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).
I had a friend decide to quit high school over Everquest.
I love gaming but I saw what early MMOs did and it freaked me out so bad I never touched WOW, but did play others such as Guild Wars, POE and such.
I had such fun with early MUDs and couldn't wait until real-time MP gaming was possible. When it got here it was immediately defied. Man Diablo 2 was so much fun, and I made so much money, I wish my kids could experience that, instead of games being shitty and costing exorbitant amounts.
Now it's all just a cash grab/casino/skinner box/insert evil
This reminds me of when I realized Diablo 3 could be completely automated after seeing a wow bot mining in action. Some of the bots I was running were playing better than humans on the top of the charts meanwhile my friends were spending their entire life trying to keep up with my bots.
Ah I had an older friend who ran EverQuest 2 bots and traded the rare item drops or something for money (rmt). He was poorer so it's how he afforded playing other games.
Yep, besides learning servers in Minecraft, I learned logic gates and very fundamental Computer Science concepts from Redstone when I was a kid. My parents were always good at regulating, but there were definitely weeks I'd play for hours.
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.
Struggling to come up with a logical counter argument but learning a musical instrument is deeply satisfy as is listening to someone live who is good. Also maybe just in terms of being attractive to other people saying you are a level 122 mage in world of ever crack does not quite have the same allure as being able to captivate a room with your piano playing.
Edit when I was about 12 I started playing the guitar non stop, I remember clearly thinking to myself this is way better than playing the super nes. I didn't touch games for another five years, I gave Goldeneye a go at a friend's house and reignighted that addiction.
> Also maybe just in terms of being attractive to other people saying you are a level 122 mage in world of ever crack does not quite have the same allure as being able to captivate a room with your piano playing.
That is really the main gist of it, women don't care much about video gaming and therefore society condemns it.
Men on the other hand will probably be way more excited about your skills and endeavours in a video game than your ability to play piano, you can listen to the best pianists in the world at any time but sharing stories and thoughts about games is something you need friends for. Evidence: There are tons of discussions about games and gaming everywhere, in youtube channels, outside classrooms etc, while basically nobody talks about how piano practice went. Piano is good to show that you are fit and attract a mate, it isn't good to make friends. And therefore piano is seen as a noble hobby while gaming is seen as a waste of time.
Even listening to music is seen as better than gaming, so the mastery or creative or productive aspects has nothing to do with it.
As a man, I don't want to hear about your video-game exploits either. I play, but I definitely don't want to define my personality or hear/tell stories about it.
I think the difference is that a video-game is (as you said and viewed by me at least) as mostly consumptive rather than creative or constructive. I'm playing a game I know I'm dicking around and wasting time, the same as if I'm watching a movie or (even) reading a book for fun.
I'd say that some games are more constructive, like Minecraft or other games where you're building something or creating a story yourself... but I think what's being targeted is largely RNG lootbox online grind games. There's also an argument that top tier professional gaming isn't really that much different than being good at some other sport... and that's kind of an unfortunate side-effect.
The title is a bit misleading as there's no provision for 'offline' games.
Culturally for me... regulating media time seems like a parent's responsibility, and maybe this does give parents the tools to do that as the child could use their parent's account with their permission fairly easily.
I'd be against a similar thing where I live, but as I am not a Chinese citizen nor do I plan on living there, I can't say my opinion is worth much.
However, I think people are making this out to be much worse than it is as there's (for a long time) been a provision that children under a certain age can't sign up for online accounts (in the US) without a parent's explicit permission (with the implication that that the parent takes responsibility for monitoring the child's activity). This makes that implication more explicit as the child must use the parent's account most of the time.
This is one way of solving the 'online games have predatory practices against children / teens,' I don't think this is how I'd solve it, but again, not really my business.
So I ski. I don’t really define my life or personality around skiing, but I would be a little miffed if I could only ski for 3 hours a week in the winter because the government thinks I’m not being productive enough.
