, your co-workers will be from all over China).
I've had co-workers who were really harmonious river crab, and some that were very non-harmonious grass mud horse...all in the same team. Outside of work, I didn't really talk about politics at all, it just never seemed to be that important beyond a lunch topic.
China was going in the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader. The authoritarian uptick really came back with Xi, and now that Xi has basically become president for life, it is really reinforced. It is a bit disheartening to see China move to being more liberal to more authoritarian all in a few short years. The trend probably won't change for a generation or two.
> We on the west do exactly the same thing for things like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling.
At least in the case of alcohol, the guardians of a child are explicitly allowed to "override" that restriction (with some caveats e.g. in some states you have to be in a private residence) - so, at least there, it's pretty clear that the law is there to protect random underage children (something something executive function not completely developed until roughly age 25) from making huge mistakes with dangerous things that are still allowed to be sold.
If the same does not apply to cigarettes or gambling, that's an oversight.
I don't believe the Chinese law under discussion has any sort of exception.
Moreover, the difference in scientific evidence for the harmfulness of cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling is significantly greater than the evidence for the harmfulness of video games.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356141&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356141&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356141&p=4
Comments like this will eventually go away...sorry for the annoyance.
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.
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.
I fortunately bought a used Wii U bundle with a stash of games and controllers off eBay pre pandemic “for the kids” and I realized while playing with them that I far prefer them playing games than staring at the TV. We are talking and laughing and arguing and explaining the whole time during Mario. Kids TV shows just seem to send kids to this zombie state. I hadn’t considered the reading aspect of certain games.
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.
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).
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.
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 café, 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 café. 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 café and not finding the motivation to stop.
I was lucky. I am certain there are people way more obsessive than me.
If the government wants to go after game developers because their games are addictive that's one thing. Dictating to the players is a level of control free citizens should never experience. Although, in this case, citizens of China are hardly free in the first place.
How do we measure what level of control we have/deserve on our kids?
I'm not disagreeing, just arguing that there are cases where one could argue that the government is overstepping on how we parent our kids.
A wonkish trick would be for the government to mandate controls with sensible defaults but allow parents to tune them I guess?
From the article:
> 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.
Is this actually going to be enforced somehow? And if so, how is that enforcement going to be different than what happened over the last two years?
The government IS dictating game developers not to provide service to children who want to play outside of the said periods.
What you said is impossible to enforce.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
Games could do this as well as books. (And certainly not every book does it much). Occasionally games do. Mostly not.
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.”
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....
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..
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.
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.
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.
I don't. 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.
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.
You can't mix people with a hardcore attitude with people with a casual attitude. It'll result in disaster every single time, without fail, in any endeavor, ever. It never works, no matter what, and no one is going to be able to make it work. You have to separate them.
What's worse, the ban system for League of Legends favors shitty people over the people who actually want to do well. Someone can intentionally troll, die 29 times in a game, have 0 kills, 0 assists, and nothing happens. When the other four players try to win, but get frustrated at this single shitbag, and then say something, they get banned... instead of the obviously troller catching an instant permanent ban to teach them a lesson.
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All the history lessons from games like Civilisation, Sim City helping you imagining a whole new world. RPG had lots of story telling.
Heck even MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you have to learn team building before any shit could get done. I often thought it as the ultimate leadership testing. Motivating people without any usual tools like promotion or salary rise.
Modern Mobile Games are bad. VERY bad. I would even argue it is worst than Social Media for kids. Some of them are designed to cause rage so your kids would rage spend to win. There is a reason why Nintendo thought it was wrong to do Mobile Games. It is simply not the type of games they want to be in.
I could go on, I have been ranting about Mobile Games for more than half a decade. Wishing Apple would do something about it. But 80% of all App Store Revenue coming from Games were too lucrative for them.
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
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.
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.
On the other hand, my numerous hours spend playing WWE Attitude and Goldeneye probably wasn't exactly expanding my horizons.
I'm a new parent so I'm not sure how I'm going to navigate this myself but I assume the above will guide my own rule-making.
This comic sort of represents those childhood sentiments experienced today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDG_IEDc9A
If they pick up reading and decide they like those endless fantasy series, is that better than playing a video game for the same amount of time? Why?
If they decide to watch TV or movies instead of video games, is that better? Why?
Should they spend that all that free time studying and doing homework instead? Why?
