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Nintendo Apologizes For Not Allowing Same-Sex Relationships In Life Sim Game
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo has been taking heat recently for their decision not to allow same sex relationships in Tomodachi Life, an upcoming life simulation game for the 3DS. An advocacy group for LGBT issues said, 'In purposefully limiting players' relationship options, Nintendo is not only sending a hurtful message to many of its fans and consumers by excluding them, but also setting itself way behind the times.' The group also pointed out that The Sims allowed such choices over a decade ago. Nintendo originally replied that the game was not intended to be social commentary, and pointed out that the U.S. release of Tomodachi Life is just a localization of the Japanese version (gay marriage is not legal in Japan). Now Nintendo has officially apologized for 'failing to include same-sex relationships' in the game, and they promised to build a more inclusive experience if they make a sequel."
At last, a story about stuff that matters. It had been so long.
So, I can marry my purple tentacle with my demon-hunter magical schoolgirl?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
So if Nintendo adds same sex relationships to the sequel, every one of those complainers will buy it, right? Or were they just complaining about something that they do not own and do not intend to buy, i.e. telling other people how to live their lives?
Pretendo is Japan's equivalent to the GOP lapdogs in the US such as Hobby Lobby. Homophobic to its core and it has no problem with bullying others(3rd Party game cos), censorship to the max, etc. Come to think of it they are exactly like the GOP. Not that I support M$ and $ony-Bony as they are both greedy corporations and while they are less evil they are still evil. Better to go with free software when it comes to games. Adjust your tastes while you wait for a FLOSS alternative to games.
Nintendo will no longer publish this type of game outside of Japan. Either that, or they go back to region locking to the extreme... Where even if you have a NA version of the console, it will not work if located in Japan, because this kind of thing is illegal in their country.
Society is sure bending over for something like 1% of the population.
We should treat drug addicts and alcoholics as lovingly.
Does this *really* have to come up all the time? These advocacy groups need to understand that they can't control every choice everyone makes. We have ObamaCare for that...
This is just dumb. It's a game!
I'm all for LGBT rights and such, but really to criticize a game just cuz it don't include your sexual orientation..? I dunno about that. What's next? Is the LGBT community going to demand air time in Disney cartoons next?
Besides, no one complained about Harvest Moon, another game that only permits heterosexual marriages. So what! It's a game!
For a family friendly company they completely dropped the ball when it comes to living my virtual harem fantasies.
The game is offensive unless it allows relationships between ethereal giraffe genderqueer fursonas and tri-curious pansexual midget doctors. Right?
Is it so bad that people just want to make a game that reflects the relationships the majority of people on Earth have? Do they really have to support every sexual minority to be "fair"?
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IMHO, whomever it is that is responsible should have his/her genitals spanked by each of the owners of the company.
Since it is a large public company someone(s) will be doing a lot of traveling around exposing themselves and their willy/VaJj whacked.
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That would take care of that problem...
.
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Whenever anything like this happens, the creator/company should... ...never respond. ...deflect any questions. ...brush off any further demands/questions. ...change nothing about the game in order to not risk alienating the users who like the game as it is. ...never lose your composure when dealing with these people.
and you owe them a favor. You know, for all the great things they did for the rest of us. Nintendo apparently didn't understand this.
Does anybody else think that this is ridiculous...?
This *IS* ridiculous, right Slashdot? Right?
These issues smack of a manufactured controversy.
They pervert/enroll children, weaken the West, have no peace until all are filthy like them, believing it to be a sure way of giving peace to their always indicting conscience. Faggots are pedophiles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1556756
The fucking faggots will doom us, no wonder Russia is strong: they have that salvaging hereditary hate of faggotism.
This must be being done by some bad apples. Perhaps my experience was different but when I was in my 20's around gay people, they mostly wanted to just be accepted and/or left alone to do their own thing. I'm not sure where this community crossed the line into forcing their views upon others. I definitely really don't approve.
because Half Life 2 only allows me to play as a white guy. I should be allowed to play as Gina Freeman, Giovanni Fabianno, Guadalupe Fernandez, or Guela Feigenbaum.
This is just dumb. It's a game!
