Jimquisition: Tomodachi Strife

[xaszatm]

Ah. Odd.

Was that an actual part of the game, or where they just messing around with it?

Based on the Direct that seems to be something you can do in game. You can transfers your current Mii's (and alter their voice) or make female/male Miis (depending on the relationship your going for) and have them look like the opposite sex- transfer them over to the game, adjust the voices accordingly and have yourself a good ol time.

Huh. So does changing the outfits/voices actually change the gender then? Otherwise it sounds like they do have gay marriage, but you have to cross dress for it.

The issue is that even if he was just focusing on the statement it reinforces the increasingly popular and very bad notion that if "If your not for us, your against us". Especially when it comes to clash with other regions and cultures that don't give a shit about Western ideals. In the case of Nintendo they make a game that is only for a Japanese audience. Japan is a place where gay marriage is illegal. As such it comes to no surprise that they don't put that feature in the game.
As for the statement itself the original statement before their "apology" statement was basically the same fucking thing. They weren't going to do it in this installment but they were going to do it in later installments.

I see what you mean, though I think Jim put Nintendo in a fairer light than that. He talked about how Nintendo of America said no to adding it in our version (and yeah I know they do answer to Nintendo in Japan). That at the very least shows they don't want to make such a change for a different audience.

They made changes already to the game for the version to the U.S. form what I've heard (changing the Sumo game into a football one, ect).

So saying it's odd they wouldn't make that change as well. While Japan has no legal gay marriages, it's not as though they are actively trying to not have gay people exist in media (as far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong please).

Like Jim put it. The issue is that the excursion just comes off as ignorant. Coupled with that statement they made, it can easily be seen as something worse. By trying to say neutral with the use of exclusion, they just come off looking bad, despite their intentions.

Also, this isn't the first time a game has chosen to not include gay people. Thus why Jim focuses on how it's still such a taboo to simply include them.

I mean- where the fuck were these people when you couldn't have gay marriage in FE:Awakening? Seriously.

FE is Fire Emblem, right? I've only just recently been made aware of those games. Never played them.
So I can't say much about it.

The comment I heard from someone about it is that each character is individually created to be unique, so people are more forgiving.

But with Tomodachi Life, people believe that since the Mii is suppose to be "you" (Kind of, but not really).

Spoiler: video explains

It comes of as them saying "YOU can play the game, but YOU can't be gay in it." Kind of like how the Mass Effect 3 ending got more hate than the Deus ex: H.R.'s ending. Even though they were similar (and really, Deus ex H.R. was worse ;p).

To answer the top question, no, it didn't change genders at all.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

Nintendo is making Electronic Arts look like progressives. This after I've personally been banned from the EA forums (by an actual EA employee) for publicly condoning gay rights. Anyone who makes EA look good is clearly bigoted. And good luck trying to change my opinion on the matter.

They've had a prominent gay character in the Mario franchise since 1988.
Two, in fact. Who are implied to be dating each other.

You can have your opinion, bro, but it's built on a pretty weak foundation. I did this in another thread and from 1990-1999 I managed to name around 6 gay characters in Nintendo games.
It's more tragic that Nintendo were saying how they were thinking of including it in the next release of the series, which is totally going to happen now, they certainly aren't going to just say 'f*ck it' and keep the series Japan exclusive.

-snip-

YOU get all the internet cookies I can find for actually finding 1st party sources. It is a pretty sad fucking turn of events when IGN is more journalistically intact than Jim.

 

[Dragonbums]

Huh. So does changing the outfits/voices actually change the gender then? Otherwise it sounds like they do have gay marriage, but you have to cross dress for it.

It doesn't change the gender. The male sounding and dressing Mii is still a female in code. But on the outside she looks and sounds like a dude (Although I'm sure the particular actions may still have female attributes)

I see what you mean, though I think Jim put Nintendo in a fairer light than that. He talked about how Nintendo of America said no to adding it in our version (and yeah I know they do answer to Nintendo in Japan). That at the very least shows they don't want to make such a change for a different audience.

But the game is also a year old and Nintendo Treehouse do not have the time or resources to make such a big change like that in such a short time span.

They made changes already to the game for the version to the U.S. form what I've heard (changing the Sumo game into a football one, ect).

Those are basic translation adjustments. The thing with gay couples is a lot more than that. Unless you want them to do a half ass job they would have to recode the game (so that horrid bug doesn't rear it's ugly head again.) add in different dialogue, scenarios, actions, etc. to make it good. Again, that is simply something NoA doesn't have time for. Their resources would be better spent simply doing it for the next installment of the franchise.

