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I must have been two years old when I met Janne.
Mom told me there was a boy of my age next door.
I remember we met in our front yard and our parents had arranged it.
Janne walked through the berry bushes in our garden.
Soon, Janne had a "Nindendo".
REPLAYED: 8-BIT MEMORIES
I invited Janne over to play some Nintendo.
I've asked my folks why they got me a Nintendo.
One reason was that it improves your mathematical thinking.
That's why they agreed to buy me a Nintendo.
So they'd read in, like, a newspaper: "video games develop your kid's brain"?
Yeah, I guess it was in the news or something...
But do you remember the first time we played together?
I'd bet it was pretty soon after I got this. After all, we've been friends since, like, five.
No, younger. We were two years old!
Get out of here!
The title of this game...
Doesn't refer to the main character. Zelda is the princess.
It was pretty tragic, like... as a kid, to realize that Zelda was a woman.
I've often tried to get my girlfriend into gaming. With no luck.
Still I keep trying, because I want to make her understand.
I want to share the world of gaming with her.
There were no girls around, before.
Girls wouldn't play with us, so there was no female view on games.
We formed our concept of women based on schoolgirls with runny noses and what you saw in comics or video games.
As a kid, it was like...
It felt a little silly if the hero was a woman.
You didn't, like, want to accept that a woman was, like... a strong personality in the game.
I guess as a child, it's important to have clear role models.
Yeah, simple, like, this is a boy and that is a girl.
If a game wasn't that simple, it would bug us.
We've been taught that women are loose--
I mean weak!
Kim tends to see people as members of their sex.
That is something we've been arguing about and probably will do so in the future.
I see people as individual personalities --
whereas Kim often explains people's behavior through their sex.
That's something that... doesn't directly come from games --
but I think it has to do with nerd culture.
I believe nerd culture often views women as these strange, other beings --
that you don't have much contact with, and they are these mysterious, aetheric beings out there.
I think Kim's thoughts and behavior clearly reflect that.
But what if it was, like...
We were afraid of becoming the woman.
We would become girlish, somehow.
Would you play a game -- like a good game --
like Mario 3, but you could only play as a girl?
Yeah, I dunno... I guess I'd get used to the concept.
Might have had a higher threshold.
Maybe we were scared of, like... if a girl kicks our butt.
Maybe the male perspective has led to violent videogames.
In 1961, Spacewar was released. In it, two spaceships would trie to destroy each other.
Ever since, the game industry has been dominated by the concept of blowing things up.
Then we're nothing.
You beat up a truckload of people in this game.
You beat up bad guys. There's a justification for the violence.
You stab people with knives!
Yeah, well...
Janne is not a violent person by nature.
If he gets excited --
he might say things like: "I'll conquer the world, kill and beat everyone!"
Things like that... I think that's coming from the games --
But it's all jokes, obviously.
I don't really like sadistic violence. Some movies have sadistic violence, I hate those.
Janne is never violent.
Do you ever get the feeling, if you get mad at a game --
that you want to, like, smash that guy's skull or something?
Yes.
Why can't games concentrate more on creating or preserving things?
I think games should move in that direction. You would do something constructive.
It doesn't all have to be about killing.
There are building games, of course.
Yeah, you have games where you build cities or entire worlds.
Still, it's such a small amount. Probably 90% of games are about violence.
And the building games are really restrictive. Usually you just build a city or something.
It's a bit engineery.
I remember, a few years back, we were sitting on the couch at Janne's place.
We were playing Nintendo games.
Janne's sister had come over with her baby.
She laughed at us: "you're playing video games just like 15 years ago!"
"You should be out hitting on girls", or something.
I thought, that's probably where we'll be, 15 years from now.
Sitting on the couch, playing video games.