I'm all for minority rights and such, but really to criticize a game just cuz it includes insensitive stereotypes about your race? I dunno about that. What's next? Is the NAACP going to demand air time in Disney cartoons next?
Besides, no one complained about Final Fantasy VII, a game that shows one African-American as an "ignorant nigger". So what! It's a game!
We're alive, we're human, we deserve representation. The only thing political about this is the strange pretension that if you just don't talk about us we'll disappear.
I demand the right to abuse and mistreat other players and NPCs in the game, to show my disgust at them, and to burn them at the stake because they are witches.
Why doesn't Nintendo tolerate my intolerance?
It does not mean that they are discriminating anyone. Being attracted to the opposite sex is the standard thing for mammals (and most creatures). Being a gay is anomaly. What if we made a game about hamsters, and they did not include any albino hamsters, would that be discrimination towards albinos? No. They are just focusing on the baseline, that's all.
Now, on the other hand, there is a lot of LGBT people, so making the game support same-sex relationships could have been a good business move.
We're alive, we're human, we deserve representation. The only thing political about this is the strange pretension that if you just don't talk about us we'll disappear.
resub: thanks, mobile ui, for cutting off the title without warning. I wonder if this p tag will fuck up too. This site is falling apart
Not an abomination simulation.
The game contains what it contains; don't like it? Don't play it. Send a message with your wallet
And buy what game instead? Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, and iOS all have secret guidelines for what content is acceptable on their respective platforms.
The reality is:teens and even adolescents sometimes kill themselves because they believe they do not fit in a make-believe worlds that ignorant people sometimes create.
I imagine a world without Nintendo.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Nintendo needs to tell the LGBT crowd to get a life, be concerned with real issues, and pound some sand in the process.
Besides, no one complained about Harvest Moon, another game that only permits heterosexual marriages. So what! It's a game!
You must not have seen how bisexual Jamie is in Harvest Moon: Magical Melody.
Yeah, if the game was promoting homosexuality, there is no way in hell I would let a child play it. These are grown-up issues that shouldn't be on a child's mind when he's playing a video game.
Too much negativity, the little silly faggots out there are trying to hide the deranging truth with minuses, it would appear. (Do you understand, O brainless faggot or, rather, let me call you "Colorectal Cancer", that by minusing this here post you, CC, will only augment the likelihood of what it says?). Faggots must be stopped (killed), they're pedophiles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Like another commenter I'm all for human rights. But the gay mafia thing has just gone a little too far. I really hope organizations start to tell them to just shut up. Having gay depicted in even aspect of life is getting more than a little tiresome. Really pretty soon they'll have to have characters of every race, every living arrangement, every transgendered combination, every disease, every handicap... they'll be ISO certification to make sure games are inclusive. Nobody will every be able produce a game.
Look my friends you're in a lifestyle LGBT is like 3% of the population. We certainly don't want discrimination but we also don't want to have to readjust everything so everyone in every minority feels totally included and no ones feelings are hurt. Life isn't fair, get over it.
foo
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
So... the fact is that gay people complain!
In classic books (Shakespeare, Zola, Voltaire, Plato,...), marriage is between man and woman
Should we rewrite these because 1% of the population is LGBT ?
Several thousand of years of definition of marriage say that it's between a man and a woman.
Even now, there are more countries where you'd be executed for being homosexual than countries where same-sex union is accepted.
So, here, I stand with Nintendo. In their country, same sex union is illegal, as is many countries where their games are sold. In some countries, promoting homosexuality to minors is also illegal (think of Russia for example). So, they HAVE to be on the LEGAL SAFE way, even if a few people don't like it. (LGBT are 1% of population and I'm quite sure that many of them can understand that games may not always include their life choice).
Not all content (books, films, games) can be LGBT-friendly... it's not about annoying them, it's only because the world is not limited to "today in LGBT-friendly countries".
Even with a Kickstarter campaign, how would such people come up with the "relevant game industry experience", "stable business organization", and "list of published game titles" that Nintendo expects?
Racial equality wasn't achieved by black people voting with their wallets.
Are you claiming that the Montgomery, AL, transit boycott of 1955-1956 didn't help?