For children, it’s common to participate in sports for way more than 3 hours a week, and yet the government does not feel inclined to involve itself there.
Allowing leisure time to be dictated by the government is not a good path to go down.
No matter the health benefits, allowing people to go down a suboptimal path that makes them happier is the essence of a free society.
Actually the Chinese government is cracking down on excessive homework and after-school tutoring programs since they create an overly competitive academic environment and prevent kids from participating in activities like sports. So they are getting involved there. https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/chinas-private-tutor-ban-kills...
That piece reads like a big propaganda ad it says they want kids to not be in school so that they can "play more and work out"
Which is exactly what the government is banning playing. Seems to me that they just want these kids to work or "help out on the farm" as Americans say. Which is totally fine with me humans should start working as kids to prepare them doesn't make sense that you wait till you're 20 to start working.
It's not really about women. The levels in video games are manufactured goals. Making music sound good is an innate goal. In the same way making a beautiful build in Minecraft is also an innate goal and so is finding a creative way to optimize your factory in Factorio, which is why that's a lot more impressive to people outside the game than becoming a level 121 mage.
There is no difference really, becoming level 121 isn't a difficulty goal and doesn't matter but getting into masters league in Starcraft or similar will impress a ton of people since it is really hard. Similarly nobody will care about you spending a year learning Piano if can't play anything decent afterwards. And most people who practice instruments don't learn how to play well so their efforts were in vain, and unlike the level 121 mage they didn't even have fun doing it.
Getting into master's league on StarCraft is only impressive to people who play StarCraft. Being able to play beautiful songs on the piano is impressive to everyone.
You're comparing achieving a goal to working towards it. It will take roughly three to four years to reach master's league on StarCraft for even talented people. Meanwhile, almost everyone can play the piano or the guitar well enough to impress laypeople after 2 years of lesser daily effort.
> Meanwhile, almost everyone can play the piano or the guitar well enough to impress laypeople after 2 years of lesser daily effort.
I don't see this. Lots of kids were forced to learn an instrument but I don't know many who plays an instrument well enough that anyone would want to listen to them. Sure people get a bit impressed that you can play anything at all, but it isn't like they find it enjoyable to listen to it.
> Getting into master's league on StarCraft is only impressive to people who play StarCraft
This isn't true, most gamers who are loosely aware of what StarCraft is would be very impressed. Like people read articles about starcraft pros and talked about how impressive/insane those were without ever playing the game. Being really good at any game at all will impress a lot of people and especially so for the more famous ones.
But of course they would just be impressed and end it at that. Similarly being able to play piano really well would just impress people, very few actually wants to listen to piano music as an activity. Piano might impress a few more, but I doubt it would make you more friends and conversations than being good at Starcraft, at least among young men. And if we instead take some more popular game today like Fortnite then 100% being good at Fortnite will be way more important for your male social life than being good at an instrument.
Kids that are forced to do piano once a day do not expend anywhere near the effort that someone trying to get to master's league on StarCraft does.
It's not true that few people want to listen to someone's music as an activity. Just go to most parties where someone can play the guitar or piano well and if there is such an instrument you'll see people play them. Happens very often in my friend groups.
A guy playing guitar surrounded by women, yes that is even a meme, but I've never seen that happen at a party with mostly men nor have I seen a woman play an instrument at a party. It seems to mainly be a way for men to demonstrate value to women. There are of course other situations, but this is what I've seen and this is what most of the internet have seen since it is even a meme as I said. Example of guitar guy meme:
No, not surrounded by women. Just guys, one or two with a guitar, playing music while the rest sing along. Sometimes next to a campfire with beers in hand. It's genuinely very fun.
I'm sure some people try to force it and it gets annoying. Humans love being musical in groups though and always have.
