Poll of the Day > Video Games targeting Kids to have 'Mandatory' Break Interruptions...

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-games-interrupted-enforced-breaks-180000096.html

Think it's a Good Idea? (Poll Question)

Honestly, that all sounds pretty reasonable. The hardest thing will be reliable age verification to enforce any of it.

God no. We don't need more government oversight.

So they'll stop playing that game and start playing another game.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So they'll stop playing that game and start playing another game.

It'd be easy enough to enforce the break at a console level instead of being confined to a game. That still doesn't rule out changing to a different console, but that's a non-trivial amount of effort for anyone that hasn't set up their entertainment system for easy swapping (which will at least draw parents' attention to the fact that their child is trying to circumvent the built-in protections, even if it doesn't actually result in them intervening).

That, and I don't know about you, but I'd consider playing an entirely different game far, far more disruptive to my enjoyment of a given game than taking a 10-minute break (or whatever it is). The only thing that suggestion accomplishes is spiting the restriction for spite's sake, rather than actually improving the situation at all.

Kids will gain access if they want to. When they started putting ratings on games. movies and music cds, that didn't stop anyone from gaining access because most kids have that one friend who has access to those things our parents ban us from having.

adjl posted...

that's a non-trivial amount of effort for anyone that hasn't set up their entertainment system for easy swapping

Hand held
Games on smart phone, or a 2nd, or a 3rd
They probably have access to PC less than 15 feet away

I dont like it Bit Im not a kid. So, as long as it doesnt affect me, Im good

adjl posted...

Honestly, that all sounds pretty reasonable. The hardest thing will be reliable age verification to enforce any of it.

You will be "living in a pod and eating bugs" as the rhetoric goes before you know it if you willingly continue to allow the oversight of parties that have zero concern for your best interests into your lives.

And for those saying "slippery slope" keep in mind Meta just launched their government ID linked account program and China (a country so well known for its freedoms and liberties) already mandates personal ID links for any online service. The free(r) world is actively giving up their freedom for a fake sense of security until it becomes so commonplace, it can be enforced.

parents don't care enough to deal with it, guess someone might as well.

adjl posted...

Honestly, that all sounds pretty reasonable. The hardest thing will be reliable age verification to enforce any of it.

None of that is reasonable.

I voted 'yup' but I misread 'mandatory'. That I'd only support in extreme cases. I thought about the little Wii reminders and thought 'sure!'. oops!

I wish the warnings we already get were skippable. The Nintendo seizure warnings are annoying.

Ehh I could see this being an option parents can activate, like with content locks and whatnot.

Otherwise it seems unnecessary

If this passes publishers will just say "lol fuck you" to the UK and not sell their games there.

IMO the parents should have control over something like that.

Absolutely unhinged China-level intrusion. And addiction, in virtually every circumstance, comes about from a lack of a basic human need not being met. When there's an epidemic of addiction, whether that's games, internet or porn, they're all indicative of a fundamental societal failing, not personal failing.

It's not surprising current degenerate government would think such authoritarian and negligent strategy would be appropriate, very on brand.

Well, I have carpel tunnel, so I honestly think getting young players in the habit of taking regular breaks is a great idea. What this will look like put into practice, I cannot say.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Absolutely unhinged China-level intrusion. And addiction, in virtually every circumstance, comes about from a lack of a basic human need not being met. When there's an epidemic of addiction, whether that's games, internet or porn, they're all indicative of a fundamental societal failing, not personal failing.

It's not surprising current degenerate government would think such authoritarian and negligent strategy would be appropriate, very on brand.

The "epidemic of addiction" falls just short of planned. Those products and services you mentioned are designed to be as easily accessible and habit-forming as possible, they want their userbases to become lifelong, repeat customers. I agree it's predatory practice, but the push for self-discipline seems to not be there for a lot of people too. While they *shouldn't* be attempting to make this stuff so "attractive" and addicting, it's also up to people to make wise choices for themselves, too.

Sort of reminds me of that recent Nick Offerman interview about how he hasn't played The Last of Us because he swore off video games after binging Banjo-Kazooie years and years ago, said that he would have been addicted and fallen out of acting if he hadn't.

GanglyKhan posted...

I agree it's predatory practice, but the push for self-discipline seems to not be there for a lot of people too. While they *shouldn't* be attempting to make this stuff so "attractive" and addicting, it's also up to people to make wise choices for themselves, too.

