Jimquisition: Tomodachi Strife

[thebakedpotato]

This week saw the first draft of an openly gay NFL player.

It makes me sad to call myself a gamer this week. The folks who beat me up in school are now more progressive than gamers are.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I think the point of the LGBT community being excluded from games still pretty much stands. Outside of Sims, and Bioware, and bethesda it's pretty hard and/or rare to find positively portrayed gay people.

Also, japan has -YAOI-, for cripes sake. Man on man love isn't exactly unknown to them. Heck, it's marketable in Japan.

Girl on Girl love isn't exactly unknown to them either.

Marriage? Don't really care. It's a fantasy game that needs not conform to the laws of any damn where. Make a frikking toggle to turn on, or off the LGBT theme, or something.

My level of giving a damn over excuses is dwindling. It's pretty easy for the majority to tell the minority to "get over it" and pull up excuses, but that doesn't fix anything! It makes no one feel better save the person making the excuses. It's absurd to the nth degree to expect people to swallow excuses about their exclusion, and be happy about it forever. Frankly trying to shove the LGBT community back into the closet is a pretty asshole move no matter how you slice it as far as I'm concerned. It's still oppression. Yes, Oppression. You're denying people the right to be themselves which is maddening in a game where you're supposed to play as you. Sure, it's "just a game" and thus trivial to you, the person who's likely pretty well represented across the board, but it's a matter of becoming culturally accepted to the minority. A matter of making progress towards being accepted. Which makes games like Mass Effect progressive because it furthers that progress. Right?

Are the LGBT as a whole hurting people? No? Then let them be. So long as they're not hurting other people, let them be, and more importantly, let them be represented. It's absurd to expect the people wanting representation to shut up about being represented when they aren't.

Here's a quote I've taken a shine to:
?You guys know about vampires? ? You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There?s this idea that monsters don?t have reflections in a mirror. And what I?ve always thought isn?t that monsters don?t have reflections in a mirror. It?s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn?t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ?Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don?t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.?


― Junot Díaz

I don't know the exact context of why he made that quote, but it's pretty applicable, IMO.

And for the hell of it:
<youtube=XdmJXHJLZ6M>

Play devil's advocate all you want. One of the few, if only upsides means it gets talked about.

The LGBT community aren't a species of monster, or evil, they're -people- as varied as any other group of people. Human beings like everyone else. Mistreating them means mistreating -people-. Period. Full stop.
Denying they exist, keeping them out of media, these things prevent people from changing their minds about them because of a lack of exposure, and ignorance. It makes it pretty easy for society to call them monsters, and the impressionable to only hear that side of the story. It certainly doesn't say "It's okay to be this way" to the people that might be that way, and end up pretty messed up because society hates them since no one's saying it's wrong to hate them.

Also, Nintendo has Senran Kagura Burst on 3ds for fnog's sake, and seems to be picking up a sequel! Katsuragi is an outright lesbian/bi (Never seen her attracted to guys, but she sure does love groping girls, and even used the term "motorboating") character, and the visual styling of the game is not exactly wholesome. Sure, Nintendo didn't make the game, nor did they make Mad World, or bayonetta 2 (Not that the latter 2 deal with LGBT themes AFAIK), but they're still in game libraries of nintendo systems.

I'm not saying that LGBT themes have to be in every game, mind you, still it'd be nice if people didn't pretend we don't exist, or keep screeching that we're "minorities" as if that makes us deserving of being treated as monsters to be kept in the dark corners, and/or attacked on sight.
It'd be nice if LGBT themes were somewhat more common, too. No, not 50/50, but some positive portrayal more often would be nice.

P.S. Oh, yeah, Nintendo also has Sims games in their libraries. Heck, I was going to step over Sims 3 pets to get Tomodachi Life as it felt a little redundant to have 2 similar games like that, but now I'm starting to reconsider.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Snip

But the team was already adding development features :/ They already did what you said they never do.

http://nintendoeverything.com/bill-trinen-talks-more-about-tomodachi-lifes-localization-changes/

They are changing mini games to entirely new ones. They are developing the game for a western audience. Your post makes so sense when this is the case.

Changing a bunch of mii's singing to a bunch of mii's doing a rap battle is changing a bunch of text boxes.

