Nintendo Says No To Same Sex Relationships For Tomodachi Miis

Karloff

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Nintendo Says No To Same Sex Relationships For Tomodachi Miis



Your friends, your drama, your life, but no social commentary please, says Nintendo.

Tomodachi Life - "your friends, your drama, your life" - suffered from a bug [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123948-Nintendo-Patches-Out-Same-Sex-Marriage-in-Tomodachi-Collection] back in 2013 that effectively enabled same sex marriage between miis, or at least the closest facsimile of it. Nintendo patched that out; "human relations become strange," as Nintendo described it, wasn't supposed to be on the menu, and besides it broke the game. The Western Tomodachi is due in June, and some fans have been calling for same sex mii marriage to be included. Nintendo has refused, saying it never intended to make any form of social commentary with its 3DS title.

"The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation," says Nintendo. "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." Nintendo points out that same sex mii relationships weren't coded into the Japanese original, and its Western version is based on that same code.

Except avoiding the social commentary angle isn't as easy as Nintendo would like to believe. "It's more of an issue for this game because the characters are supposed to be a representation of your real life," says Tye Marini [http://miiquality.tumblr.com/], one of the loudest voices calling for same sex Miiquality. "You import your personalized characters into the game. You name them. You give them a personality. You give them a voice. They just can't fall in love if they're gay."

Nintendo has said it will continue to listen and think about the feedback. Whether or not that's Nintendo being polite, or sincere, is an open question. Gay marriage isn't legal in Japan, and it's possible Nintendo's worried about the fallout back home if it opts in favor of Western miiquality. Sales of Tomodachi Life have been stellar in Japan so far, with 1.83 million copies sold.

"We're using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization," says Nintendo.

Source: Associated Press / ABC [http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/nintendo-virtual-equality-life-game-23620844?singlePage=true]


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CpT_x_Killsteal

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Jun 21, 2012
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Funny how someone already made a thread about people going freakout mode about this.
Also the main point of the bug back in 2013 was that Males could get pregnant. Funny how that wasn't mentioned at all.

While I'm all for pushing for equality, we need to keep in mind that Nintendo isn't Western. They have their own complicated culture back home that they have to deal with which is probably the most important to them.

That being said, enabling same sex marriages based on region mightn't be a bad idea.
 

Dr.Awkward

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Mar 27, 2013
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It's a simple decision, Nintendo. Despite your adamant stance on the subject, some traditions need to die due to its narrow-minded background.
 

sid

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Just from a design perspective, why didn't they just release a single character type with access to a few body types and all male AND female aesthetics? By putting different sexes in the game, something like this was bound to happen no matter what.
 

josemlopes

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RatherDull said:
Well, that's one more company to add to the block list for homophobia.

Such a shame, I really liked Nintendo too.
Eh, their social issues stuff in Japan are very different I presume so they will probably take more time to be more open about this, with that said I understand not wanting to buy this game based on that info since I bet a big part of the game will be creating a love life for the avatar.

What I dont get is what does every other Nintendo game would have to do with anything, give it a few more years and the CEO changes meaning that whatever stance the company held probably change too.

As they said "we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary.", they are ignoring the fact that gays exist but they arent against it meaning that it probably wont take long untill the company starts having a more open view on the subject (although Nintendo barely does anything that touches these subjects to begin with).

Since their other games dont have anything to do with this sort of stuff I really dont see why this game would be enough to "block".
 

Lieju

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"We're not trying to provide social commentary", except, you know, that you are.

Such as that homosexual relationships have no place in a 'whimsical quirky world'. Only straight people allowed there.
 

Eve Charm

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So we're having a really good discussion here http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.849366-Tomadachi-Life-Conspiracy-Because-Nintendo-Just-cant-catch-a-break-these-days , in the main post about how Nintendo is getting so much hate from both sides about how wrongly this issue is being reported and more notably " The bug " everyone is referring to, then the next day, front page another article with bad information.

There wasn't a bug that allowed same sex relationships, There was a bug that broke the game if a person imported their mii from the previous game that was fixed because it stopped you from being able to progress. The same sex stuff was brought up because people were wondering why some people were able to have relationships with on the outside "appeared" to be same sex but people were just coding their male mii as female or vice versa, Something that hasn't been patched out because all it is is code that reads gender.
 

Falterfire

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sid said:
Just from a design perspective, why didn't they just release a single character type with access to a few body types and all male AND female aesthetics? By putting different sexes in the game, something like this was bound to happen no matter what.
According to somebody further up the thread, pregnancy is a thing in the game, which means unless you want players to have to flip a coin on whether the man or the woman gets pregnant, you have to include sex of character somewhere.
 

Fasckira

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Oct 22, 2009
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RatherDull said:
Well, that's one more company to add to the block list for homophobia.

