Hacker News Reader

Comment by pshc | Hacker News Reader

> It nails that mixture of whimsy, cleverness, and sweetness that has made The Secret of Monkey Island arguably the most beloved point-and-click adventure game of all time.

> During the latter 1990s, when most computers games were still made by and for a fairly homogeneous cohort of young men, too much ludic humor tried to get by on transgression rather than wit; this was a time of in-groups punching — usually punching down — on out-groups. I’m happy to say that The Curse of Monkey Island‘s humor is nothing like that.

Well said. Game has aged beautifully.

View on HN

Is that really true, though? I can't think of any significant examples of games from the '80s or '90s that involved "in-groups punching... on out-groups", unless the out-groups in question were space aliens, nazis, fantasy monsters, hostile AIs, or the like.

Monkey Island is an absolute classic, of course, but this particular point feels almost like a retcon of present-day cultural assumptions into a specific context in the past where the objects of this criticism weren't really quite so present.

Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior would be pretty obvious examples. Someone else mentioned Leisure Suit Larry.

I'd like to mention Samantha Fox Strip Poker as well, though it's a bit more subtle than "punching".

This is true, but those games were noted at the time for being crude and offensive. There was actually quite a bit of dislike for all of the above, and they were seen at the time as the exception rather that the norm.

I can think of the occasional bad-taste joke in an adventure game, but I don't think it was ever as pervasive as is implied.

That's just some very obvious examples. It's not the only examples.

Duke Nukem is an obvious parody. And most ironically, the franchise always seen has more female fans than comparable genre games.

What do you mean? Would parody exclude the possibility of down-punching? Imitative mocking is always OK?

EG robocop showed lots of police brutality, but it wasn't a movie about how great and normal police brutality was.

You would need to be more specific than that.

I don't think fans indicate acceptability. For example, serial killers have fans.

It's not even a question of it "indicating" acceptability -- being a fan of something is "acceptance" of it.

Your argument being?

Hail to the king, baby.

We can't truly exalt our enlightened present and future without denigrating the past.

“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.”

For such a male-dominated industry creating a game for a largely male audience, it is impressive how well and positively women were portrayed in the MI games.

Elaine in particular is brave, smart, skillful, a leader, but also loving, kind. The character is not flattened to a single characteristic or narrative function. Even when she needs to be saved, when you get there, she already saved herself (in MI 1 or 2, I don’t remember).

The adventure game market wasn't quite so male-dominated, especially where Sierra was concerned, with a large number of female game designers, and multiple influential games with well-developed female protagonists 1-2 years before even the original Monkey Island came out.

Thanks, didn’t know. I knew about Roberta Williams, but I did not play the Sierra games much (that I remember, only Kings Quest 3, which was the first adventure game I ever played).

I adored this in Return to Monkey Island, as well. Elaine and Guybrush just have a … functional relationship. They love and support each other and they get along well. It's an important part of them as characters, but it's just there, and you don't have to worry, and the plot doesn't revolve around it. I found it refreshing.

actually, I found their relationship in Return to Monkey Island really weird. In that Elaine forgives basically everything that Guybrush does, even in the last act. It's (somehow) understandable wrt to the ending itself, but it certainly was out of character wrt the older titles in the series and as such I did not like it.

Is that the latest game? I played it on the Switch and it seemed like there was a reference on the island that she's cheating on him or something.

Not cheating, the reference (a tree carving IIRC) would be in the tree before the events of the first game of the series, so before guybrush would have met Elaine. It’s understandable that she would have lovers before guybrush, but the implication that one could have been the big bad LeChuck, makes guybrush fume, even if it’s just an initial.

He also notices she got rid of their picture and a few other things I thought

This is one of the things I really really liked in the original two MIs. The characters ...and especially the relation between tough Elaine and Guybrush ("you're so helpless and cute"). I think they did not get this "right" in the newest part and it's my main problem with it.

>For such a male-dominated industry creating a game for a largely male audience, it is impressive how well and positively women were portrayed in the MI games.

Wait a second, why is that surprising? As if to you, something being male dominated must usually mean women being portrayed negatively by men, and if they're not then it's a surprise.

Sorry, but your comment just reeks of sexism by assuming mens' default is to not have a positive portrayal on women.

I do think it is more about wide feedback than 'men can't portray women well'. It's easy to overcorrect or make weak characters (not only women) when you're in a monoculture and your feedback come from the same kind of people. My example is Raymond E. Feist. His characters (especially female, but not only) were really weak before he partnered with Wurts (which, in my opinion, gave birth to their best work), and in all his following books all his characters were way better than in his first works.

It's not sexist to acknowledge reality, and back in the 90s male-dominated media very much did have a tendency to portray women badly. The further back you go, the worse the problem gets.

In general, society has moved to be less and less tolerant of bigotry over time. Given that, you should expect that older media will be more bigoted than we currently tolerate.

This ignorant attitude about the past is currently shaping a trend of 2 dimensional characters in culture. All female characters must be strong and good, all males must be weak and evil. The same with racial depictions; whites are evil, blacks are good. The bigotry hasnt gone away, it's reversed, and become stronger.

> all males must be weak and evil.

Correction: Only the white males.

Those are some serious assaults without backing any of it up

I mean, go back far enough and people used to own black people and thought women weren't fit to vote. The extraordinary claim here would be that everything was resolved by the 90s

Definitely way better than a guy who was given a name based on a generic file name and type!

> too much ludic humor tried to get by on transgression rather than wit

I suppose the contemporaneous comparison there would be Leisure Suit Larry? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry

its almost as if most men are not crazily sexist pigs, that only cares about scantily clad female characters in video games. Its ALMOST as if there is much much to it than that

which groups do you see as beneath you, therefor punched down upon?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com