Also changing two people dressed up in sumo outfits running into each other and pushing to two people in football outfits running into each other and pushing is just changing avatar outfits. ((also we know what sumo is out in the west nintendo ;p))

They aren't changing the hard code or core mechanics of the game, which what would be needed.

This doesn't make any sense. Like, at all. Unless the programmers behind tomodatchi life are idiots, allowing gay marriage shouldn't require more code changes than a couple of lines here and there. Which is about as much as those other changes would require. I mean, it should just require a change to some if statements. That really should be it.

Thank you non-programmer for sharing your knowledge on this programming related matter.

All of my lol. Just... All of it. Tell me, how many years of Java experience do you have? When did you last work with C++ or Ruby? What are your thoughts on throwing exceptions versus returning nulls for errors?

No, it's not as simple as 'changing a couple of text boxes'. The game was randomly assigning genders to the characters, it just so happened that sometimes you could make two males marry due to the nature of the random gender assignment.

To make this game recognize gay marriage, you would have had to change the data structure which the game interprets in order to correctly have it identify any gender as marriageable. THEN you would have to literally re-write in the game's logic what it means to get married. To the game, who only deals in absolutes, marriage is only for two clumps of data structures that have opposite gender tags. The game is merely instructions that has no common sense to interpret it any other way.

Also, oh no, rewriting logic! Changing data structures! How horrifying! Sorry, but if you are trying to make this sound scary... You are doing a real shit job. This might work on someone who isn't programmer, but it is doing nothing but giving me some laughs.

This isn't to mention the other problem: because the game was randomly assigning gender tags, this was resulting in crashes and hardware instability. Because a male having a female tag is unexpected behavior to the system and it doesn't know how to recover from this.

Right... And where did I say the solution was to randomly assign gender tags, exactly?

So no, it's not just "changing a couple of text boxes". We're talking an entire round of development just to change this one feature. Localization teams, once again, don't add features to games or to the original design document.

You are far over-selling what would likely need to be done. More complex changes have been implemented in patches.

EDIT:

Yes, I have. I have written quite a few programs in my day. If the programmers behind it weren't terrible, changing something like this should create few to no problems. Yes, changing a few lines can create unintended consequences... But that is why good programmers use techniques like MVC and OO, among others. To separate out functionality and logic so as to avoid most of that shit. If changing something so trivial completely breaks the game, there is likely something very wrong with the code.

And no, you can't say "BUT IN MY DAY CHANGING SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD CAUSE NO PROBLEMS AT ALL!" And still retain any credibility that you're a credible programmer. And then pretend that you know what MVC and OO has to do with this discussion. Or are you seriously trying to say that this game, likely written in C++, doesn't use OBJECTS?

Like, the professional game company, that writes dozens of games and millions of lines of code, doesn't know about the glories of object-oriented programming in the age of visual debuggers and the internet? That is really all I'm reading from your post: You somehow think that using 'OO' would have fixed a problem that is likely being caused by objects not being interpreted correctly in the first place. Then you turn around and say "I'm a credible programmer, honest!".

The question isn't whether or not it uses objects. It is whether it actually uses them well and the code isn't incredibly brittle.

Also "Something so trivial shouldn't break the code if you do it right" is only something someone would say if they haven't ever had to pull their hair out trying to understand why a program refuses to compile.

That is taking my words completely out of context. A change this trivial to code that is already working really shouldn't cause it to explode. Their code shouldn't be this fucking brittle.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

so, is Jim bisexual? ultimately, it doesn't matter, but i am curious. which is an odd duality... i'd never judge anyone's sexual preferences, but i'm always curious about it.

 

[Sticky]

All of my lol. Just... All of it. Tell me, how many years of Java experience do you have? When did you last work with C++ or Ruby? What are your thoughts on throwing exceptions versus returning nulls for errors?

Neither of these things have anything to do with the discussion at hand but I do applaud you trying to smoke-screen your argument with some jargon you probably found on google in hopes that people find you educated. If you had left your post off here instead of continuing to reply to me, you may actually have fooled someone into thinking that you're a professional.

I will give you some credit: you managed to mangle this quote tree up something fierce

Also, oh no, rewriting logic! Changing data structures! How horrifying! Sorry, but if you are trying to make this sound scary... You are doing a real shit job. This might work on someone who isn't programmer, but it is doing nothing but giving me some laughs.