Such a shame, I really liked Nintendo too.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge them, they've got to keep in mind what the current viewpoint in their home country is as opposed to what they may feel.
 

xaszatm

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Sep 4, 2010
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CpT_x_Killsteal said:
Funny how someone already made a thread about people going freakout mode about this.
Also the main point of the bug back in 2013 was that Males could get pregnant. Funny how that wasn't mentioned at all.

While I'm all for pushing for equality, we need to keep in mind that Nintendo isn't Western. They have their own complicated culture back home that they have to deal with which is probably the most important to them.

That being said, enabling same sex marriages based on region mightn't be a bad idea.
Thank you for mentioning my forum topic because...

OT: Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Deep Breath*

OK, I know jumping on the stinking bandwagon is popular and all, but this is ridiculous. For goodness sake, when IGN of all websites is more nuanced than most websites about Nintendo, something is wrong.

IGN Link (AGAIN!): http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/05/nintendo-on-gay-marriage-and-tomodachi-life

There was no glitch that allowed same sex marriages. That was a translation error. What the article meant was two different points. The first point talked about a glitch that happened when people transferred their old Tomadachi characters to the new one: it corrupted the save file. They fixed that glitch. The second article was stating how people got around the no hommosexual relationships. They did it by cross-dressing one of the Mii's so it LOOKED like a guy getting pregnant. They did not "fix" this.

Secondly, coding homosexual marriage into this game at this point, with the game release for almost a year in Japan, would be hard at the very least. While I don't know the code, I'm assuming a game based around relationships would have multiple lines of data for how relationships work. While allowing homosexual marriage would be great, it probably be too much work to handle for a game already a year old. Is it sad? Yes, but it's also realistic. Tai also knows this which brings me to my final point.

Miiquality had a second goal: to still buy the game even if Nintendo didn't fix the problem. Miiquality stated in its video that they wanted Nintendo to be aware of this problem in hopes the would fix it in later games if not this one, but also to make sure Nintendo saw this as a viable franchise to make more games. This backlash is probably going to make Nintendo less into release Japanese-type games to the US, which is bad for everyone all around.
 

xaszatm

That Voice in Your Head
Sep 4, 2010
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sid said:
Just from a design perspective, why didn't they just release a single character type with access to a few body types and all male AND female aesthetics? By putting different sexes in the game, something like this was bound to happen no matter what.
They did. All aspects are shared between both genders. Males can dress up as females and females can be dressed up as males. These characters can marry the opposite gender even if they look like the same gender. Nintendo noted this a year ago and found it interesting. While not the ideal solution to the current issue, it's the best this game is probably getting.
 

InsanityRequiem

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Nov 9, 2009
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Even then, people don't seem to understand coding and game code. Because originally the "Same Sex" ability was a bug error that corrupted and killed game files in the original game. And so for the ability to have same sex marriage/couples/relationships in the game? Most likely a complete rewrite of the game's code. Seriously, how much work would that take? It could possibly take a year or two because of issues with bugs and such that that could be created.

This is a localization port that is hitting the lowest amount of money used because Nintendo has no idea how the game would even be received. Expecting something like an entire code rewrite within a year for a major part of a game is really, really ignorant of costs and time management. Plus I see no one complaining about a lack of gay lifestyle stuff in Sony/Microsoft games, so where's the outrage there?*

*That last bit's a hammed up fake argument. But seriously, the "cool" anti-Nintendo stuff's getting really really annoying with their intensity. Even for illogical things that would be way too expensive to do.
 

xaszatm

That Voice in Your Head
Sep 4, 2010
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RatherDull said:
Fasckira said:
RatherDull said:
Well, that's one more company to add to the block list for homophobia.

Such a shame, I really liked Nintendo too.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge them, they've got to keep in mind what the current viewpoint in their home country is as opposed to what they may feel.
Home country view is irrelevant when they're so deeply involved with Western affairs.
But this game was released in Japan a year ago. It was never supposed to have a Western release. The fact that they decided to release a localization speaks volumes on how they are testing the waters. And if people are just vile here, then why should they release any other game of this series in the west?

Miiquality wanted people to buy the game still, as he understood that patching a year old game in a way that required re-writing the entire code was a fairly unrealistic option. He mainly wanted Nintendo to be aware of this problem so that they could add it in the next game, if not this one. If sales are lackluster here, Nintendo might just never make another game in that series, defeating the purpose of Miiquality in the first place.
 

Eve Charm

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Aug 10, 2011
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RatherDull said:
Fasckira said:
RatherDull said:
Well, that's one more company to add to the block list for homophobia.

Such a shame, I really liked Nintendo too.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge them, they've got to keep in mind what the current viewpoint in their home country is as opposed to what they may feel.
Home country view is irrelevant when they're so deeply involved with Western affairs.
Well to be fair, people asked for a game that was already made, be brought over for the west, so they did. Despite the bad reporting, this was never an option in the game, and the US version is the same code as the original version. the game wasn't made with western affairs in mind.