Nintendo Promises Future Tomodachi Games Will Be More "Inclusive"

It's not. In your examples you're talking about a specific character with traits and a story written by the creators.

In this game your character is your Mii representation, except if you're gay it's an alternate reality version where you're straight and no one is gay.

@yukoasho: that implication is only there if you want it to be. The game was fine for the Japanese market and they simply localized it without stopping to think about whether this is even an issue. It's an oversight... And one they promised to address in upcoming installments.

Everybody, including Nintendo, agrees that same sex relations should have been in there and they tried to clarify that they didn't mean ill by overlooking it. You can either be happy with that or keep nitpicking at their statement, taking it in the worst way possible and keep fighting a battle over an issue that EVERYONE is on the same side of.

The issue is with the implication that, in order for there to be support for homosexual couples, the game has to be social statement. That the very existence of homosexuals is still so controversial that to acknowledge them, to have the mere option of homosexual relationships would, by itself, turn the game into a social statement.

I don't think Nintendo, as a corporation, is bigoted. Let's make that clear. However, they're also very slow, very ponderous, very stubborn and set in their ways, and this is just the latest in a long string of things that prove their inability to adapt to changing market conditions. It's 2014, and they're acting like it's 1994.

@neato: Well, what I find ignorant "as fuck," as you so elegantly put it (Great comment by the way! You're really contributing to the general level of discourse!) is people who start claiming that one's position on the bus doesn't matter only after someone else suggests that maybe they shouldn't have to ride in the back all the time. I imagine you likely won't appreciate the metaphor, so do feel free to tell me where I can stick it, in whatever colorful way you choose to use in place of critically examining my argument. And apologies if I come across as smug, being right has a habit of doing that to me.

assigning "privilege" to anonymous posters based on their point of view is ignorant as fuck.

Totally agree. The game is obviously a silly parody of life in an alternate world. If Nintendo doesn't include same-sex relationships in a silly, alternate world, that is completely their decision to make. There are plenty of dating sims out there that are strictly heterosexual or strictly homosexual, based on what the developer wants to do. Developers shouldn't be pressured to making their game a certain way. This sucks.

This is probably the best breakdown of the situation out there.

Also this comment section isn't nearly as bad as some people claim it to be. Seems to me that, much like Nintendo's original statement, people want to interpret things in the worst way possible for the sake of controversy.

I feel bad for the people behind the Miiquality campaign. They made a positive, sensible, civil appeal to Nintendo only to have their campaign poisoned by people hungry for controversy and eager to fight.

It's too bad that even @patrickklepek seems to have gotten sucked into this. Guess I expected more after watching the PAX panel with him advocating civil discourse on the internet in such a profound way.

GB could have featured the original Miiquality video or interviewed Tye Marini and gotten behind the positive way in which the appeal was made... instead they waited until the whole thing turned into a shitstorm only to add fuel to the fire at that point. (Ie. the tweets and article featured in worth reading)

As was said on the panel, an important part of changing internet culture is actively getting behind exceptions to the rule instead of only pointing at the worst and either piggybacking it or crying foul.

"the company issued a tone-deaf response."

If by "tone-deaf response" you mean, a perfectly acceptable answer that isn't trying to defend itself and isn't dripping with PR, then yes I agree with you.

As someone said above, only people with an agenda (journalists) made this into a big deal, and only people with an agenda found fault with Nintendo's original response. There are a ton of games with a ton of things that you CAN'T do in them, stop looking to demonize every single thing out there if it doesn't fit into your specific notion of how it should be. Nintendo was making Zero social commentary with this game by including, or excluding, certain things, just stop looking for it.

And @ GB, I know the "news" these days is all about getting hits, regardless of any integrity, but come on....why not try to be better then everyone else and not let these click bait sensationalized non-issue articles from getting posted here.

