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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."
So, I can marry my purple tentacle with my demon-hunter magical schoolgirl?
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Society is sure bending over for something like 1% of the population.
We should treat drug addicts and alcoholics as lovingly.
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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Actually, the complaint arised when two people who owned already the game found out they couldn't have their Mii characters marry in the game. But let a fact not spoil your rant. Keep up the good work!
or a headcrab. Because headcrab relationships with heads deserve respect!
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.
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.
Is 1:10 people really an anomaly?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
What could be more important than the hopes, dreams, and future than a lot of kids who need to know that what they are is valid?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Leisuresuit Headcrab? Sounds like an interesting game.
Overract much? Sure, they should've added LGBT stuff in their game (although I'm not quite sure trans can even be represented in a game about Mii avatars...), but I'm pretty sure Nintendo's games have helped a LOT more teenagers (through a way of escaping bad events, or a distraction and way too calm themselves, and so on) than they've hindered. This isn't some sort of conscious campaigning against LGBT, it's an omission. To then imagine how the world would be better without them is both ludicrously harsh and undermines your position by making you even more insensitive than you claim them to be.
But hey, keep on crusadin', most people are way too scared of the fanatical devotion to this movement to speak up when things turn bonkers. I didn't like the karma that much anyway.
Actually, the complaint arised when two people who owned already the game found out they couldn't have their Mii characters marry in the game. But let a fact not spoil your rant. Keep up the good work!
It's a game. Games are not real life and don't always have to accommodate every single form of relationship. As far as I know without some modification you can't have same sex marriages in Skyrim either. Get over it.
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?
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
They weren't quite so uppity?
As far as I know without some modification you can't have same sex marriages in Skyrim either. Get over it.
Skyrim always allowed same-sex marriage.
Well, whomever screams "fa$$ot" loudest usual is.
I reported your comment.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Yep.
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.
LGBT is 1% of Nintendo Buyers.
And most LGBT people won't care/complain...
So, it'll be 1/10000, 1/20000 or even less (don't forget that Nintendo primary commercial targets are children and Japan where same sex union is illegal) who could decide to not buy the game... unlikely to have any impact to Nintendo profitability...
And if Nintendo decides to implement it, it'll require lots of extra-development as they'll have to comply with local laws of some countries (including their own) where same sex union is forbidden. which means lots of extra costs...
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...
Try approximately 1% of the population. The wiki here shows 3.8% average but when you look at how they estimate numbers their estimates are grossly incorrect. For example people that express "curiosity" are counted, as are those that may have experimented at some point in time. Here is a quote to show the inaccuracy clearly.
According to the Williams Institute review conducted in April 2011, approximately 3.80 % of American adults identify themselves being in the LBGT community; wherein, (1.70%) identify as lesbian or gay, bisexual (1.80%), and/or transgender (0.30%);
The way they get the 3.8% number is to tally up all of the results, yet there is no control preventing people from answering to multiple categories. Depending on who is running the study, bisexuals may automatically be counted as lesbian or gay. Other studies may ask the questions separately, but a bisexual person would normally respond that they have same sex relationships so are also lesbian or gay. People identifying themselves as transgender are bisexual, gay, or lesbian (don't make the mistake of jumping to circular reasoning on that one) almost all of the time.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
Yes, attraction, fondness, and love can happen before sex, you Anonymous Coward.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of your cock in my mouth. -another man
Wouldn't it be easier to have the games check for the console's country setting and do things differently according to national laws?
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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.
People base their future on their stimulus and surrounding, well, that is strange : P
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I am not a motherfucking anomaly.
Gosh, you're so brave, speaking truth about a movement so powerful that... ... the majority of states haven't made it legal... ... it's still quite legal in many states to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender presentation ... ... on a website that has modded up most of the comments AGAINST people speaking out for inclusion... ... you're a real fucking hero. Possibly one of the bravest people I've ever come across. Bravely squandering (not really) your Slashdot karma to say Enough is Enough about a cause which other people have risked their well being and their lives for. I feel honored to have had the chance to interact with you here.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
I'm not a pedophile. And you can just come try to kill me. You'll find your worthless carcass riddled with hollow points in no time. ;)
Good luck getting that to work reliably without privacy advocates lambasting Nintendo for using IPv4 address geolocation, especially on a console that doesn't yet have a credit card linked to eShop. Someone might be buying all games as discs/cartridges or might be using only gift cards with eShop.
