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Man Edits Wind Waker so 3-Year Old Daughter Doesn't Feel 2nd Class

Except that for people who are invested in those stories, this is a blow. A story is set. Its written and published. After that everything is locked down and cannot be altered. I dont mind fanfictions, mods or what ever. I really dont care as they dont exist in the reality of the world. But the rules are the rules. Link a Male. Zelda is Female. Tingle is Creepy and Chickens are Deadly. There is not 4 triforce.

I'm a fact kind of guy, I dont botter with fanfiction and try to stay in the cannon.

It's probably a good thing you don't stay in cannons... I've heard they can be quite explosive.

What's made stories so great for thousands of years is how they stimulate the imagination.

Haven't you ever read a book?

Mods are the video-game equivalent. They fulfill the fantasies or the desires of the creator. Toon Link is a very gender-neutral character, so the female mod works.

But who are you to say someone's imagination or creativity is wrong? Sure it may be unnecessary, but there's no harm here.
 

EVOL 100%

Member
Except that for people who are invested in those stories, this is a blow. A story is set. Its written and published. After that everything is locked down and cannot be altered. I dont mind fanfictions, mods or what ever. I really dont care as they dont exist in the reality of the world. But the rules are the rules. Link a Male. Zelda is Female. Tingle is Creepy and Chickens are Deadly. There is not 4 triforce.

I'm a fact kind of guy, I dont botter with fanfiction and try to stay in the cannon.

I honestly can't understand why you'd be upset with this when this guy is doing this strictly for private use for his 3 year old daughter. Nobody's copies are being influenced here.

How do you feel about oral traditions?
 

Kazerei

Banned
Except that for people who are invested in those stories, this is a blow. A story is set. Its written and published. After that everything is locked down and cannot be altered. I dont mind fanfictions, mods or what ever. I really dont care as they dont exist in the reality of the world. But the rules are the rules. Link a Male. Zelda is Female. Tingle is Creepy and Chickens are Deadly. There is not 4 triforce.

I'm a fact kind of guy, I dont botter with fanfiction and try to stay in the cannon.

Holy shit, I didn't know Hyrule existed in the reality of the world.
 
ok can we all admit
that female dominance is not something that exists
jesus christ

like this whole women pushing to be better than men narrative
IT DOESNT FUCKING WORK THAT WAY



what I was saying a few pages before is that this action is precisely admirable because it seeks to disturb the canon. The canon is messed up! It has problems!

Wanting some female protags and less sexualized characters creates a hell of a backlash. Gamers proving once again their maturity levels about such things.
 

Rubius

Member
ok can we all admit
that female dominance is not something that exists
jesus christ

like this whole women pushing to be better than men narrative
IT DOESNT FUCKING WORK THAT WAY

what I was saying a few pages before is that this action is precisely admirable because it seeks to disturb the canon. The canon is messed up! It has problems!

The canon of Zelda does not have problems. The canon, allows Zelda to be a protagonist.
 
Thank you for the generalization.

/shrug

It's par for the course to see such backlash against the modding of a game for someone else's daughter because of the lack of female heroes targeting her demographic. Cry about generalizations all you want, it's definitely an issue with gaming.
 

Raonak

Banned
Thats actually pretty awesome.

I wonder if theres a market, for hacks that change the main character into a female.
probably harder these days with voice acting being so prominient.
 
I think it's a sweet story, maybe not as sweet as Sissy's Ponycorn Adventure but it's definitely up there. It would be funny if he could find a way to hack and swap Link and Zelda's models.
 
/shrug

It's par for the course to see such backlash against the modding of a game for someone else's daughter because of the lack of female heroes targeting her demographic. Cry about generalizations all you want, it's definitely an issue with gaming.

I was talking more about the believe that everybody are having the same issue or negative opinion.
 

Nexas

Member
Except that if we think like that, Katniss does not need to be a girl in The Hunger Games. Samus does not need to be a Women. Gruntilda does not need to be a Women. Venom does not need to be a transgender. But they are for a narrative. You do not change a sex of a character like that. Only the Author can do that.