So saying it's odd they wouldn't make that change as well. While Japan has no legal gay marriages, it's not as though they are actively trying to not have gay people exist in media (as far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong please).

It would be really naive of any of us to think that nobody would have any problem with the game had they of allowed both gay and straight couples but only the straight couples could marry.

Like Jim put it. The issue is that the excursion just comes off as ignorant. Coupled with that statement they made, it can easily be seen as something worse. By trying to say neutral with the use of exclusion, they just come off looking bad, despite their intentions.

It only came off as bad for people looking for something to complain about in the first place. The statement could of been worded differently, but bigotry and anti homosexuality isn't the first thing that comes to my mind.

Also, this isn't the first time a game has chosen to not include gay people. Thus why Jim focuses on how it's still such a taboo to simply include them.

The same could also be said for skin tones as well. Animal crossing has yet to allow players to be completely black or dark skinned since inception and yet I haven't heard a peep from the ethnic minority group call Nintendo racists.

FE is Fire Emblem, right? I've only just recently been made aware of those games. Never played them.
So I can't say much about it.

The comment I heard from someone about it is that each character is individually created to be unique, so people are more forgiving.

Yup. FE= Fire Emblem

But you can still basically pair up anybody with anybody. Even ones you don't think would necessarily go together realistically.

But with Tomodachi Life, people believe that since the Mii is suppose to be "you" (Kind of, but not really).

Spoiler: video explains

I see that more of a huge oversight than outright malice on my part. But like I said, the Japanese fanbase found a stupidly easy work around for the entire thing that it was basically a non issue for them.

Kind of like how the Mass Effect 3 ending got more hate than the Deus ex: H.R.'s ending. Even though they were similar (and really, Deus ex H.R. was worse ;p).

A lot of the anger came from the fact that Casey Hudson stated that the endings before release where going to be the exact opposite of...well..what we got.

Also DLC milking.

 

[Dragonbums]

Two, in fact. Who are implied to be dating each other.

Try married. It's clear that Yoshi like it and put the ring on it.

YOU get all the internet cookies I can find for actually finding 1st party sources. It is a pretty sad fucking turn of events when IGN is more journalistically intact than Jim.

I'm gonna try to give a really big benefit of the doubt and state that he made this video long before all the facts showed up...but that's pushing it. Honestly the article in question came out pretty early in the controversy and I expected Jim and others prior to the initial flames to look into it as opposed to ignoring it and fanning the flames.

It's not like the article is obscure either. The thing has like over 400 fucking comments on it.

 

[Olas]

Just checked again and, yeah, unless I'm missing or misunderstanding something, this is how the whole thing went:

- Nintendo releases the game with the gay marriage thing
- The devs patch it away because it wasn't intentional
- The press starts going on about Nintendo being against homosexuality
- Nintendo responds, saying "this isn't what we were trying to say. We were just fixing a glitch"

Basically, the fault lies with whoever moron thought that patching gay relationship out of the game was necessary

This would be true if the glitch simply allowed gay relationships as an option and only did that, but that's not how it worked. The glitch caused imported Mii character data to become scrambled, causing characters to be randomly reassigned relationships, same sex relationships being a possible permutation. It wasn't something players had any control over, and it also affected things like marriage status. Also, because the game was not programmed to handle these types of relationships it meant that male characters in same sex relationships could get pregnant. Most importantly though, this bug made it impossible for players to save the game or continue past a certain point.

In short, not patching the game would have meant leaving it in an irresponsibly broken state. There was really no choice in the matter for Nintendo. You can get mad at them for not choosing to include same sex relationships to begin with[footnote]Although this was true of the previous iteration, and did not cause controversy[/footnote], and for the whole PR disaster later, but the glitch and it's subsequent patching is not a meaningful indication of anything.

You know, it's funny how almost none of these details were included in any of the news stories covering this whole debacle. I guess a story about Nintendo mundanely fixing a bug in their game wouldn't have drawn as many clicks.

 

[carnex]

As he does when he can't write episode based on facts he reinterprets someone's words and then writes about that.