More girls are raped than boys, so it would seem that more pedophiles are heterosexual.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Is 1:10 people really an anomaly?
1 out of 10 people being homosexual is a gross exaggeration. That number includes bisexuals and any heterosexuals who admitted to a survey monkey of having once had a homosexual thought. 9/10 adults are straight to the core, and 9/10 of the 1/10 are 99.9% straight.
Agreed, my word choice wasn't probably the best. Let's call it "deviation" instead.
If you take recent studies done to correct population sampling (more than 100000 people, randomly selected), you fall under 5% for LGBT (some studies made on more than 500000 people lead to less than 3%)
In most of these studies, Bisexual account usually for half of the people which leads to 1-2% homosexuals...
Can 1-2% be called an anomaly ?
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!!!"
Still too negative. "Minority?"
Yeah, when I was in my 20s most Hispanics just wanted to work hard to better their families, most women were pretty happy staying in the home once they had kids, most Slashdotters were marginalized geeks who just wanted to play with computers. Now, Hispanics want to be respected as equals in the political arena, women want equal pay for equal work, and Slashdotters want people to stay off their lawns. I definitely really don't approve that ethnic, gender, and social groups who previously stayed in their own second-class-citizen corners have decided they want rights equal to those of straight white Christian sports-loving men like myself, and dare to speak up about it sometimes.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Is 1:10 people really an anomaly?
1:10 where? San Francisco, the United States, the world? I'd like to see an objective source that validates that statistic. I hear people throw it around a lot but I've never seen it verified.
Any organism that actively engages in a behavior that inhibits its ability to reproduce is an anomaly. That's just a basic understanding of how natural selection works. Humans, with our self-reflecting consciousness, have a great tendency to do anomalous things as our behavior is more than mere impulse, so I don't mean it as a disparaging remark. I personally don't want to reproduce because I don't think the human race needs to increase our numbers at this time, and this type of decision makes me an anomaly among organisms.
I can't stand the California attitude that evolution is a hardened fact yet being a homosexual is like being born to a ultra-special race that must be cherished and insulated from anything that might possibly be misconstrued as a slight against their amazing specialness. Do I believe that homosexuals should be discriminated against? No. Do I think they should be able to marry? I don't believe that marriage should be a legal status among straights or homosexuals. Call your partnership with your significant other whatever you want to call it. Do I think that every TV show and movie and video game should have token gay people? No. At a certain point the pursuit of inclusiveness makes a spectacle of those included. It used to be the token black guy who always had something snappy to say. Now it's the token gay guy. I guess next up will be the token tranny.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Arrgghhh... ;)
Boo hoo. If people want to kill themselves for stupid reasons I'm not going to stop them. The world is better off without pussies who can't deal with a little hardship.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
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.
No geolocation, the console's firmware would contain the ID for the country.
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LGBT is 1% of Nintendo Buyers.
Citation?
Because marriage in the game is intended to produce children (note: not applying that to reality at this time, please don't argue that), and having two characters of the same sex breaks the game when it attempts to determine which character is the father and which is the mother.
It was literally a crash bug, which is why they patched it out.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
In the US, the number is closer to 1:27, since only 3.8% of the population identify as LGBT. Other research on the topic indicates that social pressure may be pushing that number down, but that even if everyone who was LGBT identified as LGBT, the number would still only be around 5% of the US' population.
For some perspective on whether or not 3.8-5% gets considered to be an anomaly, I have Morton's toe, which occurs in about 10% of the population, yet it's still considered an anomaly. If an uncontroversial variation of the human human toe with 2-3x more occurrences than the thing you're asking about is still considered an anomaly, then it seems to me that you've already answered your own question.
Mind you, I'm not prescribing that it should be called that. I'm merely describing that, given the numbers and other occurrences against which we might compare it, it seems like it would fall in line with being called as such. Take it with some salt.
Yes, it's a game. And no one is forced to buy it. And Nintendo is free to market it to a smaller portion of the potential buyership by restricting it artificially. I wouldn't have bought it because of those artificial restictions. And I am straight. And because there are not only LBGTs complaining, but the market just shrank by Nintendo acting inconsiderately, Nintendo made a turnaround and will patch the game in the next release. And now you complain that Nintendo tries to appeal to a buyership you don't like? You are allowed to try to stir up a shitstorm like the one that caught Nintendo right now. If you prevail and Nintendo again removes the patch again, you win. And what exactly will you have won?
