Jimquisition: Tomodachi Strife

[Elijah Newton]

"It doesn't start with gay people standing up and saying, 'I'm gay, deal with it.' That's a response mechanism, that's a response to something. We need to look at the cause and we need to fix that."

*applause* Bravo, sir. That was very nicely put and dovetailed well with how inclusion ought to be a default state. Drives me nuts when apologists whinge about how it didn't occur to them to include x/y/z and shift blame to the marginalized group by characterizing them as troublemakers looking for attention.

I'm heterosexual, but I don't mind one bit if there were gay options in relationship games or any game.

Yeah, seconded.

Slightly off topic note to Jim - the new background looks great, but your black clothing, particularly the gloves, got lost in the black wing background. Since you tend to gesticulate consider moving the background (dunno about this, and it's sized so well) or not wearing gloves. Just a thought.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

Part of the reason Tomodachi Life didn't intend have gay marriage in the first place was because Japan doesn't accept it as a whole, thank you Gaijin Goomba for pointing that out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50f8mLfTzwQ

Also, as an extra piece to point out, The Sims 4 is actually given an AO (Adult Only) rating in Russia because of the fact that it includes gay marriage:

http://gbatemp.net/threads/russia-gives-the-sims-4-an-adults-only-rating.365855/

I'd say that when it comes to content like this, people have become more intolerant rather than actually being tolerant about stuff like this.

You pointed out about how there's an issue in a state in the US about turning away customers due to the owner having a religuous belief against homosexuality. Well, that's their own fucking right. Owners should have the right to turn away whoever the hell they want. It may not cause their business to do well, but that's the point. America is supposed to be a place where people can say, do, or believe whatever they want and not get attacked for it. We can't force people to believe something because we disagree with them, all we can do is not support the company or the person. The minute we start telling people how their supposed to think, we become no better than Germany and the Nazis in WW2.

EDIT: The original reason gay marriage was patched was because it was part of a game breaking bug.

Kinda funny really. Nintendo is following their native country's culture? The world is a mono-culture and Nintendo must conform to the world at large! Russia essentially bans Sims 4 because of gay content? Meh.

 

[Deathfish15]

So how long until someone throws up the whole 'danger of inclusion' argument like what happened with Mass Effect?

"If we allow the Gay Tomadachis, then we have to allow PEDOPHILE Tomadachis as well!" or what not?

That would be if Fox News got involved. Those dipshit asshole associate anything gay with pedophilia. They're the most ignorantly broadcast "news" channel in America.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "We didn't intend any social commentary" bit of the apology directed at people saying Nintendo is homophobic?

Press: "Nintendo is against homosexuality!"
Nintendo: "We did not intend to say any such thing"

You indeed are incorrect. There were many homosexual gamers who'd found out that they and their partners could not get married in the game or have a relationship with their Mii's. This is a game advertised as "Your friends, Your drama, Your life." The fans created a petition and got the word out asking Nintendo to include same-sex marriages within the game. The part you're quoting was a response to that petition, to the fans asking for the feature. So no, this isn't a to-press statement because Nintendo was getting flack, this is a statement by Nintendo to it's [now probably significantly smaller] fanbase asking for a feature in a game and being told that their lifestyle is nothing more than "social commentary".

 

[Altaria87]

I don't really know what to think about this episode. I completely agree with every point Jim is making, and Nintendo's response to the whole thing was completely stupid and irresponsable. But there's still quite a bit of misinformation going on here. As someone's said above, the 'gay marriage being patched out' thing wasn't actually gay marriage, it was a game-breaking bug based on misreading the Mii's gender which lead to males getting pregnant. Secondly, yes, in western society it's completely abhorent to say including gay marriage would be classed as 'social commentary' where lots of nations and states accept it and it is legal. But Nintendo, and Tomodachi Life, are Japanese, gay marriage isn't legal there, and if they had included it in the base game, it would certianly count as social commentary there and probably lead to a huge loss in sales for Nintendo.