Congratulations, this one line of text, from you, that you wrote, proves with 100% certainty that you've never had to program in a professional environment of any kind.

Rewriting logic and changing data structures requires QA, do you know what QA stands for? It stands for Quality Assurance. See, those data structures and that logic isn't used in just the marriage part of the code. That is used for
-Making your character
-Finding OTHER characters
-Really doing ANYTHING with your character or other characters

Which are now all things that need to be re-tested. Like the entire game would need to go through QA again to ensure it doesn't become unstable and crash now that the logic and data structures have changed.

You can "laugh it up" all you want, but anyone who has had to deal with a project that is being worked on by multiple people is getting their laughs at the person who is conceited enough to believe that you can change a few lines of code and it should be easy, nothing could ever go wrong thanks to that.

Thank you for also ignoring the link, which explains in more detail WHY you are wrong. But you can continue to yuck it up while I merely facepalm at your continued stubbornness.

This isn't to mention the other problem: because the game was randomly
Right... And where did I say the solution was to randomly assign gender tags, exactly?

You have either intentionally mis-read my post or are trying to frame it that way. Or perhaps you don't entirely know what a data structure does.

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

That one

Right there

The system was experiencing instability because the transfer, from the DS to the 3DS, was resulting in the gender tag being randomly assigned. Which resulted in data corruption and system crashes. This is how the bug started in the first place.

You are far over-selling what would likely need to be done. More complex changes have been implemented in patches.

PATCHES are handled by the original developer. It is their job, no one else's, to keep the game stable.

The localization team has no such responsibility and I once again find it incredulous that you continue to think that they do.

Also PATCHES, of all kind, are QA and bug tested. Which is where my entire argument is stemming from: this patched-in feature would require another round of development in order to implement. You can check that link and see why this is such a problem if you wish.

The question isn't whether or not it uses objects. It is whether it actually uses them well and the code isn't incredibly brittle.

That is taking my words completely out of context. A change this trivial to code that is already working really shouldn't cause it to explode. Their code shouldn't be this fucking brittle.

Okay, I have to know, what does "brittle code" mean in your definition? There's cluttered code, which means it's difficult to read. Spaghetti code, which is difficult to understand code that has nebulous control structures.

But "brittle code"? Is it made of peanut brittle? As far as any competent programmer is concerned, when you put in things that simply aren't truthful or are not what the system was expecting into the system, you get unexpected system behavior 100% of the time.

You CAN'T have 'brittle code' because any code that behaves unexpectedly is by definition unstable code. Any object you pass that isn't the exactly object the machine was expecting is OF COURSE going to make unstable code and I find it ridiculous for you to believe that you can make code that doesn't behave this way.

Are you actually a wizard that uses magic programming that can handle unexpected objects and undefined data structures? Because if so, I'll gladly take your class on magic programming.

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

 

[xaszatm]

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

Actually, in this case, he/she might not be that far off the mark. Brittle Software might explain why the transfer of miis from the DS Tomadachi game caused so many glitches to begin with. Granted, I still disagree with him on everything else but I think it that case, he may have accidentally stumbled onto a point.

 

[BreakfastMan]

All of my lol. Just... All of it. Tell me, how many years of Java experience do you have? When did you last work with C++ or Ruby? What are your thoughts on throwing exceptions versus returning nulls for errors?

Neither of these things have anything to do with the discussion at hand but I do applaud you trying to smoke-screen your argument with some jargon you probably found on google in hopes that people find you educated. If you had left your post off here instead of continuing to reply to me, you may actually have fooled someone into thinking that you're a professional.

I will give you some credit: you managed to mangle this quote tree up something fierce

God damn, you are just so precious. Just, I am yucking it up over here.

Also, oh no, rewriting logic! Changing data structures! How horrifying! Sorry, but if you are trying to make this sound scary... You are doing a real shit job. This might work on someone who isn't programmer, but it is doing nothing but giving me some laughs.

Congratulations, this one line of text, from you, that you wrote, proves with 100% certainty that you've never had to program in a professional environment of any kind.

