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INTEREST: Mother and Son File Lawsuit Over Kagawa Prefecture's Ordinance Restricting Video Game Play


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AkumaChef



Joined: 10 Jan 2019
Posts: 821
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 8:55 am Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
I haven't the faintest idea about how this would play out in court. But even if the law is unbinding and unenforceable, that doesn't mean there isn't any harm. Laws and judgements set precedent. That is the harm.

Unchallenged this ordinance could be used as a pretext for binding and enforceable laws.

Much like what China is doing in the South China Sea. The longer their coral reef military bases stand, the more their claim to their sovereignty becomes valid.


You're right that there can be harm done in the manner you are describing, but this is not something you can sue for monetary damages over. In order to sue for damages you must prove in court how exactly you "lost" the exact sum of money which you are claiming.
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AkumaChef



Joined: 10 Jan 2019
Posts: 821
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 9:12 am Reply with quote
Suxinn wrote:
I feel like rather than putting the onus on the video game players, they should be putting pressure on video game companies instead, especially the ones that purposely make addicting games to generate maximum revenue. (I'm thinking primarily of gacha games here, which are already rife with gambling addicts, and how some of them are specifically designed to entice people to play long periods of time every day.)


I agree with you that there are a lot of sketchy things going on with some video game developers. We all want games to be fun and engaging--after all, that's the whole point--but when they're designed to be addictive that's crossing a line.
The problem I see is how to deal with it.

Quote:
Right now, it doesn't seem like they're addressing the root of the issue of addiction; instead, they're punishing the addicts. This ordinance is just going to get them even more flack and pushback instead of actually doing any good.

The root cause of addiction *is* the addict, and I say this as a person who has dealt with alcohol abuse in my own past. There is no amount of legislation which can fight a war against addiction. It simply isn't possible, as history has shown us time an time again with situations like prohibition and the "war on drugs". Even attempting to do so creates a whole mess of new problems: how exactly does one "measure" the addiction potential of a video game? And even if we could measure it, what would we then do? Assign some arbitrary number, where below X "addiction rating" is OK but higher than X is illegal? All that does is create a black market for the latter, while never really fixing the problem in the first place. It's no different than trying to ban high-proof liquor when people can still get drunk on beer. It doesn't solve the main problem and it only serves to create new ones.

And there's also the matter of the public. Not all of the public is the same. Some people are perfectly capable of playing "addictive" video games without falling for the addiction. Same with anything where there is an arbitrary legal age like the age of majority or age of consent. Other people become addicted to things which aren't even designed to be, such as an college roommate I once had who failed out of school because he couldn't stop himself from spending all day in his dorm reading classic literature. Anything which is pleasurable to a person has the potential to become psychologically addictive. If we start trying to restrict video games, then what next? Do we limit shopping sales that are "too good" and might invite people to become shopping addicts? What about food? Is food which is "too delicious, I can't stop eating it" a crime?
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jeffcoatstephen





PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 9:49 am Reply with quote
Couldn't Sony and Nintendo just block people from going online after a certain amount of hours? People spend way too much time playing online and less interacting with others. Japan's population is decreasing so this would help.
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AkumaChef



Joined: 10 Jan 2019
Posts: 821
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 10:36 am Reply with quote
jeffcoatstephen wrote:
Couldn't Sony and Nintendo just block people from going online after a certain amount of hours? People spend way too much time playing online and less interacting with others. Japan's population is decreasing so this would help.


That's not so easily done. Many games are functional even if they aren't online. An online game with a dedicated login can easily be restricted, but there's no way of knowing who exactly is playing since many people share accounts. Maybe Nintendo tries to cut me off and tells me I've gamed too much today....but it has no idea that I put down the controller 30 min ago and it's actually my sister who's playing right now... Not to mention people can use multiple accounts, VPNs, etc, to get around restrictions by account or IP anyway.

In the end it all comes down to the gamer themselves (or their parents, in the case of children) to make a decision like this. For some people gaming 1 hour a day leads to addiction. Others can game for many hours and still be healthy, functional, members of society. How many hours a day someone plays games doesn't really matter. The real question is whether or not their gaming is interfering with their wellbeing. I don't see a problem with someone spending a lot of time gaming so long as they've taken care of their important responsibilities first.
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Brent Allison



Joined: 01 Jan 2011
Posts: 2444
Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 10:54 am Reply with quote
Okay, I'll make a half-seriouspost. AkumaChef, if you're unfamiliar with the works of Mill, Kant, and Aristotle, please review this cheat sheet on utilitarianism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics. Then articulate whether your above posts can be considered utilitarian (e.g. the consequences of addiction-related policy are of paramount importance), in line with categorical imperatives (e.g. the principle of free self-regulation in behavior must be applied universally, irrespective of its consequences), or virtue ethics (e.g. the virtue of self-restraint, however it manifests, demands that the individual bases their actions on it).
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AkumaChef



Joined: 10 Jan 2019
Posts: 821
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 11:45 am Reply with quote
Brent Allison wrote:
Okay, I'll make a half-seriouspost. AkumaChef


I'm not sure what purpose is served by assigning a label to what I posted, and I'm not even sure what ethics has to do with the situation here at all.

