Hello,
I am interested as to what others would think about if all games were regulated where people were not allowed to play their accounts after hours have been used up within a 24 hour time period until the next 24 hour period starts. I know we can’t make ‘everyone’ happy and there will probably be edge cases on why there would be objections against this sort of thing. I’m curious though what the forum community consensus would be for this idea though. It doesn’t have to apply to just Diablo/Blizzard games, but really any PC/console game…
Rules:
- Only one account per person will be allowed (no account sharing) where the amount of hours allowed is suitable enough for ONE person.
- Users would be given some sort of warning in game informing their play time is about to be over (like a 5 min warning of sorts).
- Within a 24 hour time period until the next 24 hour period starts clarified by example:
Example 1 (consecutive hours play): Lets say the limit was 16 hours and the user started to play at 10:00 (10am) on Sat and finished playing until reaching max at 02:00 (2am) on Sun. The user would not be allowed to play again until 10:00 (10am) on Sun.
Example 2 (not consecutive hours play): Lets say the limit was 16 hours and the user started to play at 10:00 (10am) on Sat until 22:00 (10pm) on Sat and then started to play at 04:00 (4am) on Sun until reaching max time limit of 08:00 (8am). The user would not be allowed to play again until 10:00 (10am) on Sun.
From a game owner perspective:
- They might like the regulation as it would encourage multiple accounts be bought by an individual as a potential workaround so the user can ‘play’ more than the allowed time.
- They might not like the regulation as that time period where the user is no longer able to play is potential $ lost from micro-transactions that exist in the game.
The goal(s) of this sort of regulation:
- Reduce ‘bot’ type play time.
- Enforce the player/person to take some time off to do other things from a healthy individual and society perspective (sleep, eat, chores, get groceries, etc.).
The magic # of hours allowed within a 24 time period:
- Not sure at this point in time, but I would say 16 hours in a 24 hour time period is probably a good max to start with for everyone. Why? MOST people need at least 7 hours of sleep per day. Take into account other necessary activities (like eating, bio break, etc.), this is a reasonable threshold. Now, even 16 hours sounds a bit absurd to me for playing that much on a single game/account per day. I would very much like to hear from those that have played this much as to why they feel they need to spend this much time playing the game vs. doing something else more productive from an individual/society perspective. Why do they feel the need to ‘escape from reality’ for this lengthy amount of time?
- We may want to further separate based on age brackets as well? Meaning, while the prior max limit should apply to everyone, we might want to further restrict based on age groups. So, those that are of the children age have a different max allowed vs. adults vs. retired folks. Of course this would thus mean that all the games would require an age validation process as well.
Where do we want to draw the line from a society perspective as to how much time people are gaming all day?