Jimquisition: Tomodachi Strife

Dragonbums

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MarsAtlas said:
Because those people don't understand bivalent logic, don't understand the press release, or both.
Or maybe most people are into looking at different ways to interpret a message. As not everything, but the most bold statements only have one meaning.

Alright so you bring up some articles that didn't really mention the bug. However just as many articles got the nature of the bug wrong. Which was half the reason they made articles in the first place.

As for the Miiquality blog I already addressed that Tye didn't mention the bug because he knew the bug had nothing to do with gay relationships.

But it's clear that the bug played a major role in the controversy explosion because now you have this particular Jimquisition episode (which he later addressed) getting info on the bug wrong stating that it patched out gay marriage specifically and had some credence to his next argument. Although it focused more on PR and public statements.


Then I think you would've noticed by now that the Miiquality mission statement paid no attention to the patch from a year ago.
Yeah. I said that a bazillion times to you know. I was talking about the people who bandwagoned on the campaign, misrepresented what Tye was going for and continued to spread misinformation about the bug in question.



No they didn't.

This was Nintendo's official response:

"Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of 'Tomodachi Life'. The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that 'Tomodachi Life' was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary."

We have heard and thoughtfully considered all the responses. We will continue to listen and think about the feedback. We're using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization.


They said no, they said that they "have heard and thoughtfully considered all the responses." Their "thoughtful consideration" resulted in that first paragraph that says inclusion would be social commentary, and that they're not going to represent it because of that.
They said no for this installment and in relation to the social commentary part that was a direct response to people accusing them of being bigots and anti gay marriage on the misinformation about the patch getting rid of gay marriage.

[quote

Yes, but they made a political statement when somebody figuratively walked up to them, asked them a question with a yes or no answer, and they answered "no".[/quote]

And they said no to this installment because it's a one year old game with the dev team doing other shit. They did not say no as an ultimatum because they went on to say that they will consider it for later editions if the feedback is positive enough.





Huh, thats that very testable claim again that I saw earlier. Fifty percent this time, right? Well let me scroll up to earlier in this post.

Stretching it the most, its 50%, on the nose, but thats if you count the articles where the bug was irrelevant to the overall point of the article as well as articles that went out of their way to explain the previous misunderstanding regarding that patch, which was, hmm... all of the articles that mentioned the bug. Go figure. So I guess really that 0% of those articles are upset about the patch.
Headliners and opening sentences matter. A lot of people do not read the full articles for anything. They look at the headliner, the first two sentences, cement their judgement on the matter and make a rant about it. That's why this went as horribly as it did.

> The Point

> Your Head

Its not about all games that don't have a same-sex relationship, and not a single person has ever claimed otherwise. Its about a game with the tagline "your life", a game where your avatar is supposed to be you... unless you're gay. I don't see anybody claiming that a game with a linear narrative is homophobic because the cliched romantic interest subplot is a heterosexual one. Similarly, nobody is calling the original Star Wars trilogy homophobic because the original trilogy had a heterosexual romantic subplot.
As someone already linked at the bottom it's not exactly "your life" because in the game itself you have no control over what your Mii's do anyway. Last time I checked I had control over my life and the actions I project in it.

, that exclusion would be, well, exclusion, its not necessarily driven by homophobia.
And Nintendo's was driven by homophobia?



I've seen one person claim Nintendo is homophobic - one. And they retracted their statement before Nintendo even their apology because they realized that they had fallen into a fallacious train of thought.
Except that the Escapist is not the only thing on the web. Look at tumblr, look at the comments section of places like IGN, and Youtube. You will see no end in sight of this accusation and they fucking meant it.

I've never claimed that anybody at Nintendo is homophobic.
But you did state their their original statement meant exclusion of gays and no on gay marriage. You might not of directly said they were homophobic, but when you make statements like that, don't be surprised that people might come to that conclusion with those words.