Except for the love story with Zelda, in particular Skyward Sword.

Last I checked we were talking about Wind Waker not Skyward Swords.

Also, Katniss could easily be a boy with a Love Triangle of two girls. Switch Katniss and Peeta and change Gale to be a more Tomboyish girl and bam.

Now you're talking about switching multiple characters genders, which is a larger shift than just one. Even that would change things, such as the nature of Peeta's crush on Katniss, too Katniss's handling of their "relationship" in the games.

Metroid Plot twist is a 4th wall twist. The whole narrative is about a human being trained by an alien species. The plot could be change to be a guy anytime.

Maybe so, but the sole interesting element of Metroid's entire narrative is the twist at the end of the original game.

Any story can be changed to make a male a female or a female a male.

Some could. Others would have to rework some things. Others would be impossible.
 

MisterHero

Super Member
I understand this, but what happens if the next Metroid let's you be either a man or a woman? My point specifically is that then the story isn't about a defined person anymore, it's about the player. Instead of the player being the instrument, the player is the conductor so to speak. This isn't bad in any way but surely an artist should be allowed to tell the story as they want to.

The devs want you to play as a woman in Portal or Beyond Good & Evil. Similarly the tale of Master Chief is that of a man, just as the devs wanted it. The argument can totally exist whereby there are no stories being told for little girls to identify with, which is entirely true and the crux of this whole thread in my mind.

As a terrible analogy, I don't think enough metal gets played on Irish radio stations. My solution isn't to get the artists who are curretly on radio to change their style to accomodate my tastes. My solution would be to find a new radio station or ask them to play heavier stuff. Not a perfect analogy but none of mine ever are. I just think there should be that genre of music available for me to enjoy on the radio. I think girls just want to have any genre of games they can identify with because currently none exist. At least with metal there are ways outside of radio to listen to music. What must it be like when you're a girl that wants to identify with games that simply don't exist?
It'd be awesome if more game worlds were based around a character you created. Metroid and Zelda are not those kinds of games, however. It's concievable that a Metroid game might let you play as a Federation trooper, or a Zelda lets you play as a Gerudo or a Shiekah. Maybe Xenoblade 2 stars Melia. I think those are awesome concepts. I really do think Nintendo should pursue that (or a new IP).

The only real line I draw is that if it interferes with the story told thus far. The story should have some integrity on writer's part, as stretched as Zelda's is. ;P

I don't entirely agree with the man regarding haxing a game to tailor it to his child. Maybe I'm just jelly of his ability to do that. :p There are simpler ways [I'd argue] to encourage his child. He could write a children's story just for her. Teach her to make things up for herself. The people who make things like Zelda got started by creating things that made themselves, or close friends, happy.

IMO the whole gender role models debate is lost on a series like Zelda. Like I said earlier, Ocarina had strong women. The 80s cartoon had a strong princess antagonist. The series is named after a strong woman. Will they go the next step and make a female playable? They can and probably will do it if they want to, but it's their choice.

If the industry weren't a hellhole for smalltime creators, I'd say, "If there's something you want to change, you're the one who has to see it through!". Real change doesn't come from parties who aren't as specifically motivated.
 

brian!

Member
oh wait I just realized that me and some other people are using "canon" in different ways

Like for some of you it might mean what is generally accepted to be "true" within a fictional work's "universe"

but what I mean is something more like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon
Basically a group of chosen works meant to represent a discipline.
So Zelda is definitely one of the common examples that people point to when naming "good" games, that's what I meant.

Like people probably would rally about that game being important but not, uh, i dunno some random game about horses or something I don't know
 

Rubius

Member
Holy shit, I didn't know Hyrule existed in the reality of the world.

The world of Hyrule, of course.

I honestly can't understand why you'd be upset with this when this guy is doing this strictly for private use for his 3 year old daughter. Nobody's copies are being influenced here.

