https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58384457

Nice! Chinese regulator wants to cut the time used on online gaming, obviously so that kids would spend more time with offline single-player games.

Man oh man, I can't wait to see the flood of new single-player games to the market!

I personally wouldn't like to see my child dependent on microtransactions. Good for China.

Probably more likely they'll have to do paramilitary training instead.
But tbh, while I'm not a fan of China's system, they do have a point about this, it's horrible when teenagers ruin their lives through addiction to games like Fortnite.

Maybe there's hope for a Tencent System Shock 3 after all.

It sounds good, but is it being done for the right reasons.

I imagine such a policy gives them less to police, and less influence on those inside China from without.

Could well be just another isolation strategy, even from those within their own country.

I guess this could lead to what I had wished for a long time, MMO turned into a single-player game with arena and guild stripped out. Many of these China grinders can easily be turned into SP games, making them ultimately even more grindy in some cases, but maybe even more enjoyable without constant PK' going on all around, foul language and constant begging for Power Level me PLX master or mistress. Best of course no micro-transactions to overcome that level hurdle which is already hard to reach to reach the ultimate level or reborn status to grind more for the next hundred to two-hundred levels. :)

I think most of the multiplayer games played in China are actually made in China, so it doesn't seem likely that they want to cut off foreign influences that way.
The motivation is probably nationalist in a somewhat vaguer sense, I suppose they want a physically fit population without the mental issues produced by excessive gaming.

The state disctating what people can or cannot do with their free time is no way, shape or form "good" regardless of the reasons. Frankly I'm stupefied and scared anyone could think it is.

I agree in principle, but there's the argument that some multiplayer games are deliberately designed to be addictive/require massive time investments, and that children or teenagers need to be protected from them.

Sounds like a parent's job to me.

Some people claim games like Fortnite are addictive like crack cocaine and many parents don't realize it until it's too late:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/agony-of-fortnite-addiction-families/
(linked to that because the WSJ article it cites is behind a paywall).

I don't really have much of an opinion on the issue, since I don't have children and have no interest in multiplayer games myself. Competitive play is too stressful for me.

You have the perfect avatar for that comment :)

And yes, I agree completely.

No idea about that, but it wasn't just mingling with foreigners that I was talking about, i.e. the spread of influence from their own people via multiplayer games. In their eyes, it could well be the one bad apple could effect the rest. Makes for good propaganda that notion. Which may well be why they mooted that about a little while ago, to make this new addition seem more reasonable. In a very real way, it is the curbing of liberties, and a heavy form of censorship.

When it comes to China, and I have nothing against Chinese people, it always seems to be about control by the state, though other reasons are always plead and the notion of being misunderstood aired.

Well, it's a dictatorship without any democratic elements (as far as I know not even on the town or provincial level). But keeping children away from multiplayer games is fairly tame compared to some of the other stuff they're doing or used to be doing (e.g. enforcement of the one-child policy, or the re-education methods used in Xianjiang), so imo not worth getting worked up about this.
I agree in principle, but when it comes to children or teenagers, they're banned from lots of things like alcohol or tobacco, so the argument doesn't work for people under 18 like for adults imo.
EDIT: I read the article again, apparently China limits play time for everybody, even adults. Ok, that's clearly quite totalitarian.