I personally wouldn't like to see my child dependent on microtransactions. Good for China.

Probably more likely they'll have to do paramilitary training instead.
But tbh, while I'm not a fan of China's system, they do have a point about this, it's horrible when teenagers ruin their lives through addiction to games like Fortnite.

It sounds good, but is it being done for the right reasons.

I imagine such a policy gives them less to police, and less influence on those inside China from without.

Could well be just another isolation strategy, even from those within their own country.

I guess this could lead to what I had wished for a long time, MMO turned into a single-player game with arena and guild stripped out. Many of these China grinders can easily be turned into SP games, making them ultimately even more grindy in some cases, but maybe even more enjoyable without constant PK' going on all around, foul language and constant begging for Power Level me PLX master or mistress. Best of course no micro-transactions to overcome that level hurdle which is already hard to reach to reach the ultimate level or reborn status to grind more for the next hundred to two-hundred levels. :)

I think most of the multiplayer games played in China are actually made in China, so it doesn't seem likely that they want to cut off foreign influences that way.
The motivation is probably nationalist in a somewhat vaguer sense, I suppose they want a physically fit population without the mental issues produced by excessive gaming.

No idea about that, but it wasn't just mingling with foreigners that I was talking about, i.e. the spread of influence from their own people via multiplayer games. In their eyes, it could well be the one bad apple could effect the rest. Makes for good propaganda that notion. Which may well be why they mooted that about a little while ago, to make this new addition seem more reasonable. In a very real way, it is the curbing of liberties, and a heavy form of censorship.

When it comes to China, and I have nothing against Chinese people, it always seems to be about control by the state, though other reasons are always plead and the notion of being misunderstood aired.

Well, it's a dictatorship without any democratic elements (as far as I know not even on the town or provincial level). But keeping children away from multiplayer games is fairly tame compared to some of the other stuff they're doing or used to be doing (e.g. enforcement of the one-child policy, or the re-education methods used in Xianjiang), so imo not worth getting worked up about this.
I agree in principle, but when it comes to children or teenagers, they're banned from lots of things like alcohol or tobacco, so the argument doesn't work for people under 18 like for adults imo.
EDIT: I read the article again, apparently China limits play time for everybody, even adults. Ok, that's clearly quite totalitarian.

Oh, goodie. More ways for them to control their sheep... I mean people. =P
Considering China is pretty much anything but communist, these days the middle C in CCP is a meaningless moniker as it's all about the authoritarianism with a thin veneer of capitalism.

Oh wow! So more noDRM gaming for China then?

Yes, the peer pressure to spend inordinate amount of time playing online games it huge. Its not healthy, especially with people that you never meet.

Its better to spend the time with actual live people, even if its playing games in the same room.

We're not made to be isolated hermits.

Maybe your idealized verion of parents.

We live in a work-obsessed culture.

In a lot of families, both parents work full to make ends meet. Often, they do significant overtime too or even have to work several jobs.

And then, you have single parents... The first 12 years of my life, it was just me and my mother and she had to work 50-60 hours a week to make ends meet. I spend A LOT of time by myself with no parental supervision.

A lot of children are in that situation.

Society limits your freedom all the time. Heck, some freedoms are antagonistic (ie, your freedom to stab someone with a knife vs your freedom to walk in the street safely).

As a small example, here, you can't drink alcoholic beverages in the street and if you make an inordinate amount of noise after a certain hour, your neighbors are entitled to call the cops on you and get you to bring the noise down.

You also cannot smoke in a restaurant and I'm reasonably sure we have laws on advertisement limiting the ads that target children.

I assure you that most people here are for the above regulations.

Only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy, the majority should have a say in how people's freedom is regulated.

Given that you exported most of your manufacturing industry in China, good luck with that.

This, I agree with.

I do think young people spending so much time online and not socializing is an issue we'll have to tackle socially, but enforcing that children play online only an hour a day is a little strong.

However, I agree with the underlying principle that we should do something to tackle that problem.

Yes.

This is preparation.

In fact, if you download a offline game via internet, it is counted as a "online game" in China.
I am not joking.

The CCP seems to act like we're all living on Planet China.

wait what? LMAO.
Poor Chinese.

Sure, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying. How much the State should control X and Y versus personal responsibility (or in this case parental responsibility) is the endless debate of our time. The US highly leans toward avoiding State control, even among Democrats, and due to being raised in that environment I grant that I am more likely to reflexively feel disgust at anything close to this China law. However that doesn't mean I don't think I'm right. ;)

I tend to believe in a healthy balance, with things like gambling being controlled for minors but left to personal responsibility for adults, but I am somewhat flexible. Parents do need help. To me though playing video games is no different or worse than watching TV though, and regulating that time at all is a ridiculous overreach of State power. If you want your kid to get away from the screen and run around the block, you can enforce that when you finally get home.


Many, many Americans are obsessed with working harder and harder to make more money to afford more things and be in a higher class. It's very ingrained in our culture, and taught through our media from a very young age. This might be slowly changing with millennials and zoomers, but it's hard to really say. 60s and 70s kids acted like things would be different and then grew up and voted for Ronald Regan.