Nintendo didn't make social commentary. Just because they didn't include it does not it make it social commentary. They just didn't program it in. Just like they didn't write in bestiality, diseases, soccer, boxing, space exploration. Now you are in your right to ask for it and to say you wont buy it because of it. But shame someone just because he didn't enable what is important to you is just as damn bigoted as those who prevent homosexuals from using their services.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion no matter how wrong or right it is. And as much as it hurts someone one is in his own right to put out product in state that that one sees fit to be judged by public as long as it doesn't break any laws. Just because it's against what you stand for doesn't give you right to judge person and to shame it into submission. You want the right of free speech? Then respect it for others. Be critical, don't shame. It's just a common sense.

The way you twisted the meaning of the words makes you as bad as any extremist out there.

P.S. As far as I can find info, putting same sex relationships in the game (or fixing the glitch as you ignorantly state) would mean redoing a whole lot of code and months of work to address new relationship possibility. Sorry, but someone thought it wasn't cost efficient, and I would have to agree on that. This is business after all, not government.

 

[Pebkio]

What it takes to allow marriage in a video game: Specific coding and maybe an animated extra scene with placement markers in a character file.

What it takes to allow marriage but also exclude same sex couplings: The same stuff as before + some extra code that blocks the events under certain circumstances because you don't want gays to get married in your game.

Which one of those is taking up more time and energy?

 

[xaszatm]

What it takes to allow marriage in a video game: Specific coding and maybe an animated extra scene with placement markers in a character file.

What it takes to allow marriage but also exclude same sex couplings: The same stuff as before + some extra code that blocks the events under certain circumstances because you don't want gays to get married in your game.

Which one of those is taking up more time and energy?

And you have proof of this where? Have you even bothered to look at the game or are you using your knowledge of other games cloud you to the code of this one. Tomadachi Life is different from most other Sims games in that you do not have complete control over the character. You literally just throw Mii's with different personalities into the game and see how they act out. The entire game is based around the various Miis interacting with one another, going on dates, forming relationships, marrying, and having children. And you're saying that it will be an easy fix? Care to provide proof?

 

[DrOswald]

Fact is, it's entirely up to Nintendo what they put into their games and if they don't want homosexuality in their product it's their right. It's not a hate speech, it's just a product.

THAT.SAID.

It's an absolutely abhorrent thing to do and it feels completely arbitrary. I never imagined Nintendo having a particular stance against homosexuality and the fact they apologised probably indicates they dont. Surely someone at Nintendo would have realised this would hurt sales from gay people and gay friendly people?

Does anyone else think it's odd that Nintendo say they can't change the game now when they already patched it to "fix" the gay bug? Can't they just patch the patch?

There was never a bug that allowed same sex marriage and Nintendo never patch such a thing out. An idiot who thought he could read Japanese mistranslated patch notes to bring us this misinformation. Jim failed to fact check.

 

[MarlonBlazed]

Then correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Boycotting the game the OPPOSITE effect Miiquality wanted?

It was definitely the opposite of what Tye wanted in his Miiquality campaign video.

My favourite part of this whole thing is how everyone seems to just ignore you two on every article about Tomodachi... Did I say my favourite? I meant the most disheartening.

 

[RA92]

Okay homosexuality has been done but does this game have bi/trans/beast/pedo support these are other maligned minority's that need inclusion and vocal support!


/s

It is silly that people push for representation of every demographic everywhere. The token black person / asian is not solving inequality and it often looks forced.

It's rather funny how on every topic on homosexuality, there's always someone bringing in pedophilia or bestiality, as if the two are equivalent. And by funny I mean exhausting.

And no one's asking for token representation. They're asking for sincere representation. And if people don't kick up a fuss, the status quo will remain unchanged.

 

[direkiller]

Ah. Odd.

Was that an actual part of the game, or where they just messing around with it?

Based on the Direct that seems to be something you can do in game. You can transfers your current Mii's (and alter their voice) or make female/male Miis (depending on the relationship your going for) and have them look like the opposite sex- transfer them over to the game, adjust the voices accordingly and have yourself a good ol time.

But Jim wasn't making that the whole focus of the episode and I'm sure he'd be happy to be corrected.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be upset. It's reasonable to be, when people are using incorrect information. Not just because it's annoying, but also because it makes the people using it look bad.

I know it can be hard, but ya got to try and keep a level head.
"Ya catch more flies with honey than ya do with salt." As they say. ;p

The issue is that even if he was just focusing on the statement it reinforces the increasingly popular and very bad notion that if "If your not for us, your against us". Especially when it comes to clash with other regions and cultures that don't give a shit about Western ideals. In the case of Nintendo they make a game that is only for a Japanese audience. Japan is a place where gay marriage is illegal. As such it comes to no surprise that they don't put that feature in the game.
As for the statement itself the original statement before their "apology" statement was basically the same fucking thing. They weren't going to do it in this installment but they were going to do it in later installments.

