Why wouldn't he? Was his intention to do this once and then never do it again? To not make her feel 2nd class in this game and not the next? He either has to keep doing it or have her play games with female leads. Otherwise, this gesture is moot because from here on out she'd be playing games that do [allegedly] make her feel 2nd class because, to his point, a lot of games have male leads.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Man Edits Wind Waker so 3-Year Old Daughter Doesn't Feel 2nd Class
- Thread starter Bobby Roberts
- Start date
Why wouldn't he? Was his intention to do this once and then never do it again? To not make her feel 2nd class in this game and not the next? He either has to keep doing it or have her play games with female leads. Otherwise, this gesture is moot because from here on out she'd be playing games that do [allegedly] make her feel 2nd class because, to his point, a lot of games have male leads.
He's saying gaming treats girls as second-class because there are far more male leads than female leads. So he tipped the balance a little by changing Link to a female. There's no problem or hypocrisy here. Sorry.
Modding a game is legal. Sorry again.
Alligatorjandro
Banned
Thats pretty cool.
Metalmurphy
Member
It actually isn't. It's just that they don't care and/or allow it, it's also difficult to pursue the offenders. TecmoKoei went out on a suing spree over DoA nude mods for example.
Either way, it's besides the point.
Seriously? What the fuck?
You want Nintendo to sue this guy just because he did this to make his 3 year old daughter happy?
More than likely. He was already transliterating the pronouns when reading the text to her. He probably just got the idea one night to see if he could actually change the text himself. And then he did.
He didn't sign himself up for a contract where he has to do it to every single game. He just did something neat for his daughter. It's not a black or white situation.
The only legal foothold Tecmo would have had is if the nude patches had any Tecmo IP in them. The vast majority of game patches and ROM hacks are perfectly legal because they actually do not contain any of the game's IP, they're just binary diffs that apply the mod content to the original game.
What this guy did amounted to a do while loop that goes "if (substr = "him" ) { substr = "her" }. No IP is being infringed.
I could read at three. My mom was a teacher at that time. Not too uncommon, really.
But what the dad did is pretty awesome, yeah.
Metalmurphy
Member
If he feels the game offends his values, then don't have her play it. You don't pick up someone elses work and modify it to meet your missguided perception of what a game is evoking. If I was an artist and I designed a character, only to have someone else change it's sex, I'd be pretty pissed to be honest.
What's next, people gonna photoshop Disney movies?
Bobby Roberts
Banned
There are things you do for a 3-4 year old that you wouldn't do for a 5-6 year old, because they grow and their brains develop and they don't need as much help as they did at age 3-4. Your premise doesn't allow for the idea that the child will ever change, mentally, from her 3 1/2 year old state.
You're essentially arguing that dad's editing of Wind Waker will have stunted her mental growth.
Right around 3 or 4, a lot of children become aware of the fact there are genders, and genders are different. It's entirely possible this is the first fictional hero his daughter is going to identify in such a manner. Dad edited the game so as to ensure that fictional hero is a girl. I'm sure that later, she'll understand heroes can be boys, too. LOTS more heroes can be boys. Like, 80 percent more of them.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
I think this is pretty unnecessary and he could have just had her play the game as it was originally designed (but on Dolphin so she could appreciate it in HD, obviously!)
With that said, it is a lovely gesture to do that, even if it is a bit pointless. Can't really fault him.
With that said, it is a lovely gesture to do that, even if it is a bit pointless. Can't really fault him.
OldAsUrSock
Banned
Once she gets older she will be laughed at for thinking Link is a girl. Bad move I say.
If it makes them happy and it's for private use why the fuck should anybody else care?
No I'm not. I'm asking why just this game and not the next. Is she not going to play another game anytime soon? That's why I feel he kind of has to keep doing it. Don't really see why he wouldn't/shouldn't. And I'm sure he will now that he knows he can.
