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Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

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Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#91
post #68

My first thought on this was, "Awesome!" And then my second thought was, "Could this guy go to jail for that?" It's so sad that a guy doing something as innocent as this could be faced with fines or prison because our legal system is so screwed up.

How could this be illegal? He's not redistributing the work.

If dumping the ROM required him to work around something considered "copy protection" by the manufacturer, he could go to jail for DMCA violation.

In the land of the free, at least.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#92

I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know: We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the pu…

Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace? In terms of skills, financial planning, cooking, interpersonal skills are all more essential than reading and writing code. The writing analogy is off anyways: not everyone can write very well. People would upvote -and buy- a children's story by, say, neil gaiman. This is not the equivalent of a throwaway story made up on the spot.

""Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace?""

Because under all that complication, there is a big secret, and that secret is that anything you can describe to another human being, you can describe to a computer. So what if, instead of not just learning to balance the books, teenagers are required to write a small accounting package to do it? Shouldn't competent literacy include the most significant literal tool the human race has ever created, the computer and the skills of its application, if after all, we've gotten as far as teaching kids to read and write, as well?

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#94
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, women are smaller and weaker than men, on average, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes reality has a conservative bias, you know? (But it would be more accurate to say that traditional ideas often have some basis in reality.) Second, I don't see why you have to demean all the men and women who are weak and passive. Their lives are perfectly worthwhile too, and they have something to contribute other…

1) Its not the physically smaller or weaker part that is the problem - how often really do women need men to come rescue them? Is it any more than men needing women to rescue them? Why then are most of the video games, even the puzzle based ones where brains not brawn are the deciding factor, all about saving the women? It seems to me that there is certainly a curious imbalance there. 2) Strawman - parent is not deme…

(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points)

1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the bank if you are a producer. I would not know how we even could began fixing this.

2) video games do not present a wide variety of male types. Since when did you see a undecisive, meek, emotional erratic male protagonist? How often is he a gear of wars massive hulk made of 99% muscles, with so low base sounding voice that he likely has a serious sickness in the throat? How often doesnt he act like an emotionalless robot, creating a flood of corpses and steals anything that's not nailed down?

3) while I am not a game developer, I doubt that having strong women would lower the numbers of sales to boys. I don't see anyone arguing this. I do however think that the industry is lazy, and is not going to change their products if they don't have to. Movie producers and game producers are in this aspect very similar, and focus on what ever sold the most yesterday. In media, only books tend to have reached a level of diversity that we as a society is happy with.

4) I don't think the commenter is angry. That would imply intent in a very few written lines. I also think you are missing the point. Stories are complicated, and good stories require more than simple resprite work or pronounce changes. This goes same for making games that present role models for boys as well as girls.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see.. Pretty sure Peach has her own game on which the entire concept is getting the Mario Bros. out of trouble (the name is eluding me right now, it's on the DS). She's personally helped save the world more than once (Paper Mario 2 comes to mind). There are other female characters too.. Timpani from Super Paper Mario has a huge dynamic with the primary antagonist of the game. And if you look outside of that par…

Finding a tiny handful of female protagonists really doesn't change the fact that video games are pretty much a sausage festival, where women are typically presented as helpless prizes to be won or rescued. Despite what the high-budget video game developers think, video games are not played exclusively by guys. Girls play them too. And maybe we'd like to have some fantasies where someone like us gets to kick ass and…

If you're unhappy with the games that exist today, perhaps you could make one that suits your creative desires? (That is essentially how all of the existing games came to be.)

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#96
post #74
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tomb Raider has it's own history with sexism. Nearly no athletic women have a chest like Lara Croft. And I am not referring to chest muscles, which are relevant to an action hero.

I'm talking about the new TR that just came out. Many things have changed since the original.

One thing that certainly changed is that more women are buying video games - potential clients, that might dislike to control the anatomic equivalent of a sex doll.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#97
post #82
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, women are smaller and weaker than men, on average, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes reality has a conservative bias, you know? (But it would be more accurate to say that traditional ideas often have some basis in reality.) Second, I don't see why you have to demean all the men and women who are weak and passive. Their lives are perfectly worthwhile too, and they have something to contribute other…

I think it was pretty clear that I was not talking about muscle strength, you know. (And if you want to get down that route, I’m willing to bet that in general, overweight plumbers have less jumping ability than fit women.) Also, I’m a shy introvert and I certainly do not want to demean anyone who is also that – I don’t think I did, actually. There is nothing wrong with shy and introverted characters, even weak chara…

Nintendo's Metroid franchise has already been mentioned, and then there's the Zelda franchise (where despite the fact that the main character is male, Zelda is actually a strong character who tends to be a victim of circumstances beyond anyone's ability to control, and in some instances fights shoulder-to-shoulder with the protagonist), and others outside of Nintendo as well (Tomb Raider?). It may seem like a larger problem than it actually is if you only pay attention to the examples that bother you.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#98

I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know: We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the pu…

Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace? In terms of skills, financial planning, cooking, interpersonal skills are all more essential than reading and writing code. The writing analogy is off anyways: not everyone can write very well. People would upvote -and buy- a children's story by, say, neil gaiman. This is not the equivalent of a throwaway story made up on the spot.

"Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace?"

Because what 'we' do is the most important thing in the whole world goddammit, and if only everybody else was more like 'us', how much better would the world be! Imagine if only everybody else was exactly like us, that'd be true utopia!

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#99
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Its not the physically smaller or weaker part that is the problem - how often really do women need men to come rescue them? Is it any more than men needing women to rescue them? Why then are most of the video games, even the puzzle based ones where brains not brawn are the deciding factor, all about saving the women? It seems to me that there is certainly a curious imbalance there. 2) Strawman - parent is not deme…

(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points) 1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the b…

Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before.

They are? On what do you base that?

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#100

I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know: We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the pu…

Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace? In terms of skills, financial planning, cooking, interpersonal skills are all more essential than reading and writing code. The writing analogy is off anyways: not everyone can write very well. People would upvote -and buy- a children's story by, say, neil gaiman. This is not the equivalent of a throwaway story made up on the spot.

> In terms of skills, financial planning, cooking, interpersonal skills are all more essential than reading and writing code.

Teach all that stuff too, it is not mutually exclusive.

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