I mean- where the fuck were these people when you couldn't have gay marriage in FE:Awakening? Seriously.

"only for Japanese audience"
bull, Nintendo had always planed a localisation of Tomodachi Life, as such there audience was more then just Japan, it was the world.
This is no different then the problems Ocarina of time and Pokemon had which produced changes in all language versions. If you are making a product for half the world, you should alienate as few of your target audience as you can.

"FE:Awakening"
Fire Emblem is not a simulation of me in a fantasy world. Apples to oranges.
Not every game that has relaitonships needs gay options. If the charter is not gay he is not gay there is nothing wrong with that. If the game is about simulating real life relationships in a weird world, then it should include it.

 

[PunkRex]

I know it's a serious topic but I always laugh at the mental image of a gay fella fighting for his right to marry another man, winning, and after a few months thinking "WHY THE F*CK DID I FIGHT FOR THIS SH*T AGAIN!?".

 

[Pebkio]

As he does when he can't write episode based on facts he reinterprets someone's words and then writes about that.

Nintendo didn't make social commentary. Just because they didn't include it does not it make it social commentary. They just didn't program it in.

You don't know much about programming, do you? You have to code the process of marriage in it's most basic form or you're going to take up a lot of space recoding marriage after marriage after marriage. First you program just one marriage function and then then extra code is written to block the event triggers in situations or settings that you don't want. The event triggers have to be present in each human character because the player could be any gender. Either they wrote code to deactivate the triggers depending on which player character gender is chosen OR they wrote code to deny access to same-gender trigger options (or wrote the inverse as a code that only allows access to opposite-gender trigger options).

So they didn't just "not program [homosexuality] in"... they had to actively program homosexuality out.

 

[veloper]

One of Jim's better episodes I think.

He's still preaching to the choir a bit, but we still have a handful of social conservatives here and it's a message worth saying.
I cannot care about some sad waifu/husbandro game, but focusing on the bigger issue was a good move.

 

[Dragonbums]

bull, Nintendo had always planed a localisation of Tomodachi Life,

No they didn't. They only planned on doing it this year. By this time Tomodachi Life was still an entire year old. If you seriously think that a large company with multiple projects to work on would still have the dev team of a one year old game intact then your sorely mistaken.

"FE:Awakening"
Fire Emblem is not a simulation of me in a fantasy world. Apples to oranges.
Not every game that has relaitonships needs gay options. If the charter is not gay he is not gay there is nothing wrong with that. If the game is about simulating real life relationships in a weird world, then it should include it.

So it's okay to "exclude gays" as some people have claimed Nintendo did in this instance, but it's not okay in other instances?
You gotta set guidelines somewhere. It's not apples to oranges. They still promote a feature where you can romance other players. However you are only able to romance male/female relationships. You can't do homosexual relationships. That means that Nintendo is excluding gay relationships. Which also means people should be pissed off about it. But so far nobody has given two fucks.

 

[Grabehn]

I just came to the realization that this didn't have anything to do with "Tamagotchi" which is what I heard every single person say in every single video I've heard about this stuff, and I now get why there were only Miis on screen.

On the topic though... I just can't seem to get myself to care about this whole thing, I mean, they didn't want that in their game, so be it, Japanese people being considered "close-minded" and making a comment on a non-issue that a ton of people got startled about? SUCH NEWS, SO WOW.

 

[Pebkio]

And you have proof of this where? Have you even bothered to look at the game or are you using your knowledge of other games cloud you to the code of this one. Tomadachi Life is different from most other Sims games in that you do not have complete control over the character. You literally just throw Mii's with different personalities into the game and see how they act out. The entire game is based around the various Miis interacting with one another, going on dates, forming relationships, marrying, and having children. And you're saying that it will be an easy fix? Care to provide proof?

Of course they won't let me see the code. But which do you think is more likely:

One set of relationship-controlling codes that applies to everyone with an extra set to halt trigger events under certain circumstances.
...or...
A massively large set of identical relationship-controlling codes for each potential pairing of each potential Mii (as long as they're opposite gender).

---

Well? Which one of those is going to take up more space than most console harddrives have access to?

 

[mjharper]

I laughed so hard at the 'prologue' (I think you meant 'epilogue', Jim) that I had to explain the whole story to my girlfriend.

Also, loved Jim's channelling of a British politician in there