How do you feel about oral traditions?
Oh, I'm not upset, I simply give my opinion on the subject. It would be silly to be upset to such a trivial thing.
I simply think that making Link a girl for a girl reinforce a gender lock issue and a Feminist point of view that people seem to have these days, where Females should have priority over males in every sphere. And that instead of doing that, he should reinforce the notion of equality between boys and girls.

Oral traditions are stories and since they are told orally, they change from mouth to mouth. Hell, I'm pretty sure Jesus was just a pretty cool guy who gave some food to a dude and it extrapolated. Fun fact : I'm currently in the great Canadian North in a Inuit village where Oral traditions are pretty important, since before the white man came, there was no means for them to write down anything, and had no alphabet.
 

brian!

Member
The world of Hyrule, of course.


Oh, I'm not upset, I simply give my opinion on the subject. It would be silly to be upset to such a trivial thing.
I simply think that making Link a girl for a girl reinforce a gender lock issue and a Feminist point of view that people seem to have these days, where Females should have priority over males in every sphere. And that instead of doing that, he should reinforce the notion of equality between boys and girls.

Oral traditions are stories and since they are told orally, they change from mouth to mouth. Hell, I'm pretty sure Jesus was just a pretty cool guy who gave some food to a dude and it extrapolated. Fun fact : I'm currently in the great Canadian North in a Inuit village where Oral traditions are pretty important, since before the white man came, there was no means for them to write down anything, and had no alphabet.

But the question we keep returning to is how can one strive for equality in a world that is fundamentally unequal (in favor of white male)? Like you keep identifying something that isn't happening here, where the dad is forwarding some pure female view over some pure male view, that's not what's going on
 

Nexas

Member
The world of Hyrule, of course.


Oh, I'm not upset, I simply give my opinion on the subject. It would be silly to be upset to such a trivial thing.
I simply think that making Link a girl for a girl reinforce a gender lock issue and a Feminist point of view that people seem to have these days, where Females should have priority over males in every sphere. And that instead of doing that, he should reinforce the notion of equality between boys and girls.

Oral traditions are stories and since they are told orally, they change from mouth to mouth. Hell, I'm pretty sure Jesus was just a pretty cool guy who gave some food to a dude and it extrapolated. Fun fact : I'm currently in the great Canadian North in a Inuit village where Oral traditions are pretty important, since before the white man came, there was no means for them to write down anything, and had no alphabet.

Where the hell are you getting this from? In my first Zelda game I named the character after myself and pretended that I was the hero. This guy just wanted to give the same opportunity to his daughter, and took some additional steps to accommodate that.
 

iammeiam

Member
I don't entirely agree with the man regarding haxing a game to tailor it to his child. Maybe I'm just jelly of his ability to do that. :p There are simpler ways [I'd argue] to encourage his child. He could write a children's story just for her. Teach her to make things up for herself. The people who make things like Zelda got started by creating things that made themselves, or close friends, happy..

The problem amounts to this: The game pops up and asks Dad and Maya what to name Link. Dad asks Maya what they should call their character, since they can pick any name they want. Maya says, "Maya, like me!"

Does Dad then:

A.) Use the name Maya, and just keep calling Maya a "he", leading to "But Daddy, Maya's a girl's name!"

B.) Tell Maya, "We can't do that sweetie, this is a game about a boy." thereby diminishing (however slightly) her sense of engagement with the game.

C.) Say "Okay", name the character Maya, and just pretend the androgynous self-insert character voiced (IIRC) by a female is, in fact, a female, doing roughly 0 damage to the story of Wind Waker?

There's nothing to say there aren't other things he could do as well, but Wind Waker is a game that is very visually appealing to young children (it's lol kiddy Celda after all), and there aren't a ton of good substitutes out there for that experience. This is probably not the only interaction he has with his daughter, and they probably do many other things. It's just the objection people seem to have to him doing this small thing, giving his daughter a custom game experience tailored to make it the best possible for her, that baffles me.

