
In China, 'Fortnite' Penalizes Minors for Playing Too Much - pseudolus
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzd4x/in-china-fortnite-penalizes-minors-for-playing-too-much
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huehehue
How can anyone here endorse something like this in any way? I get that video
game addiction is a real problem, but constant surveillance is not a healthy
alternative. Some people are cool with this because "kids need to be studying
or playing outside, not playing video games!". But this is just an instance
where your interests happen to shallowly align with the government's.

By the time we get to an issue you take offense with, there's already going to
be a precedent of censorship and restricted activity and you'll be screwed. To
be clear, I can't stand microtransaction-packed cash grabs and I don't game at
all, but I also don't believe it's the government's place to say how we should
be spending out free time.

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thatoneuser
How can people endorse? Pretty easy - cognitive dissonance, projection,
vicarious tithing, etc. People are really complacent about other people
suffering things they themselves would hate. We're asshole in that way.

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coldtea
Or, you know, people don't consider it "suffering", but "doing what's better".
How about that?

If a parent demands that a kid eats his veggies instead of the "burgers and
ice cream" the kind wants, it's not necessarily suffering.

Or if you still consider it suffering, it's not like all suffering is valid
and should be respected.

It's very easy to make everyone happy, giving them whatever they want all the
time, doesn't mean its best for them. Not even if they're adults. Not only
what someone wants might be bad for them, but what someone wants might also be
bad for others (like someone "wanting" to blast his favorite tunes at full
volume at 2am). In those cases it's best that they "suffer" not getting what
they want.

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yorwba
Unlike other heavy-handed attempts by the Chinese government to control their
populace, this one seems like it has potential to be a net positive.

On the other hand, I expect minors to get creative at circumventing the
blocks. "Borrowing" a parent's ID, for example.

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LorenPechtel
I think a lot more of their efforts are positive than we think--but don't make
the news. It's just what's good for the Chinese government is of higher
priority than what's good for the Chinese people. For something like this
where they aren't in conflict they do good.

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namelosw
It has been years China actually do this.

I believe this started from World of Warcraft. I remember I was 16 when I
started to play World of Warcraft, all kinds of regulation started to appear
in this game, for example: needs to register with an adult ID card, adding
flesh to skeletons, no longer gaining experience when you play too long for a
day etc.

For China itself, I think it's just a typical culture resist, just like pop
music in the 70s (It's actually a big deal if you try to listen to Taiwan pop
music, but young people just love it).

But like other posts mentioned in this thread, it's far more a problem about
how people think, just like Europe could probably do this as well. Parent
themselves think kids playing video games is a guilt, much more than the
government. It's pretty sarcastic that in China, typically parents spend more
time on their smartphone. However back in the day, parents don't have time to
play with video games because they have less time to be addicted like kids. So
they tried to forcibly control their kid about playing video games without any
consideration. There even quite some parents who send their kids to do
electroconvulsive therapy, just like the movie "A Clockwork Orange".

I personally think the video game is not a problem. Most adults won't play
video games all day long because they have their work to do, but kids in
school just have to deal with senseless homework, without seeing any points of
doing it. When I look back, I always think I should fight more with parents
and school, and spend more time on things I like, homework is not cost
effective anyway.

I strongly believe the society should fix all other things instead of fixing
kids. The problem is, fixing kids just seems too easy than those hard ways.

[1] About electroconvulsive therapy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yongxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yongxin)
[2] A good movie about typical Chinese parenting:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3401962/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3401962/)

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idiomech
It's hard to think about a government's place being to limit things like
gaming or viewing of entertainment. Though the intent is probably positive in
this instance, it's the place of the parents to be instituting and upholding
rules, not the government. It's an incredibly slippery slope.

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sitzkrieg
Many games in China implement limits like this. World of warcraft has a
fatigue system that scales xp for example

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crooked-v
The difference with WoW is that it frames it as a temporary bonus for time
logged out, rather than a penalty for time logged in, with the "normal"
progression being the lower rate.

