LGBT advocacy group GLAAD has responded to Nintendo's decision not to allow same sex marriage in Tomodachi Life saying the company's stance is "hurtful" and "behind the times."
The group's spokesperson Wilson Cruz told VentureBeat:
“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. It’s been over a decade since The Sims — the original ‘whimsical and quirky’ life simulator — allowed its users to marry any character they wanted, and many other mainstream and massively popular video games have followed their lead since. Nintendo should do the same.”
The Sims has always allowed same sex marriage, a tradition which will continue with this year's The Sims 4.
In a statement to the Associated Press yesterday, Nintendo commented, “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.”
In December, Nintendo reported that it would be correcting a bug in the game which allowed people to switch the gender of their character imports from the original DS version of the game, thus creating same sex couples.
Nintendo of America product manager Bill Trinen told IGN in April:
“There actually was a misconception over what the issue in December was. There were two things that were going on at the time that essentially were grouped together [incorrectly] as one.
“So it was actually two separate things that got lumped together into one piece of confusion that resulted in people not quite understanding what had gone on.”
While gamers still have the option to switch the genders of their characters, many feel Nintendo are marginalising LGBT players though the company denies that this was their intent.
In a statement, Nintendo commented:
“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's stance has led to a 'Miiquality' campaign with fans requesting the ability for player avatars, or Miis, to marry regardless of gender.