Metalmurphy
Member
It was dismissed because it was settled off court. And from posts I've been reading over at facepunch they are still being pretty aggressive with cease and desists over nude mods and similar stuff.
This remembers a talk I had recently with some friends ... about wich female characters are actualy transgender... like how peach would have human sexual secondary characteristics and not being ... toadette and why Bayoneta is so fabulous queen and queer and all that hair and how Little Mermaid is totaly a metaphor for genderqueer rights
Metalmurphy
Member
I have 4 year old niece and 2 year old nephew that love me and keep asking my brother to come see me.
I also have common sense and some perspective on things. Maybe I was being a bit harsh, not even being totally serious, but I just wanted to get my point across that this whole thing is a bit ridiculous and he shouldn't be editing other peoples work over a non issue.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Because she'll have grown/learned in the meantime? Again, you don't seem to be allowing for the idea that she will absorb/process things in the meantime between watching her dad play a Zelda game and playing games/reading/consuming media herself.
This isn't happening in a vaccuum. There are still stories featuring male heroes. Programs featuring male heroes. I don't get the sense dad here is under the idea he can completely bubble her off from all of that. I get the sense he just wants to begin her journey into this particular world of gender with a headstart that a lot of girls don't get because people don't even THINK about it in those terms all that often.
Hell, lets be real about this - we're talking about fictional heroes here. It's entirely possible her conception of hero is going to encompass, at some point, her father. A guy. An actual person who happens to be male, and who feeds her breakfast in the morning, plays with her after he gets home from work, and edits video games so she can watch and read along as dad plays part of a bedtime story for her. She's not gonna suffer from any shortage of male heroic figures in her life. Is the editing of a Zelda game for her, and her specifically, getting her off on the wrong foot?
Young kids tend to like jerks because they're sort of jerks themselves.
Metalmurphy
Member
Are you calling me my nephew and niece jerks? Who's really being the jerk here?
You sure sound like one, putting corporate artistic integrity over changing pronouns because we can't be fucking with Zelda canon.
Vermillion
Banned
Metalmurphy
Member
If you want to oversimplify things, sure. Let's not act like this guy wasn't saying that the game paints an image that girls can't be heros and that's why he's editing it, and that's what I have a problem with.
This has zero effect on anyone but those who want to play as a female. Does the changing of gender suddenly make you want to play the game again, in this new and exciting way?
No, it's a nice alternative for those who are going to play it, though. This has no bearing on anything other preference.
But we can't fuck with Zelda because then the little lady children will have a skewed understanding of the great Japanese heritage of Videogames.
No, it's a nice alternative for those who are going to play it, though. This has no bearing on anything other preference.
But we can't fuck with Zelda because then the little lady children will have a skewed understanding of the great Japanese heritage of Videogames.
Yes, Tecmo settled, which implies they gave up. But you're right, this is kind of irrelevant.
So we should only edit other people's work over a serious issue? The mod is for his and his daughter's own enjoyment. Same idea with plenty of mods out there.
And Metroid *_*
The best thing about this is that her dad is clearly thinking about these things and taking them into account when raising his daughter. I don't think there's any indication that every hero needs to be a girl in his opinion, TWW's art style just makes it relatively believable to make Link a tomboy. But the important things is that he's thinking about it, and I fail to see how that is a bad thing.
faceless007
Member
I see you've never seen a single fan mash-up, fan-created alternate ending, re-cut version, remix, overdub of any movie or TV show on YouTube ever.
Metalmurphy
Member
How does it imply that? As far as we know tecmo could have paid for the guy legals expenses and the guy removed all the mods. You have no idea. The fact is DoA mods became a hell of a lot harder to find and they're still pursuing them.
You mean parodies?
Don't you know? When he changed the Wind Waker ROM, it changed everyone's copy at the same time.
Yea you're probably right.