I'm not sure where part of the plot hinges on a character's distinctive outfit. Consider the famous overalls in Super Mario RPG or the hero's tunic in pick a Legend of Zelda game. It'd be interesting to hear how you suggest that the developers make the non-player characters react to the player's choice of appearance.
there is no way in hell I would let a child play it
Then perhaps they should instead be playing games that don't let player characters get married in the first place. Heterosexual life partnership is likewise a "grown-up issue[] that shouldn't be on a child's mind when he's playing a video game." This rules out a lot of Harvest Moon games, as one of the goals is to make one of the NPCs your waifu.
Really pretty soon they'll have to have characters of every race, every living arrangement, every transgendered combination, every disease, every handicap
Should I take a step toward this "every handicap"? Here's a video of my prototype so far.
. . . 'In purposely limiting players' relationship options. . .
FTFY. "Purposefully" means something else.
Nintendo is going to be blasted either way. As a game that is rated for everyone, and as a company that is seen as a children's toy company, if they included it, the latest controversy will be that this toy company is trying to indoctrinate everyone's precious little snowflakes into the homosexual agenda. I'm sure that either Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or and one of the Fox News cadre will call for a boycott of all Nintendo products and all the ignorant middle age assholes that actually give credence to what these people say will be going around with signs saying, "God hates Mario" or whatever. While Nintendo isn't as utterly screwed as the media like to portray it as, that kind of bad publicity would put them into a very bad place.
However, the big problem was that same sex relationships were possible in the Japanese version of the game via what Nintendo calls a "bug." If it was never possible in the first place, it could have been defended as a simple design decision, but by having it possible and getting rid of it, the media is spinning it as some sort of social commentary by Nintendo. So, by fixing the bug, now they are getting the wrath of the LGBT community and are facing the kind of bad publicity that they really don't need right now.
Basically, all this will do is ensure that these kind of social simulators will remain as Japan only.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
These are just avatars in a game. Someone actively decided that certain rules would apply to their interactions - there was no necessity to impose any societal values on those interactions, players would simply have applied those values they felt appropriate for themselves. In other words, the developers decided to impose their own vision of societal norms when there was no real need to do so.
This is a very similar issue to the "emoji racism" campaign - someone actively designed the almost-exclusively-white characters, even though there was no functional or other requirement to exclude black faces. It almost certainly wasn't concious racism - they just failed to think beyond their limited personal experience and reflect the wider world.
That's a reasonable thing to call out.
Not that voting with my wallet is relevant here; they don't make anything interesting anyways and my 3DS XL is a piece of shit.
I can kinda maybe understand being upset at us queers demanding to be in every type of media ever, but when Nintendo acted to exclude us as they did here, FUCK THEM.
What about adoption?
I'd guess probably half of popular video games with child or adolescent player characters probably have dead or missing parents. There are plenty of storytelling design patterns related to orphans, such as Parental Abandonment, Conveniently an Orphan, and Deceased Parents Are the Best.
Its creative fictional entertainment. Demanding to be added to someone elses fictional universe for fairness sake is absurd lol. "Dear author, I demand you add me to your book RIGHT NOW!!!"
The problem is that Japan is not a LGBT-friendly country (well, it's not a country with laws supporting it, though it's a country that doesn't actively kill their populace for engaging in weird fetishes either.)
If Tomodachi Life had intended to be localized for American audiences from the beginning, it may still not have had the feature. Hell games like "the Sims" doesn't even have it. The only game I'm actually aware of that has the "gay marry" option is Mabinogi, and that's a feature only available in the American version because, again, the Koreans don't recognize GLBT-friendly stuff either.
When will LGBT become LGBTA group, get with the times, people want relationships with animals now. Why should it be limited to the human species? Maybe the group should get ahead of the game and include robot relationships. Normal people do not want to see same sex relationships, It frankly should stay out of children's games, parents don't want their children to turn gay by playing a simulation game.
Nintendo will need to change the name from Tomodachi Life to Tomodachi Existance, or something...
Same sex relationships are Life ending.
I generally am supportive towards LGBT people, and will continue to be, but it's becoming apparent that they are also a little bit of whiney.