@patrickklepek: Isn't this the equivalent of me as a white male bitching about not having a male protagonist option in Tomb Raider or black people bitching that all of the Dead Rising protags were white with no black option? Not every game has to directly relate to your personal life experiences. I know we live in an age where the gay community (one which i support) has a much greater voice than it used to, but this still seems like self-entitlement.

It's the nature of the game itself that makes it a magnet for this kind of controversy. A large part of the game involves creating virtual likenesses of yourself, your friends, and anyone else you can recreate in the Mii Maker, and watch them live out their virtual lives, interact with their virtual friends, and have virtual relationships and love affairs.

It's a bit of a harsh oversight that a game of this nature assumes that you and all your friends are hetero.

Some people pointed this out to Nintendo and appealed for them to do what they could to address it, and after fumbling their words, Nintendo eventually issued a statement promising to do exactly that, and everyone involved was happy with that.

Of course, this is the internet, so somewhere along the way, some other people decided it wasn't an oversight caused by cultural differences but a deliberate hate crime, and now it's turned into all this.

I've never seen so many people so offended by the notion that people might be offended by something that they themselves are not offended by. (Unpack that one!) This is more or less exactly what people mean when they use the term "privilege" by the way, the belief that if one in their own personal life experience has not faced a particular hardship, that said particular hardship must not actually exist, and that concerns to the contrary are thereby invalid. I'm so sorry that people are challenging your worldview! That must be tough... :-(

@wilshere: Yeah, cause that's totally what I said, that everyone who doesn't agree with me is literally Adolph Hitler.

This. It seems people want to be offended by everything nowadays.

Everyone with a different opinion than mine is literally Hitler, check!

They basically said nothing in the original statement. I don't know how someone can be offended at that wishy-washy PR bullshit answer.

Well, actually, I guess I do know how, I've spent enough time on the internet and watched enough Parks and Rec. ;)

Wow, the staggering amount of totally non-self-aware hetero privilege on display here is more than a little gross. I don't go into the comment section on GB very often... is this indicative of the usual level of discourse, or was stormfront down this weekend and all the haters somehow wound up here? Pretty disappointing either way.

I know way too much about this game than I normally would.

@jasondesante: Gross! How has this not been moderated yet?

@jasondesante: I feel really sorry for you if you can't function without thinking about gay sex, but the problem here is not sex. It's sexuality. I hope you can find someone to explain the difference to you.

I agree fully with this. Saying that they didn't intend their game to make social commentary is implicitly saying that they think doing everything according to their status quo is not social commentary. Which is obviously false. It's the kind of blindness that leads to people making comments like "well, we didn't want to make this a race thing, so we made the character white". Which is actually something that happens.

For anyone disappointed in the Giant Bomb community over this, I have to ask... have you been paying attention?

@daedelus: It's not impossible to patch a game. However, is it possible to patch this given the current resources to meet deadlines without impacting other projects' deadlines without missing marketing timelines that had already been planned ahead of time? Look through the rest of this thread if you really think it's as simple as changing some dialogue pronouns. It's more than that, and that's before one has to consider QA and marketing.

@everystraightpersonever said:

what's the big deal?

Gamers, a group that is often marginalized, are incredibly intolerant. Use of the words "F*ggot", "Rape", etc are common place. You'd think they'd understand. But WAHHH WHITE MEN

I think Link is secretly gay. Luigi was supposedly homosexual too. Birdo of course, is the banner transvestite that Nintendo thought would wholly validate their 'inclusive' status in the eyes of those liberal gayjins.

I don't think Nintendo's response was good enough. It smacks of paying lip service to the idea of including same-sex relationships just to smooth public relations. It's not "impossible" to patch this into the game. It would in fact take very little work. Just change some dialog pronouns around and the one line that governs the sex of the bride and groom.

And all the comments on this story angry about Nintendo apologizing and bombers grasping at why this is a big deal. I'm disappointed. I guess I had hoped the Giant Bomb community was more tolerant and progressive. Video games have a long way to go towards being tolerant. Check out this video about the topic:

@roycampbell: I couldn't have said it better myself.

