Zero Punctuation: Tomodachi Life - Nintendo Life Simulator

[Pebkio]

Oh this isn't a video game. It's a screensaver that requires input from you on occasion. It's like if that old maze thing people used to think was so cool had a pop up whenever it was done exploring each dead end to ask if you'd like it to move on to the next level that looks exactly the same.

 

[Coolblue]

This again, huh? I find it strange how few people are willing to take the time to acknowledge the fact that this game wasn't crafted with Western sensibilities in mind. Foreign markets are not the primary audience. It was made in Japan, for Japanese people. A country where gay marriage isn't legal and hardly spoken about.

EXACTLY! And the fact that people are willing to fully ignore this and try and tear down Nintendo is just fucking garbage. Yeah, keep tearing away at Nintendo for every little god damn slip up that they fucking make after they've gotten your message. See how much more money and respect and shit that'll get them once they start following what you said and are making themselves better for everyone, and after your hands are bloody little stumps from STILL scratching at the same old point when they've already taken care of that point and you still haven't let up about it. The hate for Nintendo just needs to stop. Because they are listening, and they ARE trying to do better. Everyone needs to just back the fuck up and let Nintendo do their job.

Also, on a completely-unrelated-but-sorta-related-note, anyone else disappointed that Yahtzee didn't bring up the box art? I mean I thought that warranted a joke/mention all by itself.

 

[Erttheking]

Wait, wasn't the reason behind the removal of gay relationships due to the fact that the same part of the program which ran them also caused save file corruption?

Yeah, but that thing was actually an exploit. Homosexuality was never in the original game to begin with, which some people took issue with.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Snip

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/Woolseyism

If you're going to ship a game for a different country, then you need to put effort into researching the demographic of that country and change it to better fit that. Persona 4 for example had quite a few things that wouldn't make sense to a non-Japaneese gamer taken out by the translation team and even slipped in a few jokes for western gamers, such as the main character reading not-Twilight and him commenting on how painful it is. This is also why translation try to ease away from romantic relationships involving cousins and little kids, because we in the west get weirded out by that. Not to mention, a huge chunk of Nintendo's profits come from foreign countries. The Metroid series is loved in the west but gets a lukewarm reaction in their home country. Only in the past few years did they try to change up the series to appeal to the Japanese.

And I think we remember how that went.

Spoiler

http://pics.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1329334438-00.jpg

 

[Foolery]

snip

Pfft, TV tropes? Really? Get outta here with that junk. That's like quoting Urban Dictionary. Furthermore, Nintendo is lazy as hell, they even stated, ?The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan,?

At least they wanted people to have a functional product, it was patched to remedy a game breaking and save-corrupting, bug.

 

[Something Amyss]

In some cases its true but in this case there's a bit more too it.

In this case, it seems like that "more to it" was superfluous.

 

[ionveau]

Lost all respect for you, It is sad that saying sodomites are sexual deviants that should not be given a public spot light especially in CHILDREN'S GAMES is now considered edgy, i have been put off by your constant whining about "racism" and now this. you jumped the shark my friend.

 

[jimmiusmaximus]

This was interesting to watch because the points were made based on a incorrect initial premise, that excluding same sex relationships was less work than adding them (wrong as it is to actually exclude the option). Anyone who actually makes games would tell you this as there are more factors to consider so more if statements and testing to deal with, and its odd to have to point this out as the person making the point makes games himself!

wait... you even said so yourself. HE makes games. Do you? I mean, I honestly have no clue what to believe at this point. Actual developers like Yahtzee seem to say different things to people on the Internet who have never made a game, or CLAIM to know how to write games. It just doesn't make sense. I have yet to see an Actual credible developer who has published games turn around and say 'it would have taken more to include this', because that doesn't make sense. Are computers strange Catholic schooled self-aware machines who a. know what a relationship is, and b. need to be told that it can heppen between not just a man and a woman? I'm not a programmer, so I honestly have no clue at this point.

 

[jimmiusmaximus]

I fail to see a problem with excluding LGBTQAQ. I'm obese. Just like 50% of americans and mexicans or 30% of the germans. How many games are there that let me play as a fat guy?
Ask any fat person how they are treated from others. I don't think LGBTQAQ are treated worse then fat people. Am i supposed to protest now until all games include fat people?

captcha: milk was a bad choice
Realy? Only if it is the milk of mice.