Who brought up Wii? The article states that the game in question is made for Nintendo 2DS and 3DS. The big advantages of the 2DS and 3DS over (say) Android are 1. the centralized avatar builder, which this game uses, and 2. the discrete directional controls and trigger buttons without having to buy a MOGA clip-on gamepad that I haven't actually seen anyone use. The disadvantage is Nintendo's bias against first-timers.
The much-quoted "one in ten" is not a statistic, it's propaganda. It's been thoroughly debunked time and again. Real-world statistics show a worldwide average of under 1% with some nations or states being as high as 5%.
maybe they can make them themselves. And if normal people want to play games approved of by sodomites, then they can have great commercial success. Otherwise, they can have a niche market of their own.
Nothing's stopping them from doing so.
Why do people think they have a right to make other people work for their narrow benefit?
And maybe as many (or more) people *not* buying the game because same sex union is allowed in it and they are strongly opposed to it...
This. The issue is a controversial one in many regions.
is he going to face detention now?
Fuck, they will stand on their soapbox and complain about everything. Inclusiveness is one thing, but the arrogance in expecting companies to cater everything to the 1% its just a useless powerplay.
Nintendo, I didn't buy your sim game and I never played it, but I especially wouldn't have bought it or played it had you made it possible for same sex marriages on your game. Give us a break. Don't apologize for doing the right thing.
1-2%: Selection Bias and Lying. Also self-deception.
Sexuality, like many human complex characteristics is almost certainly a continuum. Probably a relatively flat bell-curve.
IOW most people are actually bisexual by nature (genotype), it is nurture (especially the social environment) that determines phenotypes and behavior.
Citation: Compare US to Ancient Greece and Rome (Citizens) as well as modern permissive tribal cultures. Compare Western Europe to US. Compare US to Russia or China. etc.
Sexual expression is heavily, perhaps overwhelmingly affected by society. So all these 'studies' mean fuck all if they do not take that into account. Read Kinsey and Masters and Johnson in depth for an introductory understanding of these ideas. And we have gone way beyond that in understanding. Actually gathering statistics - almost impossible because of confounding factors. Instead - observe populations and how they act based on what is socially acceptable.
TLDR: It really is a choice for many people. Given a free and open choice most of us would have lots more sex with a wide variety of genders.
If they hadn't done that, then it wouldn't have affected people who only wanted to do opposite-sex marriages.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A large percentage of video games involve killing people, which is generally illegal, often using weapons which would be illegal in the countries the games are sold in (if the laws of physics allowed your BFG-9000 and Death Ray to exist.) Also, a number of countries have laws affecting who can get married, and this game certainly isn't implementing lots of checks on whether you've been married before or are a citizen or whatever.
They went out of their way to write code to disallow same-sex marriage; if they hadn't checked for it, it should have worked fine. It's a different case than not including polygamy, where you have to take a whole bunch of data structures that have two entries and expand them to larger numbers (but not larger than four, if you're in a Muslim country.)
_xeno_ commented below that the real reason it's there is that the marriage feature leads to children, and that was breaking on the code for identifying the parents of the child (what, Heather has two mommies?) Ok, so this was a cheap-ass fix, but it wouldn't have been that much work to do a better fix; if nothing else, don't allow same-sex couples to have kids, instead of not allowing them to get married. Still unrealistic, but less so.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Video games don't even have to obey the laws of physics, much less national and local laws. It's nice if they can at least obey the laws of Cartoon Physics consistently, for whatever version of that they choose to implement.
Is there a Japanese-localized version of Grand Theft Auto?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Colorectal cancer!
Just because gay marriage is not recognized in Japan doesn't mean that it is illegal in any way to discuss or depict it in any media. I have no Idea how you could come to such a conclusion.
Consoles' firmware already contain an ID for a region, but regions are coarser than countries. Besides, it's often fairly easy for people to relocate from one region with very different levels of acceptance of expressions of homosexuality. Consider the United States of America, a federal republic whose several states disagree on whether to recognize same-sex domestic partnerships. Also consider the Schengen Area, which includes most of mainland western Europe.
[Console makers] have secret guidelines for what content is acceptable
PCs don't
True, desktop allows unlimited sideloading, and Microsoft publishes its Windows Store guidelines. But carrying a 3DS would appear far more convenient than carrying a laptop.
Please do show us your source for these numbers.