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1. Sports. You practice, get good, compete.
2. Effort is rewarded. "Effort" is a very vague thing. It could be not dying/luck (roguelikes, Hearthstone), it could be clicking a button 1000 times. It could be problems (Factorio) or wiki games (DF, Stardew Valley). The reward is sometimes satisfaction (Factorio/chess), sometimes a movie-like denouement (FF), sometimes a thing of beauty (Civ, DF)
3. Socialization, e.g. Roblox, Minecraft, Among Us. Solve a problem together.
4. Actions lead to consequences, e.g. D&D, Reigns, AI Dungeon, The Sims.
The last one is the "purest" form of gaming, in that it's a medium that only games can do well. But it's also the hardest to do and difficult to make money off.
I'd hope that this kind of restrictions will lead to China making more Type 4 games. Hopefully games that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion within 2-3 hours like the average movie.
5. Games that are about providing a certain experience: walking simulators, horror games, casual adventure games, story focused games. Here there, effort is often not really a focus at all and while you could say that you are "rewarded" for simply playing the game that is stretching it and could be applied to any game that is enjoyable in some way.
6. Puzzle games - here the challenge itself is the reward but unlike (1) the challenge is problem solving and not competition.
Of course like any genre system real games will not fit neatly in one of these categories but have aspects from multiple of them.
> The last one is the "purest" form of gaming, in that it's a medium that only games can do well.
Yeah no. While the interactive medium is a great tool for showing consequences, it is not required. Meanwhile many things in the other categories also benefit greatly from it.
> Hopefully games that can lead to a satisfactory conclusion within 2-3 hours like the average movie.
I wouldn't really want to hold the "average movie" as something games should strive for. I'm all for cutting down on grind, 2-3 hours is a really short time to learn complex mechanics or get immersed in the world and characters.
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You have mixed feelings a about what?
This is an absolutely insane government overreach and unacceptable.
Micromanaging what people can do with their time like this is 1984.
I grew up, sometimes skipping school and playing games all day, I still passed school, I have a good job in software and a healthy happy life.
I’d prefer the following question is asked, why do these kids require “spiritual opium”? Maybe living in a polluted authoritarian genocidal hell hole makes people want to escape reality ?
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.
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.
That's on you. There are tons of amazing new video games with a good plot and a great gameplay. I'm not a huge gamer myself but the last one I did that checks those boxes was Horizon Zero Dawn.
UK lets children drink.
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
Videogames should be social events. Not solitary escapes that cause people to become schizoids.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
- 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
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.
Unlike some games however I can't drive using only the minimap...
Is there anything that actually scales linearly? I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do.
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.
IMO, the interesting part of many things in life comes after a significant time/difficulty spike. Think of music, art, programming, athletic performance, etc.
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")
Lots of unchecked assumptions. I'm only taking issue with the music assumption. Do you have a counter to the studies you have read?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180326140244.h...
Knowing china's history, it doesn't seem too far fetched and sounds like we're slowly evolving into an episode of black mirror.
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.
That's not how improving through games works at all.
The things you understand through games are much more general than the surface of the gameplay. Total War (or Starcraft) won't teach you anything about commanding armies. But if you're observant enough it will teach you a difference between level-1 versus level-2 strategies. It will definitely teach you about the impact of timing on execution. It will show you complexity, risk, loss aversion, and how battles are usually won or lost before the first shot is fired. All these are useful things to experience so that you are better equipped to deal with them in real life.
What's even more important, the games will show you how YOU relate to these intangible concepts. How loss averse are you? Do you naturally tend to maximize win or minimize loss? How easy it is for you to abandon a pre-established plan? These and more are insights into your own nature that are not easy to get.
Finally, the multiplayer games will show you the human nature. You'll understand, for example, that different people play for different reasons, and just this understanding alone was worth all hundreds of hours I put into M:TG. I guess that most of the multiplayer insights are also available through participation (and/or managing) a regular sports team but I would have never been able to join as many of those as I had gaming teams.
TLDR: Games guide the player to instinctive understanding of categorical truths that underpin the simulations, and that is only possible through countless repetitions of similar scenarios* in different contexts. This is the true value of gaming.
[*] I'm not talking about grinding here[**], but playing same or similar games many times.