Well done you clever man. Have a cookie. Such clever satire beyond the levels of Yahtzee Himself. Oh wait. Fat people ARE in Tomodachi life. there's a slider when you make the Miis.

 

[Erttheking]

snip

Pfft, TV tropes? Really? Get outta here with that junk. That's like quoting Urban Dictionary. Furthermore, Nintendo is lazy as hell, they even stated, ?The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan,?

At least they wanted people to have a functional product, it was patched to remedy a game breaking and save-corrupting, bug.

I will "get out of here with that junk" when you disprove the legiminancy of the concept.

Well if they're just lazy, why can't people criticize them?

Making a stable game us not praise worthy, it should be the minimal standard.

 

[ionveau]

This was interesting to watch because the points were made based on a incorrect initial premise, that excluding same sex relationships was less work than adding them (wrong as it is to actually exclude the option). Anyone who actually makes games would tell you this as there are more factors to consider so more if statements and testing to deal with, and its odd to have to point this out as the person making the point makes games himself!

wait... you even said so yourself. HE makes games. Do you? I mean, I honestly have no clue what to believe at this point. Actual developers like Yahtzee seem to say different things to people on the Internet who have never made a game, or CLAIM to know how to write games. It just doesn't make sense. I have yet to see an Actual credible developer who has published games turn around and say 'it would have taken more to include this', because that doesn't make sense. Are computers strange Catholic schooled self-aware machines who a. know what a relationship is, and b. need to be told that it can heppen between not just a man and a woman? I'm not a programmer, so I honestly have no clue at this point.

Using your logic he does not have a right to say anything until he makes a 3D game, 2D games are incredibly simple to make without engines, as for your point, if the math behind the game expects something to happen but it wont the game will crash, for example if two Sodomites form a union and for example if the mother of the sodomite wants to send his bride a gift the game may crash due to not having the female sex in the union

Computer software is very fragile, the slightest mistake on the side of the programmer will crash the game, Also i would never buy my child anything that promotes un-natural sexuality, especially sodomy, dont think only Christians dislike this trend of propaganda jews and Muslims are all shunning those that promote sodomy especially to their children, only the atheists are foolish enough to take everything they hear on TV at face value

 

[DrOswald]

This was interesting to watch because the points were made based on a incorrect initial premise, that excluding same sex relationships was less work than adding them (wrong as it is to actually exclude the option). Anyone who actually makes games would tell you this as there are more factors to consider so more if statements and testing to deal with, and its odd to have to point this out as the person making the point makes games himself!

wait... you even said so yourself. HE makes games. Do you? I mean, I honestly have no clue what to believe at this point. Actual developers like Yahtzee seem to say different things to people on the Internet who have never made a game, or CLAIM to know how to write games. It just doesn't make sense. I have yet to see an Actual credible developer who has published games turn around and say 'it would have taken more to include this', because that doesn't make sense. Are computers strange Catholic schooled self-aware machines who a. know what a relationship is, and b. need to be told that it can heppen between not just a man and a woman? I'm not a programmer, so I honestly have no clue at this point.

Actual programmer here. Not a professional game maker (I am an amateur game maker), but an actual programmer who has created software that has actually been published.

It would have, without a doubt, been harder to include homosexuality than not. This is because of the nature of the game. The problem is not in allowing homosexuality, but in limiting sexuality to a preference. This is important because the characters are not directly controlled by the player. They basically go around and do their own thing. They decide who they shack up with. So you would have to put limiting checks in the game to prevent a gay person from shacking up with the opposite sex and a strait person from shacking up with the same sex. This means extra variables, extra checks, extra menu items to select sexuality, etc.

From a coding perspective this would be a significant increase in complexity of code but not prohibitively so if it was planned from the very start. Going back and putting it in later would probably be next to impossible. It is unlikely that a simple patch could fix it, some of the relationship code would most likely have to be rewritten extensively, along with any gender specific code in the game, and I am sure the event tree planning code would have to be rewritten from scratch.

From a game design perspective adding homosexuality and bisexuality is far more problematic. If you go the "everyone is strait" option then you can make certain assumptions about gender. You can base events purely on gender because there is only 1 sexuality pool that everyone is part of. With homosexuality you now have 3 sexuality pools, and in some cases people can belong to more than one pool (bisexuality).