Homosexual pairing has been observed in other mammalian species. What makes you think it wouldn't be just as present in elves, in little people, or in giant flying lizards?
F* the LGBT!!! I am SO sick and tired of their Mafia tactics. People have the RIGHT to NOT accept their garbage! If they don't like it TOUGH $H!t!! They just need to GET OVER I!!! I'm not Racists - I hate everyone equally! I'm just so done with their "we have the the right to exist, but no one else has the right not not accept us." - He LGBT - gutess what LOTS OF PEOPLE DO NOT ACCEPT your lifestyle - get the F* over it! Get over yourselves you sick and twisted get over it!!!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
The big picture hasn't changed. This "outrage" comes conspicuously right after Nintendo announced substantial losses. One political group (LBGT) is pouncing on the chance to manipulate a financially weakened company who has an objectively HUGE influence over American youth. This has nothing to do about tolerance or equality, and the Social Justice Warrior movement is basically the LBGT equivalent of the Black Panthers.
This is just wishful thinking. You don't want to be part of the minority so you make up reasons to discard the data.
I think you are interesting. http://www.online-buy.net/2014...
Do you know, in gay speak, "straight" just means "virgin".
For many more people than you would expect, there is a person they would be gay for, in the right circumstances. There are some people who make a game out of finding these people and these circumstances. Personally, I get propositioned by straight guys without even having to go looking. Just imagine:
You've been out drinking and carousing with some young, handsome, clean-cut guy: a man's man, with the body and charisma of a young Brad Pitt, or maybe Tom Cruise. Maybe you went clubbing, and he was just as into the ladies as you were, and more successful at gaining their attention. Neither of you score, though, and somehow you transition to a more intimate situation -- for a nightcap, say. Adonis puts his hand on your thigh, and with eyes and a smile that tell you he knows everything about how to make another man feel good, he suggests that you get to know each other better.
Kinsey says at least 10% would say yes, and I would say this is an underrepresentation.
bad ice cream 3
...You should not be able to marry all thirty of them.
Oops, wait, the same sex marriage people say you shouldn't. How ironic.
Slowly drifting into oblivion. But then, I can't wait to play Zelda on my iPhone :-)))))))))))))))))
We've become so sensitive on such insignificant bullshit like this.
Let's turn this around. What if a game only allowed gay/lesbian marriages, how would you respond to that? Would you still use the argument "So what! It's a game!"?
what a bunch of LGBTQP whiners... The game belongs to the company that makes it. They get decide what's in it not the whiners who demand 1000% acceptance of their hobby...
Sodomites rule the world.
Next pedos and animals shaggers will won't including :(
I for one will not be playing the filth.
Reality is that which survives all attempts to deny it's existence. We've had same-sex relationships since we've had humans. And denial- by deliberate editing one reality out of a game- is denial at the core. Hell, like as not there's MORE money to be made from inclusiveness than exclusion. Quite apart from the purported social values cruft that usually gets invoked about now. Rest assured- in time- the money will dictate inclusion if nothing else does first. Me personally- I wish the companies would GTFU and act adult= have some diversity options.
I saw the commercial, and i instantly thought of my childhood game Tomagotchi Life!!!! Why is nintendo supposdly stealing and changing the name of Tomagatchi Life?
It's pretty much Apple, Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox that still have lockouts
Apple's OS X App Store might have restrictions (I don't know, though I wouldn't be surprised), but you can still install arbitrary programs from whatever source you like
True, a Mac is like a Windows PC in this respect. But perhaps I wasn't clear enough that I was referring to iOS, not OS X. The privilege to install whatever you want on an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad costs $99 per year, plus $650 if your current computer happens to be something other than a Mac.
Why is homosexuality the only thing that people ever talk about anymore?
Why does a children's video game corporation have to join an activist movement or face consequences? Just leave Nintendo alone.
Just saying, only way of creating little humans is to put two guys in the mood.
You can guess.
Such marriages aren't recognized under Japanese law, but there is no legal obstacle to depicting them in a video game, or any other media, for that matter. Whether it would be controversial and affect Nintendo's sales is another question, though people don't seem to politicize this sort of issue so much in Japan to begin with (which has both its good and its bad aspects, as the lack of legal recognition of such unions indicates).