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sitzkrieg
No, there are multiple systems in China. All other regions have rested xp, but
in this region, extended playtime reduces your regular xp rate all the way to
zero. You can see it in the api as "fatigue" scaling

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aboutruby
I could definitely see something like this happening in European countries
under health concerns.

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sorryforthethro
The article uses the term "government" but the citation refers to Tencent
doing this voluntarily, as a form of preemptive self-regulation. The
distinction is blurred but this does not appear to be a law or public policy
at the moment.

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ssnistfajen
Don't bother. All sense and logic gets thrown out of the window when "chinese
government" is mentioned in an article. You can literally make stuff out of
thin air and the crowd will gobble it with no questions asked.

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make3
I find it difficult to be against such a system

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thatoneuser
It's easy if you believe people should be free to live their lives as they
want

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hakfoo
Okay, putting asbestos underwear on:

In most modern societies, we agree that children have limitations on the
"people should be free to live their lives as they want" mindset. Otherwise,
we'd be letting four year olds subsist solely on candy, hot dogs, and twenty
hours a day of the Best of Elsagate.

We've traditionally trusted the compromise for that to parents. But parenting
is hard. We're running on a mix of science and lore for a lot of it. Even
beyond that, a lot of parents may not follow best practices, despite the best
of intentions. Then add the too busy/doesn't care/actually incompetent
parents.

The state has an enormous vested interest in the next generation coming out
well-skilled and socially balanced. But they can't put a child development
expert into every house in the country 24/7\. They've had to trust parents who
are spotty at best at their job, because there were limits on how they could
intervene.

For the first time, we have wildly popular entertainment products that phone
home and do remote work as part of normal operation. This makes a technical
intervention possible in a way they couldn't do with prior moral panics (TV,
comic books, bawdy novels).

In some ways, this is actually a tame and tolerant way to deal with the fear
of gaming abuse. They're not saying adults can't have games, or even that kids
can't-- just restricting usage when you reach a level that implies they're
sacrificing something else (school, sleep, or family life) to make the hours.
I wonder if a future evolution of this would integrate into directly the
schools and the social credit concept-- if you can play Fortnite II: Electric
Boogaloo 14 hours a day and somehow maintain straight As, it will let you, but
bludgeon your character when your grades slip.

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tudorconstantin
We can't put an education expert in every home, but we can put all the
children in "correct child raising institutions" where they'll follow strict
schedules, intense education and balanced diets. So that we'll be sure the
kids will be productive elements for the society when they grow up.

I bet in a few generations people would start asking questions like "if it
wouldn't be the state, who would raise our children?".

Joking aside, it's not the state's role to raise our children. It's only role
should be to make sure the kids are not abused and that's it.

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dTal
> it's not the state's role to raise our children

Why not? "It takes a village to raise a child", they say. The state is the
embodiment of communal action.

> It's only role should be to make sure the kids are not abused

Where is the line between abuse (where the state should intervene) and simply
neglectful or poor parenting (which can be very damaging)?

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thatoneuser
These are hard questions and that's exactly why the state doesn't belong here.
Parents make mistakes. Governments make genocide. Leave parenting to parents,
even if they aren't perfect. The government isn't either.

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dTal
A hard question it might be, but you don't get to write it off. If you think
the state should intervene in cases of "child abuse" but not "bad parenting",
you need to define - and justify - that line.

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echevil
In China, Fortnite is not popular at all

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mrcoder111
No different than restricting access to cocaine.

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sneak
Just because a removal of freedom seems to be beneficial doesn’t make this any
less of a human rights abuse. The right to free expression is inherent in all
people, and it is unconscionable that the Chinese government censors
expression in this way.

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ssnistfajen
You must have not heard of parental control features. Is limiting a child's
screen time also "human rights abuse"?

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thoughtstheseus
No, we are not talking about parents. Unless you are implying that people
should receive their social, cultural, etc. values from a government?

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ssnistfajen
Way to escalate an issue about teenagers playing a video game.

If you've been through a public education system you've already received
social and cultural values from a government.

