3 ms·

What surprises me is the number of people who seem to be agreeing with Nintendo in this case. I guess the Overton window is shifting away from a position of so

What surprises me is the number of people who seem to be agreeing with Nintendo in this case. I guess the Overton window is shifting away from a position of software freedom; which is unfortunate. :-/

ppseafield 8y ago
As other commenters have pointed out, there is actually a BASIC interpreter available from the 3DS store, so interpreters aren't forbidden. And Nintendo has never been to friendly to software use outside what they explicitly allow. I haven't seen anyone defending Nintendo's use of proprietary platform lock-in, but only that Nintendo should have been notified about it as part of publishing the game.
kbenson 8y ago
Well, there's two separate issues at play, and then how they combine. There's whether you should be able to run your own code on your own device, which I think most people here are on board with. Then there's whether you should be able to misrepresent what you've agreed to ship through someone's network when you've presumably signed contracts and made statements about that end up being untrue. I think most people would agree that Nintendo should have the ability to control what they allow in their store. Finally, there's how these interact, because you can only really run stuff on the switch that Nintendo allows in their store, which makes the issue much more complicated. Which part of the issue someone focuses on will likely inform how their comment is formed, but also how they interpret other people's comments, whether they are really focusing on the same aspect of the issue or not.
- pubutil 8y ago
  My sentiments exactly. To branch a little bit, Nintendo has been historically focused on preventing piracy. It makes sense given their consoles tend to be the easiest to hack of the big 3. If you remember what happened on the 3DS with Cubic Ninja [0], that game’s level editor allowed the console to run homebrew code. That was inevitably another vector for piracy at a time where Nintendo was already grappling with the for-profit piracy enabler that was Gateway. Based on this I can’t personally say if Nintendo is against homebrew running on their consoles or if they’re trying their hardest to prevent piracy, at the expense of homebrew. I do think that the feature included in A Dark Room would have had better chances of staying if the dev hadn’t kept it a secret through the publishing process, though. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_Ninja#3DS_homebrew_exploit https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_Ninja#3DS_homebrew_exploit
beenBoutIT 8y ago
Nintendo is the video game equivalent of Lincoln Logs. There are people who find freedom in the constraint provided by the lack of configuration possibilities offered by a pile of Lincoln Logs. LEGOs are infinitely more complicated and full of possibilities, but they're going to frustrate the hell out of a Lincoln Log enthusiast.

ppseafield 8y ago

As other commenters have pointed out, there is actually a BASIC interpreter available from the 3DS store, so interpreters aren't forbidden. And Nintendo has never been to friendly to software use outside what they explicitly allow. I haven't seen anyone defending Nintendo's use of proprietary platform lock-in, but only that Nintendo should have been notified about it as part of publishing the game.

kbenson 8y ago

Well, there's two separate issues at play, and then how they combine. There's whether you should be able to run your own code on your own device, which I think most people here are on board with. Then there's whether you should be able to misrepresent what you've agreed to ship through someone's network when you've presumably signed contracts and made statements about that end up being untrue. I think most people would agree that Nintendo should have the ability to control what they allow in their store. Finally, there's how these interact, because you can only really run stuff on the switch that Nintendo allows in their store, which makes the issue much more complicated. Which part of the issue someone focuses on will likely inform how their comment is formed, but also how they interpret other people's comments, whether they are really focusing on the same aspect of the issue or not.

pubutil 8y ago
My sentiments exactly. To branch a little bit, Nintendo has been historically focused on preventing piracy. It makes sense given their consoles tend to be the easiest to hack of the big 3. If you remember what happened on the 3DS with Cubic Ninja [0], that game’s level editor allowed the console to run homebrew code. That was inevitably another vector for piracy at a time where Nintendo was already grappling with the for-profit piracy enabler that was Gateway. Based on this I can’t personally say if Nintendo is against homebrew running on their consoles or if they’re trying their hardest to prevent piracy, at the expense of homebrew. I do think that the feature included in A Dark Room would have had better chances of staying if the dev hadn’t kept it a secret through the publishing process, though. [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_Ninja#3DS_homebrew_exploit https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_Ninja#3DS_homebrew_exploit

beenBoutIT 8y ago

Nintendo is the video game equivalent of Lincoln Logs. There are people who find freedom in the constraint provided by the lack of configuration possibilities offered by a pile of Lincoln Logs. LEGOs are infinitely more complicated and full of possibilities, but they're going to frustrate the hell out of a Lincoln Log enthusiast.