Do you know how fat the program would have to be to fit in every country's law books?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We're sorry we didn't do it in this universe, but we might do it in an alternate, parallel universe. Try switching to other universe to see.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I'm a ginger too, you insensitive clod!
How am I a weak link in the evolutionary chain? And how do you know I won't procreate?
You soulless creature! Just wait till Cartmen deals with you! :)
Respect my authority! :)
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
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
FYI, most transgender people consider "tranny" to be a slur.
And I don't know many LGBT people who are thrilled with the idea of the "token" gay character either, because such a character is always played for laughs. I can't tell you who's being pandered to there, but it's sure not us. I value the few instances of deep characters who happen to be gay, just because sometimes people are gay.
last time I checked it was also illegal to kill people like you do in most other games.
Note that nintendo is primerally a maker of childrens/family games. That means that when considering what to include in a game they not only have to think about whether it will make the game illegal but about what it will do to the age rating of the game in various countries arround the world. They also have to think about what parents will think of it.
Notice how in games for little children you tend to kill monsters instead of people and in games for mid teenagers if you kill people it's in certain situations where it's either accepted by society (e.g. war) or far removed from current reality (e.g. the enemies have been possessed by aliens). There are games where you kill people in a gangland setting but they have higher age restriction on them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Hahaha disregard that inane homophobic drivel, I suck cocks!!!!!
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.
Now I know what to call that thing that I've got that you also have.
Base rate fallacy.
Act IV, Scene III
ACT IV, SCENE III, CONTINUED
Lifts-Her-Tail: Certainly not, kind sir! I am here but to clean your chambers.
Crantius Colto: Is that all you have come here for, little one? My chambers?
Lifts-Her-Tail: I have no idea what it is you imply, master. I am but a poor Argonian maid.
Crantius Colto: So you are, my dumpling. And a good one at that. Such strong legs and shapely tail.
Lifts-Her-Tail: You embarrass me, sir!
Crantius Colto: Fear not. You are safe here with me.
Lifts-Her-Tail: I must finish my cleaning, sir. The mistress will have my head if I do not!
Crantius Colto: Cleaning, eh? I have something for you. Here, polish my spear.
Lifts-Her-Tail: But it is huge! It could take me all night!
Crantius Colto: Plenty of time, my sweet. Plenty of time.
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?
I would consider buying it if they do include same sex marriage in the future. I'm straight, married to a woman, and not into dudes at all. But, I'm all for games that include the option. I'm for human equality or whatever you want to call it, and while it may not have affected my buying choice beforehand, if Nintendo DOES include samesex marriage then I'll be more inclined to buy because they were thoughtful enough to implement it after this "incident." I'd rather a company be sensitive to 1/1000 of potential customers than not, and that means a lot to me as one of the 999/1000 that it might appeal to.
I wouldn't want my children exposed to a game that normalized homosexual marriage, personally. I'm disappointed in Nintendo for not having the moral compass to stand up to these deviant's. They make games for children, for Christ's sake.
This is just so very wrong.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
bad ice cream 3
I didn't complain, I was just pointing out that it's only a game.
LGBT is 1% of Nintendo Buyers.
Around 5% of the human race is gay. I couldn't find good stats for bisexual and transgender demographics, but in any case we are talking about an issue that affects at least 1 in 20 people directly, and their close friends and family indirectly.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It depends how you define a homosexual. Sexuality is not binary, there are many people who may like the opposite gender for the most part, but if they met the right person of the same sex... Wikipedia has lots of citations for demographics.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Curiously it is illegal in North Carolina to perform a same sex marriage ceremony simulation. Sure, you cannot get the government paperwork and everyone knows this but a minister doing the deed anyway is a criminal. So the government is being sued on 1st amendment religious freedom grounds by churches and ministers. You were saying?
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.
You can come close to doing most of those in Saints Row IV.
You're allow to make rude gestures to pedestrians or even run at them while totally naked and thrust your crotch in their face as you knock them down. You also get the power to, as the protagonist puts it, "I can set things on fire" so you can burn pedestrians as you see fit.
Unfortunately, I do not believe Saint's Row IV is available on any Nintendo console.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
San Francisco is, allegedly, 15% LGBT. However the average for the US as a whole is something less than 5%.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I've been parroting this for a while. Rather than be annoyed at someone else's non-standard (ooh, heaven forbid I say that) Implementation, just eliminate it.
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.