Nintendo's rejection of same-sex relationships in its life-simulation game Tomodachi Life has resulted in an online campaign to change the video game company's decision.
Nintendo, the popular video game company, declined to add same-sex relationships in its life-simulation game "Tomodachi Life." The publisher of legendary game franchises such as "The Legend of Zelda" and "Mario Bros." said gamers wanting to engage in romantic activities with characters of the same sex will not be available in English editions of the social simulation game. The decision sparked an online media campaign last month seeking virtual equality for the game's characters depicting real people.
Tomodachi Life is a game about friends, life and relations featuring a cast of "Mii" characters as personalized avatars of real people living on a virtual island. Gamers can populate the island with Mii characters of family and friends. The game, which was first released in Japan last year, is one of the best selling games on Nintendo's 3DS gaming console. The company said last December that it had already sold 1.83 million copies of the game. But the controversy started after a Nintendo fan from Arizona launched a campaign last week to allow same-sex relations within the game.
"I want to be able to marry my real-life fiancé's Mii, but I can't do that," Tye Marini, a 23-year old gay gamer said in the video shared on Vimeo, AP reports. "My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or my fiancé's Mii or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it."
The #Miiquality campaign has received favorable response from people and has been reported widely in gaming blogs and online forums. But the response from the Japan-based video game company hasn't changed, which issued a statement to theAssociated Press saying it "never intended to make any form of social commentary" with the launch of the game.
"Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of 'Tomodachi Life,'" Nintendo of America Inc. said in a statement, AP reports. "The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that 'Tomodachi Life' was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary."
The company also rebuffed rumors about letting male characters marry other male characters from the game before Nintendo patched the game to remove the options. In a statement released to IGN, the company said the reports were based on a misconception.
"There were two things that were going on at the time that essentially were grouped together as one," product marketing manager Bill Trinen told IGN, Monday. "The first, that there was a patch. And what the patch was fixing was actually a data leak ... The other thing that was going on was that quite a few Japanese players were dressing up Mii characters. Essentially they would create a male version of a Mii character and assign their gender as female, and that was how the two males were able to have a baby."