That's logically identical to blaming a person with no legs for not getting upstairs quickly enough. All of this is designed to prey on people with impaired impulse control. Expecting those with impaired impulse control to solve the problem by exercising better impulse control is no different from expecting those with impaired walking to solve the problem by walking faster. The problem can only be solved by restricting the extent to which companies are able to exploit such people.

It'd be one thing if this was a question of just outright banning games or something similarly catastrophic, but it's not. Things like designing games to have periodic breaks built into them or warnings that discourage ill-conceived impulse purchases benefit everyone, not just those whose gaming habits have become unhealthy/destructive. Questions of financial exploitation aside, games are actively being made worse for the sake of manipulating players into buying microtransactions and the like, focusing on gameplay loops that are more addictive than genuinely fun. Reversing that trend will result in better games, as publishers that have leaned on addiction to keep people playing their games have to instead focus on making them more enjoyable. The only people this actually hurts are billionaires that are butthurt because they can't steal from children anymore, and they really don't need or deserve your defense or sympathy (especially where "hurts" in this case actually means "results in their numbers going up slower with no appreciable impact on their overall quality of life").

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Hand held
Games on smart phone, or a 2nd, or a 3rd
They probably have access to PC less than 15 feet away

So... switching to a system that's at least 10 years old (and therefore likely a downgrade), switching to a system where the vast majority of games are little more than low-commitment time wasters (absolutely a downgrade), or switching to a system that involves getting up, getting comfortable in a new spot, logging in, and selecting a new game (not a downgrade, but pretty disruptive). All in the name of not having to take a break for a few minutes.

Again, your "solution" doesn't actually solve the problem of having the first game disrupted and is just a matter of getting around the restriction purely for the sake of getting around the restriction. There's no actual benefit to doing so.

adjl posted...

So... switching to a system that's at least 10 years old (and therefore likely a downgrade), switching to a system where the vast majority of games are little more than low-commitment time wasters (absolutely a downgrade), or switching to a system that involves getting up, getting comfortable in a new spot, logging in, and selecting a new game (not a downgrade, but pretty disruptive). All in the name of not having to take a break for a few minutes.

None of that matters to kids today. They just want their face in a screen and constant engagement.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

None of that matters to kids today. They just want their face in a screen and constant engagement.

Riiiiight...

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

None of that matters to kids today. They just want their face in a screen and constant engagement. Why would they continue to play the same thing if it doesn't provide that? It makes more sense to start something else which doesn't have interruptions.

Classic, "I know what's right for kids, even though I've never had any".

Optional like parental controls seems reasonable to me. Forced though? Nope.

It being an option in the parental controls seems useful.
I know I wouldn't be against a warning about playing too much of a game.

The problem with parental control options is that they're only effective if parents know about them. More significantly, they're only effective if parents know they're necessary. Neither point tends to be advertised, given how profitable having kids addicted to and spending money on these games tends to be, so both points of awareness tend to be lower than they need to be to solve the problem.

Having the controls on by default would help a lot, but that gets into questions of how to verify ages, which will almost certainly end up not stopping the kids that try to work around them. On the flip side, those kids that do comply and get their parents to disable them (along with adult players) have an extra hassle/privacy concern to deal with for little actual benefit because they've already got parents paying attention to their gaming and trying to make sure it's healthy. That's mostly where efforts like this are doomed to fail, since reliable age verification is hard and ultimately not worth the cost to the large majority of people that aren't doing anything wrong.

NemesisOgreKing posted...

Classic, "I know what's right for kids, even though I've never had any".

When did I say anything remotely close to that? My argument isn't about "what's right for kids" nor did I express caring about that.

My argument is about why they would stick with something that has interruptions, when they have other options and can easily pick up something else that doesn't have interruptions. Then once engrossed in the new thing there's no point in interrupting that to go back to the fist thing.

Why is it always the UK when it comes to this crap? Gonna need to see ya video games loicense for that game there bruv innit

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

My argument is about why they would stick with something that has interruptions, when they have other options and can easily pick up something else that doesn't have interruptions. Then once engrossed in the new thing there's no point in interrupting that to go back to the fist thing.

Presumably, the intent would be to apply this universally enough that there wouldn't be alternatives that didn't have interruptions. The options, then, would be to switch between different games every hour or two hours or whatever the cutoff is, or just take the break and go back to the first thing (which is what they actually want to play) afterwards. Either way, they're getting interrupted, and there's no option that would allow them to avoid interruptions entirely.