Edit: It kind of reminds me of the granddad reading the story to Fred Savage in The Princess Bride. The story the kid hears is tailored to what he likes, parts are omitted that he finds boring ("the kissing stuff"), but in the end they have a good bonding experience. Fictional Granddad totally altered Fictional Morganstern's story, and probably could have picked a better Fictional Story to read to a sick kid that would have required no alteration, or written his own, but the end result is something special and sweet.
 

Kazerei

Banned
The only real line I draw is that if it interferes with the story told thus far. The story should have some integrity on writer's part, as stretched as Zelda's is. ;P

Why do you even a draw a line regarding how other people adapt a story? It doesn't affect how you experience the original story.

There are simpler ways [I'd argue] to encourage his child. He could write a children's story just for her. Teach her to make things up for herself.

There are other ways, and the father chose this way. *shrugs*

Will they go the next step and make a female playable? They can and probably will do it if they want to, but it's their choice.

Why shouldn't the consumer have the choice, too?

I simply think that making Link a girl for a girl reinforce a gender lock issue and a Feminist point of view that people seem to have these days, where Females should have priority over males in every sphere. And that instead of doing that, he should reinforce the notion of equality between boys and girls.

You keep bringing up this idea that this somehow promotes "females over males". That's not what feminism is about. That's not what happened when the father changed Link to a girl.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
I'm sorry, was I the one who entered a thread by throwing around "you militants," and telling people that their viewpoints were not welcome so they should leave? Somehow I don't think that was me. (You might not know that, though, since you've chosen not to engage with my actual responses to your arguments as you would apparently rather argue semantics.) I suppose you have a point in that your antagonism toward others in the thread has been very direct.

And you're right, you didn't say the word feminism.

You said that inclusiveness for women is making something "retrofitted to your politics" and that such a parent is shoving "all this socio-political shit into the picture." But yeah, you didn't say feminism. Just militants with socio-political shit. Would you care to clarify what that means if not inclusiveness for women as the father himself suggests is his intention? It's somewhat unclear.

No, I did not say inclusiveness for women is militant. But I don't think Zelda needs to change to be inclusive for women. It's already got a ton of positive female characters. You don't have to make Link a girl in order to make it appealing to girls.

At the same time, I agree that having a protagonist that looks or sounds like you does make a difference. I just don't want people to take an iconic character who is dear to me and change him to be more palatable to another group of people. Find or make your own character and let that character be dear to you.

The socio-political shit is thinking that it's cool and desirable to work on socially engineering a toddler into fighting academic battles about gender equality before they can fucking read. There is a group who descends on any discussion of gender and lobs the words sexist and misogynist like bombs to shut down any kind of discussion and tar the people they're fighting with. The kind of people who were become such a bloc of thought police that Evilore had to step in a few weeks back and tell them to tone it down. A lot of them are in attendance here. That's the kind of "socio-political shit" I mean. Every goddamn discussion with people like that is a no-holds-barred, zero sum, exhausting shit fest. Like this has become. Is that clear enough?

Women should be included in gaming. I brought my wife and sister in gaming because I enjoy the hobby so much that I wanted to share it with them. (Tried it with my mom and dad, too. But that didn't stick.) They don't always like the same stuff as me but we have gaming in common and it's a way to bond. Much like the father in the original post is trying to do with his daughter.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with this guy hacking the hex code to say milady instead of my lad. I think it's silly, but I'm not railing against that. My problem is more with the way any discussion of gender is always the exact same histrionic, hateful garbage within ten pages.
 

Kazerei

Banned
At the same time, I agree that having a protagonist that looks or sounds like you does make a difference. I just don't want people to take an iconic character who is dear to me and change him to be more palatable to another group of people. Find or make your own character and let that character be dear to you.

Ehh, this sounds a bit defensive. You still have the character who is dear to you. Fan fiction, fan art, cosplayers, mods, etc. don't take that character away from you.
 