I said that they generally avoid anything remotely controversial, and that their PR department walked them straight into the line of fire, but I never said that the company's intentions were malicious.
Except that accusing them of exclusion of gays, erasure, so on and so forth is malicious activity.

Except, you know, the same one in the video that you watched and called a guy a liar in. You must've stopped watching less than halfway through if you missed the point of the video. Additionally, I've been reading all of these threads. All. I can tell you what people on both sides are saying. Nobody is claiming malice on the side of Nintendo - just general fuckwittery. Nobody is continuing to bring up the bug, especially after they erroneuously mentioned it. Meanwhile, most of the people who are upset by the movement are the ones who cannot understand that many people on my side were upset by the press release, not whatever happened a year ago.

Citations please. Line them up so I can see them.
Citations? You yourself just said that Nintendo made a clear stance against homosexuality in regards to gay marriage. That in and of itself is against homosexual rights so there one in the camp right there.





I've not seen this claimed once except by somebody who shortly thereafter corrected themselves and said Nintendo is just being an incompetent buffoon instead of deliberately homophobic.
You only need to go as far as not the Escapist to see those claims on numerous occasions.
 

Therumancer

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Silvanus said:
Therumancer said:
I trimmed a lot of this down to the basics. Right here your basically trying to claim "well, wait we aren't demanding equal representation" but then trying to turn around and make arguments about "intrusive heterosexual content". That's pretty much contradictory. After all if your acknowledging that your not an equal portion of the population, you can't very well make arguments based around there being content directed at the majority. Your more or less making my point for me, your saying "we represent a tiny percentage of the population, yet we demand equal representation in media to the overwhelming majority".
Uhrm... they're not contradictory. We don't demand to be shown in equal numbers, which was what your claim was. My entire point was that that simply doesn't happen. That's just a baseless smear tactic.

My other point, that you don't see heterosexual content as "intrusive", is entirely separate, and perfectly valid. You haven't explained why you immediately object to the sexuality of the situation when it's gay, but that it doesn't even come into it when it's straight.

My point that gay people do not ask to be shown in equal numbers in no way contradicts my point that you hold a double-standard as to whether to focus on the sexuality of a situation. Why should it be that, simply by nature of being a minority, gay representation should be the focus of a double-standard? How does that follow?


?
Actually that's exactly what your getting at. This entire debate revolves around how if something like a life sim features heterosexual content as being normal, it must also present homosexual content as being normal. Something which has springboarded into articles claiming Nintendo's attitude amounts to "erasure" and so on. The bottom line is homosexuals are a tiny minority, and represent an abnormal, fringe behavior. Being gay is not normal, it represents a tiny portion of society. Thus there is no fair basis for saying it should be presented as normal and represented when relationships come up. If someone chooses to do so, that's fine, but it's not an entitlement, "erasure", or some kind of social attack to not include a fringe behavior.

The point about Polygamy, which can also be made about mixed race marriages, is that they are both far more common behaviors than homosexuality. They could both make a far stronger case to the claim of representation on moral grounds. They do not do so however, it's gays, who are even more abnormal proportionatly, who are demanding to be inserted into things like video games, and acting like excluding them is some kind of attack. Conversely if someone wants to show a mixed race relationship, or say present Polygamy in a TV show without being judgemental, that is their right, but the groups who practice those things are not demanding that for every monogamous relationship, or mono-ethnic pairing that they be represented as well as some kind of right, and that it's both an attack and a moral outrage to do so. Both could in theory make far stronger claims to a moral high ground through numbers than gays can.

Remember the entire topic here is moral outrage over gays not being in a life simulator, and the way Nintendo handled it and treated an abnormal minority like well... an abnormal minority, while admittedly being pretty polite about it. This entire discussion revolves around how gays are entitled to be in a game like this, and Nintendo is committing some kind of moral outrage by not representing that fringe in a life sim where heterosexual behavior and relationships are not only allowed, but a focus of the game.