I can't bring myself to back Patrick on this, either.

This entire thing was a joke.

@lurkero: I was referring to people equating the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century to this situation. It's a ridiculously inaccurate comparison.

@greggd: Nintendo has every right to not include homosexual relationships. That doesn't give people the right to silence opposing opinion. In the end, all Nintendo has to say is, "we don't want homosexuals in the game" if that is their policy.

@greggd: That's fine. It's just how I feel. If one my my friends knowingly supported a company that I feel has done something like this, it would just impact how I think about them.

I don't disagree with you, but we are talking about video games, and not something like where you can and cannot drink from/ride in/get an education. They are luxury products for enthusiasts, not basic human rights. Should Nintendo be more inclusive? Absolutely, but it's on a basic moral level that has nothing to do with inherent rights.

@fonzinator: Most of the comments on this thread are equivalent to "If homosexual people want games with homosexual people perhaps they should make their own games where that is the focus."

I don't think the analogy is too far off from representing a lot of the comments. And the games don't necessarily have to be of lower quality. Just separate.

And you are missing the point. This is sticking to headlines because it is becoming increasingly important to point out. Just like civil rights in the USA became increasingly important to point out in the 1960s until the civil rights act was finally (and begrudgingly) passed by those who didn't like giving up some of their privilege so that more people would be considered equal and not separate.

Nobody is asking Nintendo to add homosexuals to all of their games. They are asking that if Nintendo has a game with customizable relationships that homosexual relationships be included.

I'm glad to see this article hasn't taken the Kotaku/Polygon approach and gone with a headline along the lines of "Nintendo Bans Same-Sex Marriage, Declared Most Problematic Company 2014".

Just... no. An analogy that would fit your point would be to make entirely different "separate but equal" games of lower quality specifically for homosexuals. This imaginary game would have a giant sign that said "FOR GAYS ONLY" on the box, and the "original" tomadachi life game would say "HETERO ONLY".

I'm not saying that there is no homosexual discrimination out there, but this is what sticks to headlines?

If you were one of my friends I'd feel uncomfortable keeping you around because you would think less of me for wanting to play a cool game just because there's a bit of controversy surrounding it. On a personal level, I'd think you weren't worth it to have to deal with that kind of drama and potential betrayal, for lack of a better word.

@wilshere: I don't think you're homophobic, but personally, and just on a personal level, I would feel worse about someone I know for playing the game.

There is still one little question that I take away from this all. Why does Nintendo have to put same-sex relationships into their game? Is there a rule somewhere saying that they have to? I'm pretty sure that Nintendo is not hating against same-sex relationships with the exclusion of this feature in the game.

I honestly think all of this news is ridiculous and blown out of proportion. It's like me not purchasing a romantic comedy on DVD because the movie features a heterosexual relationship. It's the creative choice of the creators. I honestly don't know why people got so offended by this in the first place.

@sergio: Yeah, that reads kind of...something worth publishing? Like, because they issued a clarification, that's somehow not worth publishing?

I can kind of see your point.

I couldn't help but imagine him with his hands together, fingertips to fingertips, all Mr. Burns-like, going "excellent" until Nintendo's second statement was released.

VIDEO GAMES

Nintendo has fans, not gay or straight fans, that's the problem what people don't understand. I'm not running around asking people if they are straight or gay either, nor do I ever think about that, if this isn't a subject of discussion.

It's a game, entertainment, not a real life simulator.

If The Sims managed it over 14 years ago, I don't know why Nintendo are having so much trouble.

Do what you think is fun, rather than worry if the voice in the sky will accept your actions.

This is about where I come down. Nintendo's response was tone deaf and likely illustrated a cultural disconnect and lack of understanding, but was the original game and the bad response were in no way "bigoted" or "homophobic." Failing to properly address an issue doesn't make you a bigot. And the result of a overheated rhetoric is just to harden opinions on the other side and generally inflame an otherwise civil, positive conversation.