Platy

Member
That's not an answer to my question. What's the issue here?

THe issue started when videogames starting evolve past the fact that main playable character could have some distinction and not be abstract squares.

So comes society need to separate everything in genders and suddenly you have male characters everywhere because games were praticaly only made by male nerds since sexism only allowed nerds to be male at that time.

So it started to became really complicated when games started to evolve and some idiot said "so, what if we do it like a movie ? I like movies" and suddenly the focus was on the narrative and what you saw and everything was screwed.

Suddenly, the character started to matter more and more because of how gameplay became a secondary feature next to everything cinematic.

So we came to a part where a videogame that was made to look like a cartoon did what every cartoon of that time did : Used a male protagonist since it was not female only (ot was a Pre-Laura Faust's MLP time) and put some random token girl in what was basicaly a men's issue.

And then people, the same people who complain that zelda must go back to the series roots where nothing REALLY mattered outside gameplay, are complayning that the gender of one of game's last mute protagonists is one of the main pillars of the game

It also has something to do that you can't fix the past or something closer to those crazy time travel movies. The past was racist and misogynists ? You are fucked with Super hero movies with white people only and sequels and sequels with male heroes only.

Also something about art being changed is evil, wich ignores that michelangelo originaly painted everyone in the Sistine Chapel nude, only for a priest to hire someone to paint fabric covering all the naughty bits

And i'm pretty sure someone got close to talk about how reincarnation forbids you to change genders in the next reincarnation.

If Link and Zelda changed sex and not genders, how much hatemail would Nintendo get ? =P
 
Edit: It kind of reminds me of the granddad reading the story to Fred Savage in The Princess Bride. The story the kid hears is tailored to what he likes, parts are omitted that he finds boring ("the kissing stuff"), but in the end they have a good bonding experience. Fictional Granddad totally altered Fictional Morganstern's story, and probably could have picked a better Fictional Story to read to a sick kid that would have required no alteration, or written his own, but the end result is something special and sweet.

This is a really good analogy - probably the best in the thread, really.

Pyrrhus said:
Women should be included in gaming. I brought my wife and sister in gaming because I enjoy the hobby so much that I wanted to share it with them. (Tried it with my mom and dad, too. But that didn't stick.) They don't always like the same stuff as me but we have gaming in common and it's a way to bond. Much like the father in the original post is trying to do with his daughter.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with this guy hacking the hex code to say milady instead of my lad. I think it's silly, but I'm not railing against that. My problem is more with the way any discussion of gender is always the exact same histrionic, hateful garbage within ten pages.

This keeps happening in the thread, which I think is interesting/kinda cool: The farther the discussions go between people of differing depths on opposite sides, the more we discover the fact that the thought processes aren't exactly all that different. For example: You trying to share your gaming experiences with your wife and sister, similar to how dad is sharing his experience with his daughter. He's going the extra mile, of course, but at the core, the experiences are similar, and people have tended to agree, over and over, that the intent is good, and laudable, and if more people felt this way, more games would be made with either a female protagonist, or at least the CHOICE of gender in protagonist, would be produced.

Now, could these realizations/admissions/compromises honestly be made in a thread as histrionic and militant as you keep saying this thread is? Granted, there's a couple posters in here who are the messageboard equivalent of crazy-glued pennies on a train-track, but for the most part, I don't find this thread histrionic/militant/hateful, not with the amount of people coming to an understanding regarding the motivations behind this move and the potential positive change that could be enacted if more people thought that way/supported people who think that way.
 

Rubius

Member
But the question we keep returning to is how can one strive for equality in a world that is fundamentally unequal (in favor of white male)? Like you keep identifying something that isn't happening here, where the dad is forwarding some pure female view over some pure male view, that's not what's going on
I understand why the Feminist movement exist, and I agree that it was a good thing. Was. We went from people who wanted equality to people who think that guys are evils and that womens are better than mans. The movement do not prone equality, it prone superiority.