I play piano too, and also find it deeply satisfying but I also have friends who find playing video games deeply satisfying and I don't think one is worse than the other. As I am not a professional musician at the end of the day I only do it for my own enjoyment and if viewed through the lens of "productivity" it is a complete waste of time, anyone could just find the songs I play on spotify, played by someone far better than me.
The difference, for me, is consumption vs production.
If you spend tons of time learning an instrument, you will probably find yourself interesting in creating music. Maybe it's not going to be playing in a band, or recording albums. It might just be playing music around the campfire. But that is an activity in which you are producing something, bringing music into the world. I feel the same about any of "the arts". You're inherently going to be engaged in the act of creating something.
With gaming, consumption is more the rule. You play a level, a campaign, a story. If you create something, bring something new into the world, it is most likely going to be external to the game (like the posters who mention that they built websites and utils for their favorite games).
There are obviously exceptions on both sides. Games like Minecraft, Factorio, etc are obviously creative. Games like Roblox or Mario Maker allow people to create content and put it into the game. Game review videos, Twitch streaming, etc, allow people to build content with games at the center. These are creative/productive pursuits, and I think they have some inherent value (even if it's kind of a bummer that these creations are largely limited to being enjoyed within the game).
As an exception on the musical side, you could, for example, learn guitar exclusively through Rocksmith, and only ever use your guitar as a controller for a game.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using your free time to do "consumptive" stuff. I enjoy gaming here and there. I listen to music. I watch TV. But for me personally, I find that I get a lot more satisfaction out of "creative" activities.
One last point - you get good at what you spend your time doing. I tend to really enjoy games that ask a lot of skill from their players - roguelikes, tight platformers, Souls games, Doom on nightmare mode, etc. But when I finish a game, I no longer have any use for the skills I developed. Whereas skills I develop in the pursuit of something creative/productive can be used in all kinds of situations for the rest of my life.
Edit: I started rambling and forgot the point. With all of this said - I would never want the government to limit how I spend my time. That's a job for parents when you're young, and it's a job for your own sense of what makes you happy when you're an adult. These kinds of lessons aren't things that can be downloaded into you from outside. Realizations about what makes a person fulfilled tend, in my experience, to come from within.
That's true - although the physical activity from sports is probably a net good for _players_ on average. I enjoy lifting weights, but that doesn't really fall into either of my categories - I'm not really consuming or creating anything when I'm lifting. You could argue maybe that I'm 'consuming' my workout plan (which I didn't create). Or that I'm 'creating' muscle, but that's a bit of a stretch :)
Either way though, I agree that _watching_ sports TV is firmly in the "consumption" category.
There is a real difference between the two. The primary goal of playing an instrument is to make something that sounds good. The goals of video games are generally manufactured.
The exception are games like Minecraft. But if someone builds a computer in Minecraft or finishes a beautiful build that can actually be captivating to people that don't play it.
The highest paid pianists in the world make roughly the same as the highest paid esports players. Both groups are exceptionally talented and driven multi-multi-millionaires with massive fan bases. These things can be attractive to some people, even if the source of the attributes is videogames over piano.
The older I get the less alluring music artists are to me. they're basically just following a set of rules tooting a horn or strumming a string. really not that impressive. especially when you pick one up and learn the magic goes away.
South Korea has built a collective sense of value around Starcraft, but it feels too far removed from meatspace where we will likely occupy for a long time yet. Music seems more valuable, along with the ability to tell a good story. Sometimes they overlap. I’ve been enjoying Fire Draw Near, a podcast by Ian Lynch about the folk-music tradition of Ireland. “Work, Rest, Play, Die” by The Subhumans has melodic roots in an old tune, and he makes similar connections with “One” by Metallica.
A value-test I use is: “how useful/feasible is this activity if I don’t have a computer or similar technology that is predicated on significant infrastructure?”
Telling stories, playing physical games, making music (with our bodies, at least; humming, whistling, drumming, singing); these are elegant, as in = depth / complexity (per James Portnoy of Extra Credits, RE games).