Rewriting logic and changing data structures requires QA, do you know what QA stands for? It stands for Quality Assurance. See, those data structures and that logic isn't used in just the marriage part of the code. That is used for
-Making your character
-Finding OTHER characters
-Really doing ANYTHING with your character or other characters

Which are now all things that need to be re-tested. Like the entire game would need to go through QA again to ensure it doesn't become unstable and crash now that the logic and data structures have changed.

So... Automated testing is not a thing for game dev studios, then?

This isn't to mention the other problem: because the game was randomly
Right... And where did I say the solution was to randomly assign gender tags, exactly?

You have either intentionally mis-read my post or are trying to frame it that way. Or perhaps you don't entirely know what a data structure does.

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

That one

Right there

The system was experiencing instability because the transfer, from the DS to the 3DS, was resulting in the gender tag being randomly assigned. Which resulted in data corruption and system crashes. This is how the bug started in the first place.

And where did I say that I thought re-implementing the bug was a good idea? And what exactly am I supposed to get from the link? It goes into no specifics about how marriage is handled in the code itself. It just gives a vague overview of the bug that causes save data corruption.

The question isn't whether or not it uses objects. It is whether it actually uses them well and the code isn't incredibly brittle.

That is taking my words completely out of context. A change this trivial to code that is already working really shouldn't cause it to explode. Their code shouldn't be this fucking brittle.

Okay, I have to know, what does "brittle code" mean? There's cluttered code, which means it's difficult to read. Spaghetti code, which is difficult to understand code that has nebulous control structures.

But "brittle code"? Is it made of peanut brittle? As far as any competent programmer is concerned, when you put in things that simply aren't truthful or are not what the system was expecting into the system, you get unexpected system behavior 100% of the time.

You CAN'T have 'brittle code' because any code that behaves unexpectedly is by definition unstable code. Any object you pass that isn't the exactly object the machine was expecting is OF COURSE going to make unstable code and I find it ridiculous for you to believe that you can make code that doesn't behave this way.

Are you actually a wizard that uses magic programming that can handle unexpected objects and undefined data structures? Because if so, I'll gladly take your class on magic programming.

"Brittle code" is code that is far too interconnected and interdependent. Where you change one thing and it affects the functionality something in some other, completely unrelated spot.

EDIT: Or that other thing you found. Whatever, I don't really care. My point about code being far too interdependent still stands.

 

[wolfyrik]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior

Debunked countless times. Homosexuality in nature is a flat out contradiction to Darwin's theory of evolution.

http://www.narth.org/docs/animalmyth.html

This article is by an apologist,it is not a scientific document, it's propaganda, nothing more. Your claim that it has "academic insight" means nothing. The fact is it is NOT academic, it is not supported by any evidence and doesn't prove anything. "insight" is not evidence. Sure the article LOOKS like it could be, but only because it has references. When you actually identify the source for those references, guess what you find? More opinions and propaganda. Neither of which is evidence.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13674-evolution-myths-natural-selection-cannot-explain-homosexuality.html#.U3G1fShur4I

This article supports the claim that homosexuality occurs in nature, it's an article busting the myth that "Natural selection cannot explain homosexuality"

It completely contradicts your claim. All you've done here is misread the article title and post it, assuming it supports your claim and challenges the previous poster. When challenged, you claimed that this article referes to "debunked" claims, and yet you have not provided any evidence for that. In fact, you posted this article as proof of that very claim. If you can please link your evidence that homosexuality does not occur in nature now, that would be swell. I've searched for these "debunkings" but have found nothing. I found plenty of articles to support the claim that homosexuality does occur in nature though.
For example, this one paper which describes how homosexuality occurs in humans through epigenetics: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668167?__redirected

ie homosexuality is epigenetically inherited, it is a natural trait. What's more, this article links to apaper describing the purpose homosexuality serves in nature. ie adoption in social species, leading to increased survival off the group, through the protection and rearing of orphaned or abandoned offspring:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100709/full/news.2010.344.html

As for your article, again, my two articles show exactly why the theory is unsound. You've met fact with question, doing nothing to strengthen your argument. There are still gay people out there because they're mentally ill. Quite simple.

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/facts_mental_health.html In fact, homosexuality is NOT a mental illness.