I don't see any reason to not believe Nintendo when they said recently that trying to add in same-sex relationships now would be prohibitive due to the fact the game's code if built around heterosexuality. So yes, it's wrong that they didn't include same-sex relationships in the first place, and their response to a western audience was stupid, but I don't really see why we should be surprised or be villifying Nintendo so much for not including it in the first place given its original market, and not adding it in ebcause they simply can't.

 

[Dragonbums]

I'm going to imagine this was done early on because my. fucking. God.

Goddammit Jim. You got the info of the bug wrong, you got the nature of the statement wrong, you got everything fucking wrong.

First off, the bug in question only came about due to a sex glitch within the Mii's during transfer that assigned whatever sex to whatever Mii. Due to this fact the game began to internally conflict and prevented player progression, corrupted save files, crashed the game, and in worst case scenarios actually damaged the 3DS software itself.

The gay coupling players saw in screenshots were not a result of the bug. It was a result of Japanese players dressing up their "female" characters as male character and having them romance each other.

Nature of the full bug at IGN (of all fucking places to get things right.) http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/05/nintendo-on-gay-marriage-and-tomodachi-life

Secondly this game is about a year old. It came out in early 2013. Early 2013 for a Japanese only audience. You want to know what's illegal in Japan? Gay marriage. Guess what dude, Nintendo is not a political crusader machine. Gay relationships in 2014 is only normal in first world countries like the United States and Great Britain. In many other parts of the world it fucking isn't normal and is often frowned upon, illegal, or met with a death sentence. Japan just happens to be one of those countries. So why would Nintendo- who are not- mind you- a political crusader company by any stretch of the word- implement a system in a game meant only for Japanese players that is illegal in Japan? Seriously. Ask yourself that. Why would they?
Let's also keep in mind as well that by the time Nintendo decided to port this game over to English, the game was well done and over with, the original dev team is off doing other projects, and nobody inside our outside of Japan gave a shit anymore?

Third, the message Nintendo sent to Miiquality wasn't fucking stupid. Did you not watch the video? The man was extremely realistic about the outcome of his video. He even stated that there is a high chance they wouldn't put it in this game, but they would put it in future games. And that's what Nintendo said. They specifically said that if the feedback is positive enough they will put them in future installments to Miiquality.

But that doesn't mean fucking anything. Because once again the whole world revolves around us. Did you even mention the legality of gay marriage in Japan? No. You didn't.
Japan never got a feature that we didn't. Their game doesn't have gay marriage in it and our game doesn't have gay marriage in it.
The only thing stupid here is the willingness-despite having all the evidence right in front of you telling the full story- you still decided to perpetrate the misinformation and misunderstanding that occurred throughout this fucking disaster.

To reiterate:

Nintendo did not patch out the bug because it contained gay marriage. They patched it out because it corrupted saves files, prevented player progression, caused the game to crash, and did actual harm to the 3DS system. This was a result of an error through Mii transfers from the Wii/DS systems where a random sex was designated (or absent) from the Mii's and it confused the games coding and caused it to fail.

Read the link. Read the IGN link. It explains fucking everything.

 

[JoJo]

Did Jim just admit to being Bisexual? Explains his love for Commander Shepard now doesn't it...

Yeah, he's mentioned his sexuality before in some of his written articles, usually he just makes light of it in these videos.

OT: Good video Jim, I agree entirely. I do understand Nintendo's actions given that gay marriage isn't a thing over in Japan but they should have thought more about how it might be interpreted before running off their mouths to Western audiences. In-fact, PR departments all-over gaming really need to up their standards, too often the wrong messages comes out which more established industries don't seem to make.

 

[Stefan Strelnieks]

America is supposed to be a place where people can say, do, or believe whatever they want and not get attacked for it.