Another focus of this is the argument as to whether it's political or not. It's quite political. In a world that is largely anti-gay, where even the first world is divided 50% and needs to "cheat" to pass ant-gay legislation and have it stick even in the most socially liberal states in the most permissive nation on earth (California waffles back and forth here, being a huge battleground for example). The whole point of arguments like this is to saturate the media with portrayals of this being normal, mainstream, behavior in order to sell it and hope that by convincing people that it's true it will affect legislation, that is the very definition of political.

My personal opinions aside, the bottom line is the battle over gay rights ended long ago. Being gay has been decriminalized. Gays can be presented in the media without there being a problem with it if someone chooses to do so, along with other fringe behaviors. It's all about politics now and an argument that gsys have to be represented alongside normal human relationships. Nobody is entitled to that, and if one makes that argument, as I pointed out, you are also basically argueing for every other fringe behavior and sexual orientation to be required to be represented as well, and by the numbers gays wind up pretty far back in that priority queue.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care if Nintendo did put gays into their game, it's their right, but they didn't. Gays have no right to be outraged simply by not being included. Now if the game was say having you hunt down and brutalize homosexuals and presenting this as normal behavior that society should encourage, that would be different, but it's not doing that, it's just not including a gay option.
 

Aardvaarkman

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Scars Unseen said:
Possibly yes, but probably no. Do you have any idea how much work what you might consider a "minor" feature can take to implement? How much coding is involved, how many bugs could result?
Oh, Boo-hoo! This is possibly one of the weakest arguments in this thread next to "if they allow gay marriage, then they have to allow fox marriage!"

These people are game developers. It's their job to develop games.

Why is "oh, it's hard work" an excuse? Customers are paying them to do this hard work. I really don;t understand this argument that we should allow developers to be lazy, and not do their damn jobs. It's a competitive business, and they damn well better be working hard to make their games as good as possible if they want our business.

Screw lazy developers, and screw this cop-out of an excuse. "Oh no, they might have to add some game content." Other companies have done a lot more work and added a lot more content for less marketplace benefit. If this is really something that's so difficult to do that it's almost impossible - than that's proof that the developers are either incompetent or lazy.
 

Silvanus

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Therumancer said:
Actually that's exactly what your getting at. This entire debate revolves around how if something like a life sim features heterosexual content as being normal, it must also present homosexual content as being normal. Something which has springboarded into articles claiming Nintendo's attitude amounts to "erasure" and so on. The bottom line is homosexuals are a tiny minority, and represent an abnormal, fringe behavior. Being gay is not normal, it represents a tiny portion of society. Thus there is no fair basis for saying it should be presented as normal and represented when relationships come up. If someone chooses to do so, that's fine, but it's not an entitlement, "erasure", or some kind of social attack to not include a fringe behavior.
Therumancer said:
My personal opinions aside, the bottom line is the battle over gay rights ended long ago. Being gay has been decriminalized.
You moved the goalposts; presenting something as normal is not the same thing as presenting it in the same proportion as you present everything else.

The rest of the post is a string of rehashed arguments from before, and various provocative slurs. If you think decriminalisation was the end of the gay-rights issue, that's truly delusional. People are still murdered because they are gay; people still lose their homes and families because they are gay; people are still brutally attacked and bullied because they are gay. It's quite sickening to suggest gay people have already won, when they face incredible violence and adversity.

You didn't address my point about how the exact same arguments as those you use now were trotted out about mixed-race relationships.

Therumancer said:
Another focus of this is the argument as to whether it's political or not. It's quite political. In a world that is largely anti-gay, where even the first world is divided 50% and needs to "cheat" to pass ant-gay legislation and have it stick even in the most socially liberal states in the most permissive nation on earth (California waffles back and forth here, being a huge battleground for example). The whole point of arguments like this is to saturate the media with portrayals of this being normal, mainstream, behavior in order to sell it and hope that by convincing people that it's true it will affect legislation, that is the very definition of political.
Oh, for...