 

[Sticky]

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

Actually, in this case, he/she might not be that far off the mark. Brittle Software might explain why the transfer of miis from the DS Tomadachi game caused so many glitches to begin with. Granted, I still disagree with him on everything else but I think it that case, he may have accidentally stumbled onto a point.

Brittle Software is used to refer to code bases that are reused in order to save time and money and eventually fails because of an evolving development cycle. As far as we know, the codebase for this game was not re-used in the making of it as there is no prequel or previous installment to take from.

So even if he meant this, it was clear it was unintentional.

How do I know this? Because he just admitted it

EDIT: Or that other thing you found. Whatever, I don't really care. My point about code being far too interdependent still stands.

Yeah, whatever, he doesn't really care about his argument it seems, he'll just argue to the grave with me about it anyway.

Onto the main show:

God damn, you are just so precious. Just, I am yucking it up over here.

Yeah I know right? That part where you slipped up and proved that you don't know what it takes to develop any kind of software was just the best!

So... Automated testing is not a thing for game dev studios, then?

For new features it's not. Automated testing is used for wide arrays of unexpected data. Here there is only one piece of expected data that is used over and over again.

And where did I say that I thought re-implementing the bug was a good idea? And what exactly am I supposed to get from the link? It goes into no specifics about how marriage is handled in the code itself. It just gives a vague overview of the bug that causes save data corruption.

Okay, if you want to rule-lawyer, no you didn't say that implementing the bug again was a good idea. You merely implied that another team should have enabled gay-marriage in the game and this somehow would take no testing or development time.

"Brittle code" is code that is far too interconnected and interdependent. Where you change one thing and it affects the functionality something in some other, completely unrelated spot.

That is not the correct term you are looking for then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_code

You actually want this.

 

[xaszatm]

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

Actually, in this case, he/she might not be that far off the mark. Brittle Software might explain why the transfer of miis from the DS Tomadachi game caused so many glitches to begin with. Granted, I still disagree with him on everything else but I think it that case, he may have accidentally stumbled onto a point.

No, he hasn't. You see Brittle Software is used to refer to code bases that are reused in order to save time and money. As far as we know, the codebase for this game was not re-used in the making of it as there is no prequel or previous installment to take from. Unless it was lifted from an unrelated title, then no, he is wrong. This is not an example of brittle code. At all.

How do I know this? Because he just admitted it

Er...Tomadachi Life is a sequel to Tomadachi Collection. Tomadachi Collection was the first iteration of the series made for the Nintendo DS in 2009. The glitch involved transfering the characters from that game into Tomadachi Collection. I mean, you probably are right for other reasons, but there was older data for this game.

 

[Monsterfurby]

"...were in the game until Nintendo edited them out."

The same way wallhacks were in Half Life until Valve edited them out?

I think Jim, you misunderstood the situation. It was a bug in the game to begin with and not part of the Design. Now Nintendo has said that they will include same-sex relationships in future installments of the series as a proper feature. So where's the issue here?

 

[IceForce]

your right in that homosexuality stretches back over a millennia, but this says nothing about it being 'normal' or 'natural'. Pedophilia also existed at taht time. Is that normal and natural too?

Comparing homosexuality with pedophilia?

Just when I thought this disgraceful excuse for a thread couldn't get any worse.

There are still gay people out there because they're mentally ill.

What the fuck is this bullshit??

 

[Sticky]

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

Actually, in this case, he/she might not be that far off the mark. Brittle Software might explain why the transfer of miis from the DS Tomadachi game caused so many glitches to begin with. Granted, I still disagree with him on everything else but I think it that case, he may have accidentally stumbled onto a point.

No, he hasn't. You see Brittle Software is used to refer to code bases that are reused in order to save time and money. As far as we know, the codebase for this game was not re-used in the making of it as there is no prequel or previous installment to take from. Unless it was lifted from an unrelated title, then no, he is wrong. This is not an example of brittle code. At all.

How do I know this? Because he just admitted it

Er...Tomadachi Life is a sequel to Tomadachi Collection. Tomadachi Collection was the first iteration of the series made for the Nintendo DS in 2009. The glitch involved transfering the characters from that game into Tomadachi Collection. I mean, you probably are right for other reasons, but there was older data for this game.

