[devnulll]

There are all sorts of things governments express control over, even at home.

The obvious scenarios are alcohol, nicotine & drugs. As a parent of young children, there are addition parallels between Minecraft / Roblox / Alcohol / Cigarettes.

To a real degree, more effort is put into making gaming deliberately additive - although flavored vaping (bubble gum, cotton candy, etc) would like to enter the conversation.

[goostavos]

I don't know if we're coming at it from the same angle if we're lumping Minecraft in with alcohol and cigarettes. To your initial point, though, just because the government currently expresses control is not actually an argument that they should continue to do so or be granted additional powers to do more. Because it's normal, doesn't mean it's correct.

Flavored vaping products are for sure bad. I'll happily give you that. I'll also give you sugar, processed food, alcohol, cigarettes, McDonalds, and a near never ending supply of things we regularly consume (food, entertainment, or other).

I wouldn't petition the government to control access to any of them. I tend to trust the millions of individual personal (or parental) decisions over the long haul more than I do centrally planned, top-down mandates.

[xvector]

Videogame addiction probably stunted my childhood development as much as drugs would have, so I can see where the Chinese government is coming from if it's from an addiction perspective.

[devnulll]

> I don't know if we're coming at it from the same angle if we're lumping Minecraft in with alcohol and cigarettes.

My belief is that's a reasonable debate with very valid points on both sides. At a personal level, kids 2-12 are Addicted to games (Minecraft, Roblox, etc). Taking the games away has the same impact as taking away narcotics from an addict.

The unregulated ability of these platforms to target children (and they do), seems very analogous to pre-regulated cigarettes, drug, and alcohol marketing.

I wager more psychological studies are done on driving MAU, rapid viral adoption, and upping Click Through Rates than were done for nicotine.

[pluto8195]

the US has imposed many rules on the manufacturers and distributors of addictive substances as well (banning flavored vapes, marketing towards children), I think it would be much more constructive to impose some regulation on how games are made, and how they are pushed rather than the behavior of children.

[binarybanana]

What makes you think adults don't like flavored liquids?

Seems insane to suggest that adults would prefer the taste of ashtray over apple or orange (I like fruity aromas). I mostly vape without flavoring nowadays because I'm lazy, but I just don't get the mindset. Adults like sugar, sweets, lemonade and all that stuff just as much as children do. Some seem to really like the taste of cigarettes, but I think for the most part people are just more comfortable to say "I like the taste" instead of "I'm addicted to nicotine", because inhaling burnt plant matter along with the diffused active agents and aromatic compounds generally isn't good for taste. Weed also tastes much better vaped.