another.intheuniverse » Internet

No Female Heroes? Why?

lolfang — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:00:28 +0000

This is just a link to a blog In-depth analysis made at GamaSutra, called “In-Depth: No Female Heroes At Activision?”.

My two cents here, is what’s mentioned by the comment of Rayna Anderson, following the post:

I’m sad to say that I’ve encountered this before, activision isn’t the only company. When I was lead designer/writer on a murder mystery game, I was forced to rewrite everything because the higher-ups didn’t want a female to be the murderer. They said that people wouldn’t believe that a female could overpower her male victim. Every game I’ve worked on, I’ve tried to include more female characters, but the higher-ups just keep cutting them. It’s pretty discouraging to keep pitching those kinds of characters when you know they have no chance of surviving through the production phase.

I wonder… female leads are often encountered on Japanese game, because of the different cultures and all. Here in occident, we are kinda Hollywood-driven, so a strong male lead is often characteristic of a script. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we can have a God of War protagonized by a female. It just CAN be done. It’s not just a term of culture. You just need a good writer.

Lego Starcraft

lolfang — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:39:01 +0000

This is so on-topic these days.

No, I’m not dying or anything. Just… too much of life, too little of time.

How to build a totalitarian regime… in Sim City 3000

lolfang — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:59:13 +0000

You know, I just crossed my paths with a video that… kinda scared me. The video showed how to build a city that –according to game rules– was the perfect city. Of course, there were some problems.

Here is the video.

Awesome? Magnificent? Creative, at least? I don’t know. Maybe. But regardless, there is a great caveat in all this.

Yes, he achieved the perfect city by the game boundaries. But if we took this city to, let’s say, a real scenario… Quoting the creator itself:

There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle – this is the price that these Sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the Sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.

Scary stuff.

We could lose all day talking about what he did, but let me stress the following:

Achieving perfection through limiting itself to the rules, it’s clearly not the best way to achieve it.
I’m also wondering if this could be a first try to build a feasible robot-populated city
He is 22 years old as of date. He is not autistic.

Wonderful and quite scary at the same time.

Sources: [1], [2]

SRWare Iron

lolfang — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:00:18 +0000

Been using Google Chrome lately? So, if you don’t know let me talk a bit about SRWare Iron, a project also based on Chromium.

Google Chrome is a fork based on Chromium code base. Chrome is made by Google.

Iron is made by SRWare, and removes all this “features” of Chrome:

A unique ID through which a user can be identified.
A Timestamp of when the browser was installed.
Address bar search suggestion.
Google hosted error pages when a server isn’t found.
Bug tracking system, sends information about crashes or errors.
RLZ identifier, an encoded string.
Google Updater automatic installation.
DNS Pre-fetching.

As you see, Google fetches all these data from you. I recommend using Iron, and even more, using Iron portable version. If you even need more privacy, use it’s Incognito mode activated by default by making a .bat file that contains the following.

ironportable.exe -incognito

Opera celebrates 15th birthday

lolfang — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:32:34 +0000

Congratulations, Opera Software.

You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve been using Opera Browser. And I still can’t replace it. Sure, it’s a little behind the times, since WebKit is way faster in JS and stuff. But the features are extremely needed for me…

Notes, Opera Link! Opera Link saved me a while back :D – Mouse Gestures, Menu and Toolbar customizations, skins, security, Speed Dial, Zooming, Feeds, Sessions and even more stuff like bits of customizations here and there with User JS… MHTML save feature… and more.

It took me a while to configure the browser just like I’m using it now, but I love it.

Happy Birthday, Opera. I hope Opera 10 becomes way faster than Opera 9. Good luck!