Where the hell are you getting this from? In my first Zelda game I named the character after myself and pretended that I was the hero. This guy just wanted to give the same opportunity to his daughter, and took some additional steps to accommodate that.

I get this from the sentence he said, ""I'm not having my girl grow up thinking girls don't get to be the hero.". The guy seem to think that a male hero is a bad influence for his daughter. Because he was a boy. Instead of supporting his daughter he give her the message that "Dont worry, you dont need boys at all, see? This is a girl, not a boy", which is a feminist approach to the problem.
 

Parallax

best seen in the classic "Shadow of the Beast"
That's not what I said.

I said that Link is an emotionless void meant to be filled by the player. He has no thoughts or particularly strong emotions that you don't ascribe to him as an observer. He is good, he is heroic, and he is just. These are all equally female traits. There is nothing that defines him as him (particularly in older Zeldas) aside from clothing. Even his name isn't necessarily his. He is what the player wants him to be. He is very obviously intended to be a reflection of the player himself -- should the player so choose, and it would seem that a great many do.

But only the player himself. Girl gamers are denied the experience that many of their male counterparts will have.

What experience are you talking about?
 
No, I did not say inclusiveness for women is militant. But I don't think Zelda needs to change to be inclusive for women. It's already got a ton of positive female characters. You don't have to make Link a girl in order to make it appealing to girls.

At the same time, I agree that having a protagonist that looks or sounds like you does make a difference. I just don't want people to take an iconic character who is dear to me and change him to be more palatable to another group of people. Find or make your own character and let that character be dear to you.

The socio-political shit is thinking that it's cool and desirable to work on socially engineering a toddler into fighting academic battles about gender equality before they can fucking read. There is a group who descends on any discussion of gender and lobs the words sexist and misogynist like bombs to shut down any kind of discussion and tar the people they're fighting with. The kind of people who were become such a bloc of thought police that Evilore had to step in a few weeks back and tell them to tone it down. A lot of them are in attendance here. That's the kind of "socio-political shit" I mean. Every goddamn discussion with people like that is a no-holds-barred, zero sum, exhausting shit fest. Like this has become. Is that clear enough?

Women should be included in gaming. I brought my wife and sister in gaming because I enjoy the hobby so much that I wanted to share it with them. (Tried it with my mom and dad, too. But that didn't stick.) They don't always like the same stuff as me but we have gaming in common and it's a way to bond. Much like the father in the original post is trying to do with his daughter.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with this guy hacking the hex code to say milady instead of my lad. I think it's silly, but I'm not railing against that. My problem is more with the way any discussion of gender is always the exact same histrionic, hateful garbage within ten pages.

Here's the thing. The female equivalent of this is basically choosing between strong silent characters or generally sexy characters who have no depth.
 
THe issue started when videogames starting evolve past the fact that main playable character could have some distinction and not be abstract squares.

So comes society need to separate everything in genders and suddenly you have male characters everywhere because games were praticaly only made by male nerds since sexism only allowed nerds to be male at that time.

So it started to became really complicated when games started to evolve and some idiot said "so, what if we do it like a movie ? I like movies" and suddenly the focus was on the narrative and what you saw and everything was screwed.

Suddenly, the character started to matter more and more because of how gameplay became a secondary feature next to everything cinematic.

So we came to a part where a videogame that was made to look like a cartoon did what every cartoon of that time did : Used a male protagonist since it was not female only (ot was a Pre-Laura Faust's MLP time) and put some random token girl in what was basicaly a men's issue.

And then people, the same people who complain that zelda must go back to the series roots where nothing REALLY mattered outside gameplay, are complayning that the gender of one of game's last mute protagonists is one of the main pillars of the game

It also has something to do that you can't fix the past or something closer to those crazy time travel movies. The past was racist and misogynists ? You are fucked with Super hero movies with white people only and sequels and sequels with male heroes only.