..Well I didn't actually know this. I knew about Tomadachi but forgot that it was part of a related series.

Wait were the other games even released here? I don't actually remember.

Anyway it's all the more reason that if the marriage logic was changed, it would require strenuous bug testing and QA.

And actually that would give all the more reason why the localization team COULDN'T change the code: they weren't the original makers of it in the first place and in the professional world; changing code others made without passing those changes 'upstream' is a big no no that could cost someone their job.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomodachi_Collection

It WASN'T released here.

NOW this is making even less sense from Nintendo's standpoint, why even release TD: Life here if the original game wasn't even ported? Was demand for a Mii micromanagement game really that massive here in the west?

This actually paints a very obvious picture as to why they didn't include gay marriage in the first place: I doubt anyone, developer or CEO, ever expected TD: Life to make it's way outside of Japan.

I'm wondering if they localized it solely with the intent on breaking up the summertime game drought most platforms seem to have.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Yeah, whatever, he doesn't really care. Because his argument is just that: a bunch of guesswork using whatever terms sound correct to him using whatever meager programming knowledge he can try to make us believe he has.

I don't need to make you believe anything, bub. Like, I really don't care what you think of me. I just like to argue on the internet for fun, especially about things I am knowledgeable about. Whether you believe I am actually knowledgeable or not does not concern me. I just find it hilarious how pissed you are getting about this and how you feel the need to continue to insist the guy who thinks differently from you clearly doesn't know anything about anything.

Though I will admit the "everyone who disagrees with me is INCOMPETENT" bit is getting tiresome, so I will probably just not reply here soon. I can only get poorly insulted so many times before I get bored. XD

God damn, you are just so precious. Just, I am yucking it up over here.

Yeah I know right? That part where you slipped up and proved that you don't know what it takes to develop any kind of software was just the best!

Right... Where did do that, exactly? When I messed up one term? Seems a pretty shitty way of evaluating this type of thing to me.

So... Automated testing is not a thing for game dev studios, then?

For new features it's not. Automated testing is used for wide arrays of unexpected data. Here there is only one piece of expected data that is used over and over again.

Right, so software devs don't have tests in place to ensure what is currently working is still working before they push their changes out... (hint, they do actually. Or some do, at least)

And you obviously don't use automated testing on new features before you push them, to ensure you aren't pushing something broken. That would just be silly, right? I mean, who uses test driven development, amirite?

And where did I say that I thought re-implementing the bug was a good idea? And what exactly am I supposed to get from the link? It goes into no specifics about how marriage is handled in the code itself. It just gives a vague overview of the bug that causes save data corruption.

Okay, if you want to rule-lawyer, no you didn't say that implementing the bug again was a good idea. You merely implied that another team should have enabled gay-marriage in the game and this somehow would take no testing or development time.

Where did I imply this again? I said it would likely be a simple fix. Like the changes made for localization.

 

[Sticky]

I don't need to make you believe anything, bub. Like, I really don't care what you think of me. I just like to argue on the internet for fun, especially about things I am knowledgeable about. Whether you believe I am actually knowledgeable or not does not concern me. I just find it hilarious how pissed you are getting about this and how you feel the need to continue to insist the guy who thinks differently from you clearly doesn't know anything about anything.

This isn't about hating people who disagree with me, this is about the basic tenants of the software development process. Which, to me, are static and cannot be argued with except in extremely formal environments (which this is not one).

So when you come along and say "I am a skilled programmer!" and then insist that these basic rules, such as bugtest and QA every added feature, can be argued or changed and it should be 'simple' merely because of conceptions you have on how complex professional code is (you must really not think very highly of professional programmers if their jobs are just 'change a few lines, it'll be easy!').

So yeah, of course I'm going to say that you don't know what you are talking about when you keep insisting something that is completely infeasible in real life based on conceptions that I don't even know where you got them from.

Also the "Jokes on you I was only pretending to be ignorant in order to ruse and anger you!" game is for children if that is what you're playing at.

Right... Where did do that, exactly? When I messed up one term? Seems a pretty shitty way of evaluating this type of thing to me.

You keep messing a lot of things up, like how new features are added, or how easy it would be to change 'just one line' in code.