If gay people were treated equally, then everybody would be happy to just live their lives. I am not making a political statement when I go out with somebody of the same sex. It becomes political when rights get denied.

Just like mixed-race relationships. The people who tried to deny them rights and treatment forced them to argue back, and try to attain equal treatment-- and then you have the audacity, and shortsightedness, and pure prejudice, to blame the victims for doing so?!
 

Aardvaarkman

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Houseman said:
You're saying that you can't be a toaster? But the folks at tumblr say otherwise... Who are you to dismiss how they feel they are born to be?
Look, if you want to argue with the people on Tumblr, then why don't you go to Tumblr and do it?

We are not the people on Tumblr, and nobody here has put forth any of the straw man arguments you are debating. Furthermore, if you love Tumblr so much, then why don't you marry it? You seem somewhat obsessed with it.
 

Aardvaarkman

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Dragonbums said:
But for it to be immoral it would have to of been done with intended malice.
Immorality does not require malice.

Dragonbums said:
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.
That's absolutely not true. Many slave owners saw blacks and other races as not-human, and property.They absolutely saw it as their right to own and preside over the lives of the inferior races.

This still persists today - even in 2014, we have Cliven Bundy making public statements about how much better off black people were under the stewardship of slaveholders.
 

Scars Unseen

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Aardvaarkman said:
Scars Unseen said:
Possibly yes, but probably no. Do you have any idea how much work what you might consider a "minor" feature can take to implement? How much coding is involved, how many bugs could result?
Oh, Boo-hoo! This is possibly one of the weakest arguments in this thread next to "if they allow gay marriage, then they have to allow fox marriage!"

These people are game developers. It's their job to develop games.

Why is "oh, it's hard work" an excuse? Customers are paying them to do this hard work. I really don;t understand this argument that we should allow developers to be lazy, and not do their damn jobs. It's a competitive business, and they damn well better be working hard to make their games as good as possible if they want our business.

Screw lazy developers, and screw this cop-out of an excuse. "Oh no, they might have to add some game content." Other companies have done a lot more work and added a lot more content for less marketplace benefit. If this is really something that's so difficult to do that it's almost impossible - than that's proof that the developers are either incompetent or lazy.
It is not their job to develop this game. That was their job. They finished it. Over a year ago. People(not the Miiquality people, but less reasonable ones) are asking them to re-make the game. What I'm saying is that this isn't as simple an issue that they can just patch it in without putting more man hours into it than they are likely to be willing to for a game that has already been out for a year. This is more the sort of thing that they would have to sell as DLC(which would bring on an even bigger uproar and have legitimately unfortunate implications) or put into a paid expansion in order to justify the cost of.
 

tstorm823

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MarsAtlas said:
This was Nintendo's official response:

"Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of 'Tomodachi Life'. The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that 'Tomodachi Life' was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary."

We have heard and thoughtfully considered all the responses. We will continue to listen and think about the feedback. We're using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization.


They said no, they said that they "have heard and thoughtfully considered all the responses." Their "thoughtful consideration" resulted in that first paragraph that says inclusion would be social commentary, and that they're not going to represent it because of that.
I don't see how you can continue to interpret that press release this way. If the "not social commentary line" was in a vacuum, I might see the ambiguity, but when they tell you directly after that it isn't meant to be a real world simulation, there's no way this means anything other than "if we were trying to simulate real life, we would have included homosexuality." The not making social commentary line did not even remotely mean that including gay relationships would be social commentary (whether they include or exclude, it's the same level of social commentary, which I'm about to explain is zero), what they were saying is that the game isn't in any way meant to represent society, so anything in it is not intended social commentary. When they say "we were not trying to make social commentary" they're saying "we didn't mean to suggest that gay people are nonexistant or unimportant." That wasn't their explanation for why they didn't have gay relationships, it was their olive branch to anyone who felt insulted or excluded.