Also something about art being changed is evil, wich ignores that michelangelo originaly painted everyone in the Sistine Chapel nude, only for a priest to hire someone to paint fabric covering all the naughty bits

And i'm pretty sure someone got close to talk about how reincarnation forbids you to change genders in the next reincarnation.

If Link and Zelda changed sex and not genders, how much hatemail would Nintendo get ? =P

...

I dunno where that came from

Certainly was not the "different issues" that I was implying
 

Rubius

Member
But only the player himself. Girl gamers are denied the experience that many of their male counterparts will have.

Sex was never an issue for me. I'm me. You can call me, He, She or It, I dont really care. It does not diminish me to play a female in a video game, so I do not see why it diminish a girl to play a man.
 

Platy

Member
Here's the thing. The female equivalent of this is basically choosing between strong silent characters or generally sexy characters who have no depth.

To be true changing Link to a girl would give a Silent character with no depth =P

And look at how insane the complains is for this one !
 
To be true changing Link to a girl would give a Silent character with no depth =P

And look at how insane the complains is for this one !

Yeah it's not really a salve but it's more so he and his daughter can enjoy it. Honestly I've just pined away for a Zelda game with Sheik as the main character.
 

Kazerei

Banned
I understand why the Feminist movement exist, and I agree that it was a good thing. Was. We went from people who wanted equality to people who think that guys are evils and that womens are better than mans. The movement do not prone equality, it prone superiority.

Nope, you're imagining things. The movement still promotes equality.

I get this from the sentence he said, ""I'm not having my girl grow up thinking girls don't get to be the hero.". The guy seem to think that a male hero is a bad influence for his daughter. Because he was a boy. Instead of supporting his daughter he give her the message that "Dont worry, you dont need boys at all, see? This is a girl, not a boy", which is a feminist approach to the problem.

You're jumping to a conclusion here. There's no logical connection from the sentence before.

Sex was never an issue for me. I'm me. You can call me, He, She or It, I dont really care. It does not diminish me to play a female in a video game, so I do not see why it diminish a girl to play a man.

But surely you can see how it would enhance the experience for a girl to play as a girl. Because like you said earlier, people prefer to play as the same type of person as themselves.
 
Sex was never an issue for me. I'm me. You can call me, He, She or It, I dont really care. It does not diminish me to play a female in a video game, so I do not see why it diminish a girl to play a man.

Are you a three year old girl who's absorbing all sorts of social conditioning...telling you how to act and what values to hold dear?

I didn't think so.
 

Nexas

Member
I get this from the sentence he said, ""I'm not having my girl grow up thinking girls don't get to be the hero.". The guy seem to think that a male hero is a bad influence for his daughter. Because he was a boy. Instead of supporting his daughter he give her the message that "Dont worry, you dont need boys at all, see? This is a girl, not a boy", which is a feminist approach to the problem.

Again, where the hell are you getting this? He's not saying that male heroes are bad influences. He is just wants to show his daughter that girls can be the hero to.
 

Rubius

Member
Nope, you're imagining things. The movement still promotes equality.
Find me a Feminist group that work so that Males have the same rights as female when it comes to childs.
Or a Feminist group that push for more days of Parental for the male when a kid is born.
Or a Feminist group that push for mens to get jobs in "Women" jobs like Waitress, Nurses or Boarding agents?
Feminist groups do not prone equality as they only push on one side. And the word Feminist also prevent them to ever push on the other side.
 
Reason number 13 why I so wanted that rumor about Retro doing a Sheik spin off was true

If they'd get off their ass and make one everyone would win.


Find me a Feminist group that work so that Males have the same rights as female when it comes to childs.
Or a Feminist group that push for more days of Parental for the male when a kid is born.
Or a Feminist group that push for mens to get jobs in "Women" jobs like Waitress, Nurses or Boarding agents?
Feminist groups do not prone equality as they only push on one side. And the word Feminist also prevent them to ever push on the other side.

The internet is never bereft of this lol.
 