'just one line' can make or break a programming project, no matter how well it is written, there is no foolproof way to ensure code is functional without testing and implementation. Which is why when you say 'just change what it means to get married', I cringe. I do hope you're aware that getting married in that game isn't as easy in the code as a switch statement, right?

Right, so software devs don't have tests in place to ensure what is currently working is still working before they push their changes out... (hint, they do actually. Or some do, at least)

And you obviously don't use automated testing on new features before you push them, to ensure you aren't pushing something broken. That would just be silly, right? I mean, who uses test driven development, amirite?

Yes, it's called QA

I've covered this before. To implement these changes, they need another round of QA. And then they need bugtesting.

In short: you're asking them to go back into another round of software development for the mere sake of adding this one feature in. Software development is expensive, starting a new project is expensive, editing an existing project in which no programmers who worked on the original code are present and changes in the code are tested in-house by the programmers (who are the worst ones to test their own code) is not only expensive, but stupid, and risky for their careers.

A competent programmer isn't going to risk his career, period.

Where did I imply this again? I said it would likely be a simple fix. Like the changes made for localization.

And the whole crux of my argument, which is you are so wrong that you don't even realize that you are being wrong right now. That is how wrong you are.

And not only are you being that wrong, you are being that wrong while simultaneously implying that professional developers and coders must be less competent than you because, in your head, you could fix this yourself because to you, it's a simple process.

Which is a viewpoint that I can only imagine stems from complete lack of familiarity with the accepted design process of software.

EDIT: Also sorry about my quote tree being a mess, my internet is seriously dying on me and I cannot edit or stay to reply any longer. If you still care tomorrow or so, we can continue then.

 

[xaszatm]

EDIT:

Okay, I did some searching to try and understand what the hell you were talking about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_brittleness

You mean THIS?

software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way

This doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand. This is about old software that receives periodic updates until it's not stable anymore. This does. not. apply. to. this. game. Are you trying to redefine what 'brittle software' actually means?

It's not even something you can 'create', it's a result of old code being patched until it cannot function in a modern setting anymore. As far as you or I know, this doesn't apply to this game.

Actually, in this case, he/she might not be that far off the mark. Brittle Software might explain why the transfer of miis from the DS Tomadachi game caused so many glitches to begin with. Granted, I still disagree with him on everything else but I think it that case, he may have accidentally stumbled onto a point.

No, he hasn't. You see Brittle Software is used to refer to code bases that are reused in order to save time and money. As far as we know, the codebase for this game was not re-used in the making of it as there is no prequel or previous installment to take from. Unless it was lifted from an unrelated title, then no, he is wrong. This is not an example of brittle code. At all.

How do I know this? Because he just admitted it

Er...Tomadachi Life is a sequel to Tomadachi Collection. Tomadachi Collection was the first iteration of the series made for the Nintendo DS in 2009. The glitch involved transfering the characters from that game into Tomadachi Collection. I mean, you probably are right for other reasons, but there was older data for this game.

..Well I didn't actually know this. I knew about Tomadachi but forgot that it was part of a related series.

Wait were the other games even released here? I don't actually remember.

Anyway it's all the more reason that if the marriage logic was changed, it would require strenuous bug testing and QA.

And actually that would give all the more reason why the localization team COULDN'T change the code: they weren't the original makers of it in the first place and in the professional world; changing code others made without passing those changes 'upstream' is a big no no that could cost someone their job.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomodachi_Collection

It WASN'T released here.

NOW this is making even less sense from Nintendo's standpoint, why even release TD: Life here if the original game wasn't even ported? Was demand for a Mii micromanagement game really that massive here in the west?

This actually paints a very obvious picture as to why they didn't include gay marriage in the first place: I doubt anyone, developer or CEO, ever expected TD: Life to make it's way outside of Japan.

I'm wondering if they localized it solely with the intent on breaking up the summertime game drought most platforms seem to have.

Yeah, its localization was a surprise to all of us. As far as I can tell, Treehouse wasn't handed this project until January of this year on top of all the other stuff they were localizing. So you can factor time in this mess as well. The localization of this game seems to come from Nintendo's panic mode over its financial status. At this point, they want sales, so they're literally throwing everything they've got and attempting to take advantage of the 57 million people who have bought a 3DS. Iwata even called this a harvest and is hoping to make Tomadachi Life the next Animal Crossing, though that dream is probably no more due to this controversy.

