LogFAQs > #957757873

Zeus posted...

You're pigeonholing and reaching there.

I'm taking what you said at face value. If anything, any other interpretation would be reaching.

Zeus posted...

The overarching criticism is that asking kids to play responsibly is bad if their parents didn't play responsibly, which is just f***ing stupid.

The criticism is that it's hypocritical for somebody that has and/or does enjoy playing games to think it's reasonable to limit kids' play time so much that they'll be hard pressed to ever finish a game. Which... is true. Whether or not that's bad is up to interpretation, since hypocrisy is logically and morally neutral if examined in a vacuum, but it is definitely hypocritical.

Zeus posted...

As for the amount of time, anything is ultimately arbitrary. Considering all of the other hobbies kids can have, a 3-hour limit on games doesn't seem insane. At a certain point, you're really just splitting hairs.

There's obviously room for subjective interpretation, but 3 hours/week is definitely on the extreme end and mostly just serves to punish and stigmatize people that want to adopt gaming as a major hobby (note that the restrictions apply to all minors, which includes older teens that are able to make decisions about how to balance their hobby time for themselves), especially where other hobbies are not similarly restricted. If anything, I'd actually go so far as to say that it's worse for encouraging game addiction/susceptibility to microtransactions because it promotes playing games that feel rewarding to play in short bursts (and, in turn, paying for microtransactions that will facilitate that), especially with it being broken up into three 1-hour blocks.

Of course, the fact that it's specifically online games being restricted makes it less restrictive. Offline gaming remains a viable hobby, so that's not that bad (though it does pretty much guarantee that nobody can play an MMO until they turn 18, which also potentially creates greater risk for addiction because they won't be exposed to that risk in an environment where they have parental supervision and guidance to help them recognize when they're getting sucked in). That does, however, ensure gaming is seen as an antisocial hobby, since gaming online is the primary means by which it becomes a social hobby.

Mostly, though, while you could say that it's an unreasonably extreme limitation for parents place on their kids, but justify that as being a personal parenting decision, enforcing it as federal law is definitely not reasonable. That's a totalitarian decision by a bunch of old dudes who don't like video games and understand virtually nothing about how or why problem gaming becomes a thing and what protection children actually need from the modern gaming industry to prevent them (and their parents' credit cards) from being exploited. That's not "playing responsibly," that's virtue signalling the belief that video games are evil.

Zeus posted...

Also, even if you decided to interpret my post literally, keep in mind that the "yes" was the too extreme option.

Yeah, I opted to roll with the misinterpretation because that's what you were responding to. He did indeed misinterpret the poll, but your response was based on the underlying message of his misinterpretation, which doesn't change regardless of that was the "yes" or "no" option. For the sake of being consistent with your response, I opted to use "yes" to represent what he was talking about, even though that wasn't accurate to the poll's actual wording.

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