[**] although grinding can teach one about how seemingly small process improvements somethimes add up to a qualitative break ... and sometimes not. Figure out the best way to do a cow level run to learn more!
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> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
* Hell, you don't even need to circumvent the defintion if you can get around it technically.
It's simple, Every MMORPG or online-game requires a license. The government can fine your company for violations. If you run games through email or IRC, pray your underground game network doesn't attract attentions.
btw there are tons of "grey" area online game services in China.
In this as in many things, big central institutions are much easier for a state to work with.
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."
Sounds like it could be kinda fun (nostalgia for me)
I don't look back very fondly upon the days when I grinded playing online PC games in a room alone, even though I had a headset and a chat box - that feels more like wasted time.
It's purely personal of course, and I know people who feel differently, but if gaming takes a step back toward anchoring itself in the physical realm, I'm all for it. The arcade heydays of the 80s sound awesome.
Also, imagine influx of games for services to handle.
Ah, fortunately they planned for that way ahead of time.
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.
Our restrictions came about through a democratic process (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...), not because our supreme leader decided he knows what's best for us.
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?
A democratic process where most of the people affected weren't allowed to vote.
You can be in a authoritarian democracy, say Iran which is a theocratic republic which obtained that status through a legit revolution, overthrowing what used to be a dictatorial, but fairly liberal society under the Shah.
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Dead Comment
Something that people don't seem to realize about China is that CCP values are supported by a majority of Chinese people.
> What other word would you use to describe the Chinese government?
I strongly suggest getting out of your comfort zone and go talk to some mainland Chinese people (preferably not the living-in-america ones). You'll find that they describe it with words like "unified" (which, for record, I also consider a loaded term).
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.
I'm really shocked by the somewhat puritanical take on video games at hacker news of all places.
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.
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?
That's clearly anecdotal because I worked and lived there for a year recently and what you said is only what *some* of them think.
I have spoken to many people, particularly those who are yonung and educated, who don't think like what you have said. Many people are also very eager to speak to foreigners about their governments and, in some extreme cases, they openly criticize their own for exactly the same reasons that much of the HN crowd probably would. Also, I was just a regular worker who wasn't anyone's boss, and I spoke to them in Chinese.
I'm not interested in debating against anecdotes with more anecdotes, but I think what you said is not the whole story of "their side" and is potentially manipulative even if it wasn't your intention to be.
I also don't think "authoritarian" is a loaded word, it's just an indication of how likely or unlikely someone is willing to work with others openly. The important thing is what to do to fix it, hopefully, together, after realizing what the issues could be, not toning in down and making everyone comfortable with some illusions in the first place.
Right, that's why I said "Many chinese".
What I'm reacting to is the general tone that the CCP just forces draconian measures down everyone's throats as if no one could possibly ever agree, but also not dare speak up. What I mean is that the characterization that the whole populace just puts up with crap is a bit inaccurate because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.
As someone else pointed out, these initiatives get passed precisely because there's enough support for it at some relevant branch of government, rather than being some sort of dictatorial whim of the party leader. And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.
I've had co-workers who were really harmonious river crab, and some that were very non-harmonious grass mud horse...all in the same team. Outside of work, I didn't really talk about politics at all, it just never seemed to be that important beyond a lunch topic.
China was going in the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader. The authoritarian uptick really came back with Xi, and now that Xi has basically become president for life, it is really reinforced. It is a bit disheartening to see China move to being more liberal to more authoritarian all in a few short years. The trend probably won't change for a generation or two.
At least in the case of alcohol, the guardians of a child are explicitly allowed to "override" that restriction (with some caveats e.g. in some states you have to be in a private residence) - so, at least there, it's pretty clear that the law is there to protect random underage children (something something executive function not completely developed until roughly age 25) from making huge mistakes with dangerous things that are still allowed to be sold.
If the same does not apply to cigarettes or gambling, that's an oversight.
I don't believe the Chinese law under discussion has any sort of exception.
Moreover, the difference in scientific evidence for the harmfulness of cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling is significantly greater than the evidence for the harmfulness of video games.
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.
I think it's unlikely that every kid will be using 100% of their playtime every weekend, and thus giving a perfectly reliable usage pattern.
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.
| 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.
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...
- Game prices have not kept up with inflation.
- Games are more expensive than ever before.
- More games now have online multiplayer, requiring constant funding.
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.
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.