Platy

Member
Find me a Feminist group that work so that Males have the same rights as female when it comes to childs.
Or a Feminist group that push for more days of Parental for the male when a kid is born.
Or a Feminist group that push for mens to get jobs in "Women" jobs like Waitress, Nurses or Boarding agents?
Feminist groups do not prone equality as they only push on one side. And the word Feminist also prevent them to ever push on the other side.

I know a group that wants all of that ... it is called Third Wave Feminists ... but you can call then just Feminists for short
 

trinest

Member
To be honest I find this more close minded then if he just left it how the game was made. I just feel that pushing the identity that Link is a girl onto his daughter feels very pretentious and closed minded that she can't play a game with male protagonists and not aspire to be a hero.
 

Rubius

Member
Me neither, and I actually think Rubius argument about that was really shitty...

That was more a grip I have with this kind of thing. Like I said, I'm a canon and fact guy. Thinking that somewhere I may have an argument about somebody who think that Link is a girl, or that the sun turns around earth, which already happened, is kind of bad for me. Not a people person for that.
 
Find me a Feminist group that work so that Males have the same rights as female when it comes to childs.
Or a Feminist group that push for more days of Parental for the male when a kid is born.
Or a Feminist group that push for mens to get jobs in "Women" jobs like Waitress, Nurses or Boarding agents?
Feminist groups do not prone equality as they only push on one side. And the word Feminist also prevent them to ever push on the other side.

Out of curiosity, what types of activism have you done to push these issues? Since they're so important to you.
 

MisterHero

Super Member
The problem amounts to this: The game pops up and asks Dad and Maya what to name Link. Dad asks Maya what they should call their character, since they can pick any name they want. Maya says, "Maya, like me!"

Does Dad then:

A.) Use the name Maya, and just keep calling Maya a "he", leading to "But Daddy, Maya's a girl's name!"

B.) Tell Maya, "We can't do that sweetie, this is a game about a boy." thereby diminishing (however slightly) her sense of engagement with the game.

C.) Say "Okay", name the character Maya, and just pretend the androgynous self-insert character voiced (IIRC) by a female is, in fact, a female, doing roughly 0 damage to the story of Wind Waker?

There's nothing to say there aren't other things he could do as well, but Wind Waker is a game that is very visually appealing to young children (it's lol kiddy Celda after all), and there aren't a ton of good substitutes out there for that experience. This is probably not the only interaction he has with his daughter, and they probably do many other things. It's just the objection people seem to have to him doing this small thing, giving his daughter a custom game experience tailored to make it the best possible for her, that baffles me.
I just said I don't entirely agree that it was the best way. That doesn't mean I don't understand. Someone posted (albeit not the one I quoted) something like "does he have to make a whole game just to make his daughter included"? My answer is no, as a smaller project like a children's bedtime story can be as effective. Something as sophisticated as a videogame can be very far from, or even negative for stimulating imagination (even one as visually creative as Wind Waker).

What I or someone else thinks doesn't make him wrong. At this point in the thread, I'm just commenting on discussions that have shifted into different directions. :p

Kazerei said:
Why shouldn't the consumer have the choice, too?
There are many many games with character customization. I agree that not enough serious games (as serious as Zelda games can be) are aimed at children, especially girls.

You're right. I think everyone would be okay with a Zelda game with a female protagonist. It doesn't have to be Link. Another factor I've tried to introduce is that it could be costly for a game on the level of Zelda to deliver on, and do it right. For me, ensuring "the player's gender not effecting the story at all" is not a very significant addition.

That's a hard truth even for games that have to pander to demographics. However, if someone who knows how to make games wants it enough, it will happen.
 

Rubius

Member
I know a group that wants all of that ... it is called Third Wave Feminists ... but you can call then just Feminists for short

Nice then. And I do know that its not all Feminist groups who are doing that, but the word Feminist means Women. It does not means Equal.
"First recorded in English 1894, from French féministe (1872). Ultimately from Latin fēminīnus, from fēmina (“woman”)"
The movement is not for mens.
 
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