My points are that:
1) A non-binding resolution is a pointless waste of time and money.
2) Attempting to restrict vices via legal means is ineffective as we can see from historical examples.
3) Applying arbitrary numbers (such as X number of hours of gaming a day is OK while >X is not OK) is necessarily incorrect in a large number of cases; the obvious implication of that is that some different metric ought to be used.
4) the only person who is capable of accurately measuring how much gaming is "too much" gaming is the gamer themselves (or their parents, in the case of minors).

This is 100% utilitarian. Whether or not a government should attempt to restrict gaming is an entirely different ethical question that I'm not even addressing. All I'm saying is that what they're doing won't work.
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor


Joined: 19 Jan 2012
Posts: 637
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2020 3:59 pm Reply with quote
AkumaChef wrote:
Brent Allison wrote:
Okay, I'll make a half-seriouspost. AkumaChef


I'm not sure what purpose is served by assigning a label to what I posted, and I'm not even sure what ethics has to do with the situation here at all.

My points are that:
1) A non-binding resolution is a pointless waste of time and money.
2) Attempting to restrict vices via legal means is ineffective as we can see from historical examples.
3) Applying arbitrary numbers (such as X number of hours of gaming a day is OK while >X is not OK) is necessarily incorrect in a large number of cases; the obvious implication of that is that some different metric ought to be used.
4) the only person who is capable of accurately measuring how much gaming is "too much" gaming is the gamer themselves (or their parents, in the case of minors).

This is 100% utilitarian. Whether or not a government should attempt to restrict gaming is an entirely different ethical question that I'm not even addressing. All I'm saying is that what they're doing won't work.

It's almost like the actual actions taken matter, and not wide blanket statements saying nothing works. Prohibition sure didn't work as intended, but there's a reason drunk driving laws exist my dude. There's no historical example of drunkards or drug abusers throwing a fit about their identities being under attack because some town suggested that maybe to be more responsible about it. At the end of the day this was an entirely toothless statement that at worst suggested doing any other activity than video games, and unsurprisingly that was somehow an insult to people who have attached their identity to them.
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AkumaChef



Joined: 10 Jan 2019
Posts: 821
PostPosted: Tue May 19, 2020 8:41 am Reply with quote
ATastySub wrote:

It's almost like the actual actions taken matter, and not wide blanket statements saying nothing works.


I think we are both in agreement that a non-binding resolution is not an "actual action taken", and that's exactly why I'm claiming this particular approach won't work. I didn't say that nothing would work. I stated that this particular approach won't work.

Quote:
Prohibition sure didn't work as intended, but there's a reason drunk driving laws exist my dude. There's no historical example of drunkards or drug abusers throwing a fit about their identities being under attack because some town suggested that maybe to be more responsible about it.

People constantly complain about restrictions on alcohol sales. Drunk driving is illegal, yet it remains a huge problem. The same can be said for distracted driving (food, makeup, and especially cell phones).

Quote:
At the end of the day this was an entirely toothless statement...

Right, which is why it's a waste of everyone's time and money.

Quote:
...that at worst suggested doing any other activity than video games, and unsurprisingly that was somehow an insult to people who have attached their identity to them.

It's an insult to non-gamers as well. I don't have a single game installed on my phone unless you count the junk like solitare that came pre-installed and I have never used. I totally respect it if other people want to game on their phone but I find the tiny screen and the touchscreen to be a huge turnoff. I haven't played PC games since my time in college two decades ago. I own a PS4 but it hasn't been powered on in two years. Last year I probably played a grand total of 10 hours of console games, all when I was visiting friends. I'm not offended by this because I'm a gamer who feels this insults my identity. I'm offended by this because of basic principles which go way beyond gaming:
1) non-binding resolutions are entirely pointless by their very nature. Why waste taxpayer money and government time fooling around with them? It's 100% wasteful, no matter what the topic is.
2) measuring hours of gameplay is not a fair or reliable metric to determine how much of an impact gaming has on someone's life. Frankly I agree that many people game far too much and it might be nice to help those people....but assigning arbitrary limits is not the way to do that.
3) the suggested solution is essentially unenforceable even with a binding resolution. It's virtually impossible to limit someone's gaming when they can easily work around it with multiple devices, multiple accounts, various means of masking IPs, or simply playing games which don't involve any sort of monitored connection.

Replace "gaming" with any other activity like sports, shopping, reading, watching movies/TV, studying, hanging out with friends, and I would still feel the same way. "Gaming" isn't what's triggering me here, rather it's the whole idea of non-binding resolutions and arbitrary metrics. Want to do something about gaming? Great. Make resolutions binding so we're not just spinning our wheels in place, and figure out a method of measuring the impact of gaming which is not arbitrary. Gaming (or any other activity) is not a problem if it passes X or Y hours a day. It's a problem when it affects things like work or school, finances, health, and social life. Measure those things, not time.

It's very easy to say "oh, I'm not a gamer so this doesn't really effect me" or "ha hah, those gamers sure are mad when they get called out" but this principle goes way beyond gaming. It affects everyone when "gaming" could just as easily be replaced with nearly any other activity. If we do not protect the rights of gamers, then I don't think we can count on gamers for support when it is our hobby under the microscope instead, and you don't have to have any interest in video games to understand that.
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