[barnesto]

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.

[javierluraschi]

Where is the line compared to government enforcing parents to not leaving their kids alone in a car or home, or sending their kids to school?

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.

[Diesel555]

These arguments have already happened. You are arguing about paternalism. These debates are common in policy classes, specifically about libertarianism. Clearly, people that believe in the freedom of choice would hate this. However to your questions:

> parents to not leaving their kids alone in a car

Infringes on the freedom of the child to live or not endure conditions beyond what a normal person should endure

> sending their kids to school

The other questions start getting more into removing the freedom of the parents to choose at the expense of the best interest of the individual being affected (in the government's point of view).

There is a lot of academic material with well defined terms about these subjects. Americans will err towards individual freedoms rather than the government directing more than will European countries (and obviously communist countries; yes you can find specific examples to contradict this statement, it's a generality, an average of all policies). But Americans are trending towards more paternalistic policies over the last fifty years (Standard disclaimer: To those who will derive an intent out of this statement, it is not supporting or not supporting it, simply an observation).

[lurgburg]

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?

[x0x0]

Does anyone expect this to be effective though?

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?

[beaunative]

The government is not dicating parents/kids.

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.

[seanmcdirmid]

It should be noted that this is for online gaming only, but that kind of gaming is extremely popular in China. My wife (who isn't affected by this) has this one Chinese online game that she plays for hours every weekend.

[beaunative]

"(who isn't affected by this)"

LMAO. Even if you didn't mention it. Likely no one would think you married an underaged girl.

[CRConrad]

I read it as "who doesn't live in China", but I guess we all first see what we've conditioned ourselves to look for first.

[HouseJay]

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.