They made a public statement saying "we didn't mean to insult anyone, we weren't trying to make any statement about homosexuality, but now we've heard your feedback, and we'll keep it in mind for future games" and people apparently couldn't understand that. Fault is absolutely on Jim.
 

Aardvaarkman

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jaateloauto said:
Frankly he should have considering he misunderstood what Nintendo said. They said didn't intend to make social commentary by _not_ including same sex relationships rather than other way around.
How was anybody supposed to understand what Nintendo was saying? It was not obvious by their statement exactly what the "social commentary" remark was referring to. It could have referred to either including or not including same-sex relationships.

Nintendo's statement was bordering on incoherence. Which is a huge problem if you are making a PR statement. It should be as clear as day what you are trying to say. The fact the Nintendo's statement was "misunderstood" does not bode well for Nintendo. Do they not employ PR people who understand English and Western cultures? Why did they allow this garbled statement of mixed messages to be released?
 

Aardvaarkman

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10BIT said:
Except Nintendo never made the statement Jim spent the bulk of the video tearing down. When they said "We did not want to provide social commentary" they meant "The game was patched to remove game breaking bugs and has no basis on our views about homosexual lifestyles",
If that is what they meant, then maybe that is what they should have said? It is their job to make their meaning clear, not the job of others to deduce it from vague statement.

10BIT said:
The strawman is actually on Jim - and the vast majority of games "journalists" - on this one.
No, it's actually Nintendo's fault for not making a clear statement. Saying that they supposedly meant to say something other than what they said is just apologia for Nintendo. Jim was simply commenting on what Nintendo did actually say.

In fact, it would be journalistically irresponsible to interpret Nintendo's comments in the way that you have.
 

Dragonbums

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Aardvaarkman said:
Immorality does not require malice.
But does it not also require intent? Because I do not see that being an intent from Nintendo as well.

Dragonbums said:
That's absolutely not true. Many slave owners saw blacks and other races as not-human, and property.They absolutely saw it as their right to own and preside over the lives of the inferior races.

A view that started during the rise of colonialism and Social Darwinism. Perputrated by racists who thought they were superior to all. That line of thinking passed down so on and so forth. But the Founding Fathers and many others were acutely aware of the hypocrisy that they call themselves a free nation and yet their nation was built on slavery. The American side of it were just a whole lot more worse about it. Britain pretty much had that inkling from the start. Why else would they be the first ones to stop it right then and there? (yeah America had the cotton industry, but you can't tell me there weren't much easier alternatives than enslaving people...but hey, that bottom dollar I suppose)

we have Cliven Bundy making public statements about how much better off black people were under the stewardship of slaveholders.
That incident makes me chuckle. It was quite amusing to see Fox and Friends put him on a pedestal as a national hero only to quickly forget he ever existed after that ultimatum. (Although I think someone gave really good insight about how the government is just as greedy and corrupt about the whole pasture situation which makes me kind of understand where Bundy was coming from in relation to refusing to pay the government for his cows.)
 

Aardvaarkman

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uanime5 said:
Jasper van Heycop said:
uanime5 said:
Given that in many countries gay marriage isn't legal it's no surprise that Nintendo didn't want to include it in a game that they wanted to sell all over the world.
And EA wasn't trying to sell the Sims to everyone in the world and their mom? Yet it still has gay marriage. They sometimes get censored for including it (like Ridiculous Russia giving it an A/O rating), but they show some backbone and just continue making money off non-bigots.
Are these games targeted at the same audience? While adults may be prepared to buy a game containing gay marriage for themselves they may be more reluctant to buy a game containing gay marriage for their children.
What? Are you saying the Sims isn't a game suitable for children? I thought it had an "E" rating.
 

Aardvaarkman

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Scars Unseen said:
It is not their job to develop this game. That was their job. They finished it. Over a year ago.
Except, they didn't. The Japanese version of the game was released over a year ago. This is not the same game, otherwise, why didn't they release it to the other countries then?