A lot of negativity over this.
http://neogaf.net/forum/showthread.php?p=39009391
A thread on gaf that showed a study children had lower self esteem after watching a lot of tv, except for white males. The TV shows white young boys they are exposed to generally had characters that were white and male doing cool things so they felt good about themselves, and all the other demographics felt the opposite. Not sure how well this study translate to video games, but lets be honest here most video game protagonist are white and male.
So I say good on the dad imo.
http://neogaf.net/forum/showthread.php?p=39009391
A thread on gaf that showed a study children had lower self esteem after watching a lot of tv, except for white males. The TV shows white young boys they are exposed to generally had characters that were white and male doing cool things so they felt good about themselves, and all the other demographics felt the opposite. Not sure how well this study translate to video games, but lets be honest here most video game protagonist are white and male.
So I say good on the dad imo.
Zoe
Member
Yeah, definitely unnecessary. When I was that age, I just wanted to play the games (or watch my brother play them). It didn't bother me that I had to play as boy characters, and when games like SMB2 started to come out, my time playing as boys didn't stop me from naturally gravitating to the girl characters.
But it does because the definitive character of the series is Zelda and she is specifically a girl. This isn't Orcarina of Time where she's secretly being a hero, she stays in her tower like Repunzel and then gets kidnapped by Ganon.
Hell, who are the female characters in Wind Waker again? Granny who makes you soup? Zelda who gets kidnapped? The girl who kidnapped who started the whole story (because she was pretending to be you, a boy? really, i don't remember that much about it)?
Link is such an androgynous character that changing the pronouns relating to them is about as insignificant and shocking as how it's done in the book Orlando. Well, Orlando is probably a little more significant in its meaning for why but still, it doesn't change the character.
The character's heroic qualities juxtaposed against the other female characters shows differentiation among people or just character weakness to plot advancement. When Link is under the pronouns of 'he', it's able to become a gendered game on women being in the kitchen or under the protection of men, and I wouldn't even make those arguments. Someone could, but...
holy fuck someone changed the pronouns, miyamoto-san, forgive the sins of this one gamer and do not scorn us all
faceless007
Member
Male nerd culture is really so easily threatened.
I like how the replies are simultaneously:
He's lazy for doing something so trivial/He's dumb to put so much effort and work into something so pointless
He should find already-existing examples of good female characters instead/He should wait until there are more good female characters
He should wait until things are better/He should be more proactive about solving the problem
He should stop doing this because it won't have any point/He has to do it for every video game his daughter plays or he's a hypocrite
This is really dumb and won't have any impact on anything/This is an outrage and an egregious affront to the very notion of artistic integrity
He should be having an in-depth conversation about the state of gender in cultural representations with his 3-year-old/3-year-olds are too young to understand what he's doing anyway.
Did I miss any?
I like how the replies are simultaneously:
He's lazy for doing something so trivial/He's dumb to put so much effort and work into something so pointless
He should find already-existing examples of good female characters instead/He should wait until there are more good female characters
He should wait until things are better/He should be more proactive about solving the problem
He should stop doing this because it won't have any point/He has to do it for every video game his daughter plays or he's a hypocrite
This is really dumb and won't have any impact on anything/This is an outrage and an egregious affront to the very notion of artistic integrity
He should be having an in-depth conversation about the state of gender in cultural representations with his 3-year-old/3-year-olds are too young to understand what he's doing anyway.
Did I miss any?
Yeah, having the best Zelda as her first will probably make it hard for her to want to play the others.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
You pretty much got em.
graywolf323
Member
the utter focus on self-esteem is part of why our school system in America is so screwed up, they care more about making kids feel good than making sure they actually know anything
Tetra was a badass.
faceless007
Member
Parodies are certainly included, but that's just a subset of every fan-mashup and fan-created alternate cut of something out there. There are countless videos that take original works and re-cut or re-mix them for music videos, for parodies, for tributes, to get different moods out of scenes, for almost any other purpose that people want to make. All of these are "picking up someone else's work and modifying it." Remix culture is very real.