> A value-test I use is: “how useful/feasible is this activity if I don’t have a computer or similar technology that is predicated on significant infrastructure?”
That would discount most hugely important activities like, say, medicine. In general, I don't think testing against dependency on modern infrastructure is useful, except when you're preparing for a post-apocalyptic world.
By the way, is playing chess online or against a local AI regarded as a video game or is there an exemption for traditional games? For sure Chinese professional weiqi (go) players played a lot of games online when they were younger than 18.
The vast majority of depressed people do not demonstrate symptoms of gaming addiction. Even if one were to accept the argument that gaming addiction is always caused by underlying depression, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered separately from garden variety depression - there is often a nasty positive feedback loop between depressive symptoms and addictive symptoms. Besides, psychiatry in general needs to be increasing the precision of its definitions if we are going to get anywhere with new treatments.
Ironically, depression is often caused by other underlying disorders (e.g. Autism), yet if the symptoms are met there will be a comorbid diagnosis, rather than saying that depression is just a symptom. It can be difficult to disentangle cause and effect for a lot of comorbid diagnoses, and also many existing treatments address symptoms rather than causes. So the distinction you are making hardly exists in the field at large (at this time).
As for the deeper question, "could an otherwise healthy person develop gaming addiction?", I'm inclined to answer yes. It of course depends on how you define "otherwise healthy", as I'm sure we could identify genetic risk factors for gaming addiction, and I bet they will correlate with risk factors for addiction, ADHD, etc. However I've certainly seen people who were functioning well but perhaps a bit bored at school/work or a bit anxious in social situations take a complete nose dive when they got hooked on the "right" game.
I'm curious if you would say the same thing about gambling addiction?
Edit: just to add I am 100% against anything like what China is doing. I think we need more resources to help those who are spending more time gaming than they would like, which involves recognizing it as a legitimate issue. I also wouldn't mind some restrictions on the tactics game companies can take to make their games addictive, although the details of that would require careful consideration.
No shit, that doesn't change anything I said. The definition of depression is hilariously vague, the last thing we should do is lump additional (relatively) well defined issues under "just depression". Besides, there are certain symptoms that do appear in a high percentage of patients, gaming addiction is most definitely not one of them. The point is not about aligning symptom profiles exactly between individuals, it's about looking at classes of symptoms across a broader population. Nobody in their right mind would say addiction is "just a symptom of depression", even though it can be correlated with depression to a similar extent as gaming addiction can be.
Undervalued comment that doesn't vibe with mainstreams interpretation of "gaming addiction." I only became "addicted" after both my parents almost died of medical conditions. It's easier to write it off as "gaming addiction" in the same way certain drugs are "gateway drugs."
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.
This is hacker news self selection talking. The filter: The few who found computer science through gaming and made a cushion of a life which let's us the time luxury to post on an online forum in the middle of a Monday(at least it is the middle of a Monday for me). Meanwhile countless lives went into backbreaking labour work if that in the "below the API" sort of uber and amazon delivery work. These lives and their stories will rarely be represented here. I am speaking for a friend who went into construction and got injured and is on disability at the age of 35. He said he could have made so much more of his life had he not played 24/7 video games for several of his most precious formative years during high-school and early college (of which he dropped out).
To clarify, I’m not advocating for gaming-abuse. I believe in a balance.
I’m just letting the grand parent know that to get their point across better they need to realize MMOs specifically should be considered IRL and it’s better to use “AFK” or “non-digital” to differentiate in person interactions rather than “IRL”.
Specifically in the grand parent’s post, they ”blame” MMOs and gaming-abuse for their friends “issues”. However, it’s a more apt analogy to view over use of MMOs as a form of workaholism than to view it as a form of drug-addiction. It’ll help you to get them to find a balance.
And similarly I advocate a similar vocabulary switch from “IRL” to “AFK” to differentiate Zoom/FaceTime vs non-Zoom/FaceTime activities.
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.