Also, it's the job of game developers to continue to support and fix bugs in games. Once again, you're not exactly making the case that they are competent developers. Professionals would not just release a game and then completely ignore it after that. Especially in the case of a major world-wide re-release.

You really think it's acceptable for them just to release this to a much larger audience, and not make any effort in developing it for that audience, or fixing any problems that might come with that release?
 

Dragonbums

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Aardvaarkman said:
Except, they haven't. The game was released in Japan over a year ago. This is not the same game, otherwise, why didn't they release it to other countries then?
It is the same game. They just decided to port it over here. As for why they didn't do that earlier, that's because Nintendo considered it "Too Japanese" and didn't think the game would click with outside audiences. So they left it in Japan until sometime this year.
 

Aardvaarkman

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tstorm823 said:
When they say "we were not trying to make social commentary" they're saying "we didn't mean to suggest that gay people are nonexistant or unimportant.
That's an extremely social/political comment. So, yeah. It doesn't excuse them from their stupid statement.

And who are you, Nintendo's translator/telepath? Tell me again, if that is what Nintendo meant to say, then why didn't they say that, rather than these other words which they actually said?
 

Aardvaarkman

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Dragonbums said:
It is the same game. They just decided to port it over here. As for why they didn't do that earlier, that's because Nintendo considered it "Too Japanese" and didn't think the game would click with outside audiences. So they left it in Japan until sometime this year.
OK, so, the game is being release to countries outside Japan completely unmodified? It's exactly the same code as the Japanese version?
 

Dragonbums

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Aardvaarkman said:
Dragonbums said:
It is the same game. They just decided to port it over here. As for why they didn't do that earlier, that's because Nintendo considered it "Too Japanese" and didn't think the game would click with outside audiences. So they left it in Japan until sometime this year.
OK, so, the game is being release to countries outside Japan completely unmodified? It's exactly the same code as the Japanese version?
Yes. Aside from a few translation adjustments and minor code enhancements like different mini games the game is basically the same.
 

Aardvaarkman

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Dragonbums said:
Aardvaarkman said:
Immorality does not require malice.
But does it not also require intent? Because I do not see that being an intent from Nintendo as well.
No, it does not require intent.

Dragonbums said:
A view that started during the rise of colonialism and Social Darwinism. Perputrated by racists who thought they were superior to all. That line of thinking passed down so on and so forth. But the Founding Fathers and many others were acutely aware of the hypocrisy that they call themselves a free nation and yet their nation was built on slavery. The American side of it were just a whole lot more worse about it. Britain pretty much had that inkling from the start. Why else would they be the first ones to stop it right then and there? (yeah America had the cotton industry, but you can't tell me there weren't much easier alternatives than enslaving people...but hey, that bottom dollar I suppose)
Doesn't really matter what the Founding Fathers or the British Aristocracy thought - the idea of blacks as subhumans and slavery as perfectly acceptable has been enmeshed in the situation forever. Some people thinking it might have been wrong does not equate to everybody involved thinking that.

Also, why do you start with Britain? Slavery goes back much further than the existence of Britain. How do you think they built the pyramids?

Dragonbums said:
That incident makes me chuckle. It was quite amusing to see Fox and Friends put him on a pedestal as a national hero only to quickly forget he ever existed after that ultimatum. (Although I think someone gave really good insight about how the government is just as greedy and corrupt about the whole pasture situation which makes me kind of understand where Bundy was coming from in relation to refusing to pay the government for his cows.)
Off-topic, but how is the government being greedy and corrupt here? Bundy avoided fines and legal action (decided by courts, not policy makers) for a decade. He's a simple thief. And all the government was trying to do was to protect property and endangered species.

Where was the corruption and greed? The government was asking for below commercial rates for grazing. The government has been extremely lenient in enforcement and has backed off when faced with resistance. Doesn't seem like some kind of overbearing abuse of power to me. Bundy is the only corrupt abuser here.