 

[Sticky]

Yeah, its localization was a surprise to all of us. As far as I can tell, Treehouse wasn't handed this project until January of this year on top of all the other stuff they were localizing. So you can factor time in this mess as well. The localization of this game seems to come from Nintendo's panic mode over its financial status. At this point, they want sales, so they're literally throwing everything they've got and attempting to take advantage of the 57 million people who have bought a 3DS. Iwata even called this a harvest and is hoping to make Tomadachi Life the next Animal Crossing, though that dream is probably no more due to this controversy.

I want to shed a tear for them and their terrible business practices (Ha! Just kidding!) but then I remember that Nintendo has been trying to ride their success from the previous generation in hopes that they wouldn't have to do anything in order to make a killing this generation. Like no serious marketing or attempts to further bring games to their console.

And it's resulted in the demise of so many great games in their quest to be lazy. Wonderful 101 is the prime example of a great game that Nintendo just left to sink on its own because they seemingly buried it when it came out.

And only now are they realizing "WAIT, SHIT, You mean we have to MARKET our console and the games on our console for either of them to sell? And we don't actually have infinite money either?" and are scrambling to compensate for the past two years they've been in a money-induced coma.

 

[Dragonbums]

Are you okay with female genital mutilation? Pedophilia? Howabout the existing slave trade?

Are these okay simply because they're part of other cultures?

Of course I'm not okay with it. Any more than knowing that children and women are still burned in this day and age for witchery.

However I'm not going to stomp in there all colonial moral high ground style and proclaim that what they are doing is wrong because we Westerners have stopped doing it.

It takes years of understanding why that view came to be, and more years starting to convince people why that might not exactly be a moral thing to do (plus physical harm of ones' genitals are leagues worse than not being able to obtain a legal document of marriage.) Eventually the practice in question will fade out.

That's how you go about things like this and actually have it last.

 

[Dragonbums]

why even release TD: Life here if the original game wasn't even ported? Was demand for a Mii micromanagement game really that massive here in the west?

There wasn't much demand from it outside of a few niche player bases outside of Japan that wanted to try it out. However it most likely has correlation to Iwata's earlier statements when he said that they will port over games they considered "Too Japanese" for an outside market and see how it goes.

 

[Dragonbums]

I'm considering what culture they are from, that's why I am lenient towards Nintendo. But that doesn't mean that what they did was not immoral.

But for it to be immoral it would have to of been done with intended malice. In this case it is a lot more than an oversight. I would call it stupidity first than claim that Nintendo acted morally wrong.

Owning slaves was considered okay at a certain point in America. And the owners can be excused to a certain point because they were constantly reaffirmed by their culture that it was fine. That doesn't change the fact that slavery was and will be a gross injustice.

Of course it doesn't. When slavery began to happen not a single country that participated in it were under any illusions what so ever that it was a shitty thing to do. Not one. Britain started it, and even they knew it was morally bankrupt. The same however can not be said for homosexuality. Many people genuinely believe it's immoral and deviant behavior.

You say I come to this moral judgement because I'm from a Western Culture. Which is true in the way that it allowed me to get in contact with certain ideas and arguments I wouldn't have been able to if I came from other places.

I'm fairly certain those ideas have come into play in all of the countries that disallow it. However they have absolutely no groundwork to work on. To assume such isn't fair. Considering that was also the same mindset we had not even 60 years ago. It took a lot of killing and murder on their part before they finally got a leg to stand on and people actually listened to what they had to say. In the case of Japan it's basically a universally adopted don't show don't tell policy. They don't necessarily care that your gay or in a gay relationship. They just don't want you to publicize it. And gay marriage is as public as it gets. Hence it's illegal there.

But you can't assume I chose this judgement solely because of where I was brought up. I have heard the other side of the argument on this issue and made a decision. This decision, based on all arguments I've heard and came to myself, has nothing do to with where I am from.

My main issue just comes from the fact that people are calling Nintendo bigots and anti homosexuality. I can understand why you disagree with their decision. I do. What I DON'T agree with is saying they are against homosexuality because they didn't include them in a game that was only released in a country where gay marriage is illegal. That's my biggest beef with the whole argument.