In practice, of course, there's zero chance this could be implemented any further back than consoles that are currently on the market and receiving firmware updates (and even then, the wording seems to suggest designing games around the principle of only playing in sessions of a certain length, not simply forcing the game to pause for the breaks regardless of what's happening), so anyone with access to a PS3, 360, WiiU, 3DS, Vita, or earlier system could circumvent it with those. That said, with each passing year it becomes less and less likely that any given minor will have access to such older systems (and those that do, have access because of gamer parents who will have a better understanding of the industry anyway), so that option isn't going to be available for most. It's also not as significant a workaround as you might think, since many of the games that are designed to be addictive enough to cause problems are ones that stand to profit from that addiction, which really only applies to games with active servers, meaning older ones aren't as much of a concern anyway.

How long switching systems take would probably depend on the system, and how everything is set up. It might not actually take long. Especially since many people (at least, gamers that I know) will usually have multiple systems hooked-up to a tv at the same time Even faster if the system you are switching to is the switch I can turn that one and start playing faster than heating something up in the microwave As for why they would switch, there are people who dont mind playing more than one game at a time. So, it could just be an incentive to play the other game while one in forcing you to take a break (depending on the length of the break)

NemesisOgreKing posted...

Classic, "I know what's right for kids, even though I've never had any".

Politicians clearly know what's right for kids.

I'm sure they have more pressing things to worry about then trying to parent other people's kids. Besides there are already tools and options for parents limiting game time. The first and oldest being "You're done for the day."

LinkPizza posted...

How long switching systems take would probably depend on the system, and how everything is set up. It might not actually take long. Especially since many people (at least, gamers that I know) will usually have multiple systems hooked-up to a tv at the same time Even faster if the system you are switching to is the switch I can turn that one and start playing faster than heating something up in the microwave As for why they would switch, there are people who dont mind playing more than one game at a time. So, it could just be an incentive to play the other game while one in forcing you to take a break (depending on the length of the break)

It's certainly possible, but it's still disruptive. As much as it's easy to think about it hypothetically and come up with ways that you could perfectly optimize your gaming time to minimize breaks, in reality, the vast majority of people faced with such a break are just going to take it. Even for those that don't mind playing multiple games at a time, the idea of having to plan that out ahead of a given session is just more forethought than most are willing to put into their leisure time. It'd be much more common to simply use the enforced break as a chance to go to the bathroom, grab a snack, check one's phone, or similar quick tasks that will fill the time.

No

adjl posted...

It's certainly possible, but it's still disruptive. As much as it's easy to think about it hypothetically and come up with ways that you could perfectly optimize your gaming time to minimize breaks, in reality, the vast majority of people faced with such a break are just going to take it. Even for those that don't mind playing multiple games at a time, the idea of having to plan that out ahead of a given session is just more forethought than most are willing to put into their leisure time. It'd be much more common to simply use the enforced break as a chance to go to the bathroom, grab a snack, check one's phone, or similar quick tasks that will fill the time.

I think it depends on the length of the break. At 10 minutes, I would say I agree many would take it, using the opportunity to use the bathroom, grab a snack and drink, and check social media (or something in their phone) If the break is like 30 minutes or longer, then I disagree and think most wouldnt mind playing another since they probably wont want to wait that long Which is why I mention the break length at the end of post

LinkPizza posted...

I think it depends on the length of the break. At 10 minutes, I would say I agree many would take it, using the opportunity to use the bathroom, grab a snack and drink, and check social media (or something in their phone) If the break is like 30 minutes or longer, then I disagree and think most wouldnt mind playing another since they probably wont want to wait that long Which is why I mention the break length at the end of post

Yeah, it's hard to really assess it without actual numbers. I believe the official recommendation is a 10-minute break every hour, which is probably too short for switching games to be reasonable, but it could be just about anything with what's said there and how little those suggesting these ideas actually understand video games. If it's like half an hour every two hours, yeah, switching would be worthwhile.

adjl posted...

Yeah, it's hard to really assess it without actual numbers. I believe the official recommendation is a 10-minute break every hour, which is probably too short for switching games to be reasonable, but it could be just about anything with what's said there and how little those suggesting these ideas actually understand video games. If it's like half an hour every two hours, yeah, switching would be worthwhile.

Yeah. I dont really trust the ones making the rule to make a sensible rule Like at all

LinkPizza posted...

Yeah. I dont really trust the ones making the rule to make a sensible rule Like at all

Yep. It's really stupid. Shitty politicians making another law nobody wanted.

Revelation34 posted...

Yep. It's really stupid. Shitty politicians making another law nobody wanted.

Exactly