You are misunderstanding what freedom means. You have the freedom to make choices that are incorrect or even unacceptable in America because of freedom of speech. However, this does not protect you from other people have the freedom to voice criticisms and concerns about what you have done or said. More and more it is becoming culturally unacceptable to discriminate against homosexuals in ways that may not have been questioned publicly 20 years ago. An 'unfortunate' part of living in a nation that allows for as much cultural growth as America is that you need to continue to grow ethically as a person as the nation does or you will be seen as a bigot.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Yeah, the bigger issue isn't that ya can't be gay in Tomodachi life (by the way I found out you can't actually "pick" to be gay, your Miis apparently just end up hooking up automatically with some other Mii.), rather it's that just saying gay people exist and including them in things is still such a taboo.

It's how we get people going around saying: "We don't have any gay people in our country."

As Jim said, including a group of people isn't "catering to them", it's just recognizing that they exist.

I don't think Nintendo did this all out of malice, but they really did pick some terrible words to say.

Did Jim just admit to being Bisexual? Explains his love for Commander Shepard now doesn't it...

Who doesn't love a Shepard or two? xD

"Not entirely straight"? Huh, I always assumed the homoerotic stuff was 100% faked for humor. Considering I do the same thing all the time, I never considered Jim was actually anything but straight. [sub]Not that it really matters.[/sub]

The more you know, I suppose

Actually Jim's mentioned this a few times, but like he said, he doesn't play it up much.
Explains why he went with the classification: "Not Straight".

Understandable that ya may have missed or forgotten that though.

It is surprising how many people still don't know Jim has a wife and step-son though. Perhaps that number has decreased after the last expo. xD

Thank God for you, Jim!

Gah I wanna have sex with Jim's big sexy brain.

You gotta stop being so right all the time, I can only be so erect.

This may help you with that "problem".
If looking at this doesn't help calm ya down, nothing will. ;p

Spoiler: Blarg!

[https://imageshack.com/i/0ntmppj]

 

[NightsOwl]

Just checked again and, yeah, unless I'm missing or misunderstanding something, this is how the whole thing went:

- Nintendo releases the game with the gay marriage thing
- The devs patch it away because it wasn't intentional
- The press starts going on about Nintendo being against homosexuality
- Nintendo responds, saying "this isn't what we were trying to say. We were just fixing a glitch"

Basically, the fault lies with whoever moron thought that patching gay relationship out of the game was necessary

It had adverse effects on the game too, actually. Like causing the game to freeze and corrupt your files when using an item and things like that. IIRC Jim didn't mention anything of it either. And apparently, there was never "gay" marriage. It was the Japanese transferring Male Characters from the original DS version of the game over to the 3DS version, which would cause Data Leaks and let you assign a male mii as a female.

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/05/nintendo-on-gay-marriage-and-tomodachi-life

Still though, as Jim said, gay coupling in games should be the default by now, and Nintendo is no exception.

Edit: I was beaten, and also they explained it a lot better. Curse people who have more time to bother typing than me.

 

[erbkaiser]

Oh yes Nintendo is horrible because as a Japanese company, it applies Japanese cultural norms to a game.

Nintendo is of course also "racist" against Muslims, since this game does not allow marriages with little children (as the Prophet with Aisha), or plural marriages (a basic islamic right).


Edit: since some people are incapable of detecting sarcasm even if I use "quotes" to make sure it is obvious: this is sarcasm.

 

[The Great JT]

Yeah, The Sims managed to have gays in the game and it not be any sort of big deal since...wow, I don't even remember, it's just kind of always been there. In essence, Nintendo, bite the damn bullet.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Nintendo has now joined the growing list of companies that need to fire their entire PR departments.

Oh yes Nintendo is horrible because as a Japanese company, it applies Japanese cultural norms to a game.

The issue is not that Gay marriage was excluded or even that it was patched out. The issue is how Nintendo responded to the backlash against it, which is dangerously close to EA levels of bad.