This makes the plan the event trees far more complex. Working around 3 sexuality pools with blurred lines is far more difficult than working around 1 sexuality pool.

Adding homosexuality to Tomodachi Life would certainly not have been trivial.

 

[Oskuro]

It would have, without a doubt, been harder to include homosexuality than not. This is because of the nature of the game. The problem is not in allowing homosexuality, but in limiting sexuality to a preference.

Unless you just let everyone hook up with everyone, which means you just take away the "gender" variable and all the code relating to sorting characters by it, which I suspect is what is being suggested.


I think the whole issue has probably more to do with the acceptance (or more precisely, lack of) of homosexuality in japan, than with Nintendo itself.



Also.... X is black?

I don't know why, but when reading books I tend to always miss something about character descriptions and imagine them on my own, hence why I'm surprised by this, as I was surprised by Snape not being a gnarly old man (I originally imagined him like the wizard from Fantasia, the one to whom Mickey is an apprentice)

Oh, I imagined X as a tall well-built redhead in a suit. Beats me why.

 

[Ikaruga33]

They had homosexual relationships but they screwed up peoples save data. I wish that people would actually do some further research when it comes to this sort of stuff.

 

[DrOswald]

It would have, without a doubt, been harder to include homosexuality than not. This is because of the nature of the game. The problem is not in allowing homosexuality, but in limiting sexuality to a preference.

Unless you just let everyone hook up with everyone, which means you just take away the "gender" variable and all the code relating to sorting characters by it, which I suspect is what is being suggested.

Which might be the only solution to the issue that is stupider than excluding homosexuality. Then you are just making everyone omnisexual which, frankly, is going to put off too many people. There are plenty of people out their who don't care if there is homosexuality in a game. They can just not choose the homosexual option and it's good. But I can guarantee they would not appreciate homosexuality forced on to them.

And this still would not solve the problem of forcing heterosexuality on homosexual people. You solve nothing and everyone walks away mad. Except for the omnisexuals, I guess.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

one of the funniest ZP's i've seen in awhile. i always sorta LQTM, but i was actually laughing out loud at this one.

 

[Toblo1]

They had homosexual relationships but they screwed up peoples save data. I wish that people would actually do some further research when it comes to this sort of stuff.

It's a bit more complicated than that. What actually happened was that Nintendo was fixing a data transfer issue that rendered the game unplayable when transferring Mii characters from the Japan-only Nintendo DS installment to the 3DS one. The gay marriages are due to people creating Miis that look male and assigning them female.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I now want to make a 'gay' sock puppet for my kid. That looks hilarious.

Mr Cockface: He has a 'normal' face down there right? What else could it be?

 

[Halla Burrica]

Oh Yathzee, you poor misinformed former husk of a human being. Like so many others, you have no idea about what you're talking about because all you did was take a quick look at some Internet pages that thought they "called out" Nintendo being homophobic and let that be it, no deeper look into the case or anything. And thus, you reached a horribly misinformed conclusion.

Here's what actually happened: Tomodachi Life was an installment in a franchise popular in Japan but not released anywhere else. Nintendo thought: "Hey, maybe the kids and some adults will have fun with this too! Let's port it!" and decided to do just that. All was going fine and well, until a certain report popped up that made the "white knights of social justice" mount their horses and cry for Nintendo's head on a stake. The report apparently said that the Japanese version allowed same-sex marriage and that it would be an excluded option for the rest of the world, and that sparked huge controversy and rightfully so. Except the report DIDN'T say that, there was a translation issue. There was A BUG in the Japanese version that made it possible to have people of the same gender marry, but which would also make the game crash, THAT IS WHY THEY CHANGED IT. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE HAVING THEIR GAME CRASH.

But the damage was already done. The Internet cried out in anger, they demanded the includusion of same sex marriage for a game that was already done and was just getting some tweaks so other audiences could play it. It was way too late to make that change, so it wasn't done because it couldn't be done not because Nintendo is homophobic like SOME people like to assume. And before SOME people ask why same sex marriage wasn't included in the series before, and claim not including that makes them homophobic, it's more likely a matter of demand. If the Japenese audiences (those who the games in the series were made for to begin with)had wanted same-sex marriage in the Tomodachi games, it would probably be there already.

 

[Rpground]

So...what was the point of mentioning all the homosexual things? Did I miss some huge convergence of stupid somewhere on the internet saying something about this game "restricting" homosexuality?