 

[Lamnidae]

Thanks for adressing the issue Jim ^_^ Bioware is not a perfect company but at least they have the decency to give optional gay content/storyline that feels real and memorable Fernis Romancing a male mage? EPIC!
Too bad male Shepard isn't allowed to romance Xenos

Damn, people can be so stupid.
Homsezuality can be found across lot's of species.
Homosexuality has always existed.
Homosexuality is natural birthcontrol if you ask me
We were accepted throughout history.
But then these books appeared and these zealots took their chances to fullfill their greed for power.
Then they twist and turn that what is written to their own dillusions and bred these religious zealots we have to deal with even 'till this day.
Evolution of our own species is halted because of these books people cling onto with their lives.
And throughout eons it has corrupted the minds of so many sheeple.
I'm lucky to live in the Netherlands.
But there's so many countries where they are committing atrocious holocausts on gay people.
They're being locked up, tortured and even killed for knowing love...

It's really sad to be a part of this species sometimes when you see messages of people killing other people because they love their close ones.

I don't think it MUST BE in every game...
But if it fits the game? If the game is some sim like this? Why the hell not?
Kid seem to be more grown up than adults these days

Hate and fear is not something people are born with.
Hate and fear are a dissease planted into the brains of children, mostly by parents who were once kids themselves...
It's going to take a long time to cleanse the world of these hatreds and fears...
But I think we're well on our way
Could go a little quicker though

THANK YOU JIM! FOR SPEAKING UP LIKE THIS! ^_^
THANK CHAOS, uhm GOD (is actually the same ) FOR YOU!

 

[themilo504]

Oh yes Nintendo is horrible because as a Japanese company, it applies Japanese cultural norms to a game.

Nintendo is of course also "racist" against Muslims, since this game does not allow marriages with little children (as the Prophet with Aisha), or plural marriages (a basic islamic right).

The western release could have easily included gay marriage as a feature.

 

[Something Amyss]

OMG, Jim. You just said you're not completely straight. That means you're politicising things and rubbing our faces in your sexuality!

Joking aside, I have one quibble: I don't think many of the people who are defending Nintendo would stop defending them if they said the same thing about excluding women or non-whites. I can't say whether this is bigotry or apologetics, but I suspect the former. We've seen a lot of defenses for lack of diversity in games, though.

Did Jim just admit to being Bisexual? Explains his love for Commander Shepard now doesn't it...

"Not entirely straight"? Huh, I always assumed the homoerotic stuff was 100% faked for humor. Considering I do the same thing all the time, I never considered Jim was actually anything but straight. [sub]Not that it really matters.[/sub]

The more you know, I suppose

More on topic: That game looks really horrifying. The big Mii heads rising out of the sea are going to give me nightmares.

Jim's said he's bisexual before, so it's not like he just came out or something.

And to Fappy's post specifically, I always assumed he was being over the top myself.

So how long until someone throws up the whole 'danger of inclusion' argument like what happened with Mass Effect?

"If we allow the Gay Tomadachis, then we have to allow PEDOPHILE Tomadachis as well!" or what not?

In fairness, you can have interspecies relationships in Mass Effect. OMG. The slippery slope is true! Soon people in Massachusetts will want the right to marry aliens!

It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Jar-Jar!

Nintendo has always taken the path of least resistance, if it sees someone yelling about something, it will usually try and either avoid or tone down the issue, like the blood in mortal kombat thing, they heard people bitching about the violence, they censored it, then they got yelled at louder so they let all the blood back in mortal kombat 2. They are one of those companies you have to yell at to get them to do anything.

If that was true, they wouldn't try so hard to lock down their content. That's not path of least resistance. It's Nintendo's obstinance that tends to get it in the most trouble.

Part of the reason Tomodachi Life didn't intend have gay marriage in the first place was because Japan doesn't accept it as a whole, thank you Gaijin Goomba for pointing that out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50f8mLfTzwQ

Polls are showing that about half the country supports some sort of same-sex partnership. This argument has no legs and it's sort of surprising that GaijinGoomba, a guy who's usually quick to defend Japan, would make such assertions.

Also, as an extra piece to point out, The Sims 4 is actually given an AO (Adult Only) rating in Russia because of the fact that it includes gay marriage:

This is rather a new thing, though, as Sims 3 did not.

The minute we start telling people how their supposed to think, we become no better than Germany and the Nazis in WW2.

Unless we're gassing bigots, I think we can safely say your Godwin is inapt. However, we're not telling people what to think, either. Laws of commerce are not laws regarding thought. Can we tone it down a notch? Especially when the people who proposed the law you're defending are now crying foul at businesses that put up "we don't discriminate" signs as bullying them? Are they also "no better than the Nazis" for trying to "tell people how they're supposed to think?"

Or can we maybe just declare that comparing this to the Nazis is incredibly inappropriate and kind of undersells the actual attrocities of WW2.

 

[shrekfan246]

Honestly, I'd be willing to bet that the whole "social commentary" excuse comment was just really poor wording on their part, and not Nintendo stating that it's impossible for them to implement homosexual relationships as anything other than a political statement. From what I've heard (of course I could be wrong, I haven't been following the whole kerfuffle too closely), the reason it was "excluded" was because the bug allowed for reproduction regardless of the gender of the two people, which is just biologically impossible, and it's not like they had time to add completely new mechanics like adoption or surrogates.

It doesn't really excuse the "out-of-touch" aspect and it's still a pretty bad excuse anyway to be sure, but I feel the old adage of "don't attribute to malice what could just as easily be explained by stupidity" still applies. For better or for worse. *shrug*

 

[themilo504]

I?m disappointed in you Nintendo, I hope that the game at least includes a asexual option, no idea why since I have no plans to buy the game.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

The gist of what I removed from Dragonbums post: Jim got the details of the bug wrong and some other stuff. Link below.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.849789.20988250


Nature of the full bug at IGN (of all fucking places to get things right.) http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/05/nintendo-on-gay-marriage-and-tomodachi-life

The gay coupling players saw in screenshots were not a result of the bug. It was a result of Japanese players dressing up their "female" characters as male character and having them romance each other.

Wait.
Did they have the female Miis romance each other, or did they have the female Miis dressed as guys romance male Miis?

Anyway.

Yeah, I heard about that too. Glad Jim made the rest of it more about what Nintendo said to calm people and about how it's still so "risky" to just include gay people in games.

Still a shame about the misinformation, though I think you may be letting it get to you a bit too much.

 

[Dragonbums]

The gist of what I removed from Dragonbums post: Jim got the details of the bug wrong and some other stuff. Link below.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.849789.20988250


Nature of the full bug at IGN (of all fucking places to get things right.) http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/05/nintendo-on-gay-marriage-and-tomodachi-life

The gay coupling players saw in screenshots were not a result of the bug. It was a result of Japanese players dressing up their "female" characters as male character and having them romance each other.

Wait.
Did they have the female Miis romance each other, or did they have the female Miis dressed as guys romance male Miis?

Anyway.

Yeah, I heard about that too. Glad Jim made the rest of it more about what Nintendo said to calm people and about how it's still so "risky" to just include gay people in games.

Still a shame about the misinformation, though I think you may be letting it get to you a bit too much.

They had female Mii's look and sound like Male Mii's and had them marry each other that way (I also think they were able to eliminate the default dresses as well to make it a lot more real)

I know it's getting to me, but man, look at the most commented section of this site. Most of them are directly related to the misinformation spreading of this entire issue. With people calling Nintendo bigots. I'm getting tired of it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Nintendo is of course also "racist" against Muslims, since this game does not allow marriages with little children (as the Prophet with Aisha), or plural marriages (a basic islamic right).

When did Muslims become a race, and when did a religion supersede things like laws? Were the latter that simple, one could simply get a same-sex marriage in Japan by converting to a branch of Christianity that accepts same-sex marriages. It doesn't work that way.

Of course, serious question. Assuming we accept your statements that Islam allows these things (though you'd get an argument from many Muslims against them), would you be as quick to defend a game made by Muslims that graphically depicted pedophilia because it's "their" cultural norm?

Would people really be as cool with Nintendo's stance if it was defending the option to include pedophilia?

And would that be sold in the US? OR would they do what they frequently do and "localise" it.