Why do we play videogames? Do we play them to escape reality, or to take our reality to another level? Maybe it is to achieve something in those worlds that we are unable to do within the constraints of our day-to-day lives. Slaying dragons, marrying our loved one, planting seeds. Those three are parts of my life that I am unable to achieve now… dragons are my number one!
Tye Marini is engaged, he is 23 and resides in Mesa, Arizona. You could call it Black Mesa due to its backward outlook on same-sex marriage. That is correct, Tye is engaged to a guy. He loves him, he wants to marry this fine gentleman. He wanted to achieve this in Tomodachi Life, a life simulator from Nintendo. Sadly, though, even after creating an online petition, he isn’t any closer to that reality.
Nintendo have responded to his very polite campaign.
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.
Nintendo never refers to Tomodachi Life as a life simulator, so why did I? It’s because I see more and more gamers, journalists, and game developers referring to games in this way.
Google defines the word simulator as the following:
- a machine designed to provide a realistic imitation of the controls and operation of a vehicle, aircraft, or other complex system, used for training purposes.
“a driving simulator”
- a program enabling a computer to execute programs written for a different operating system.
noun: simulator program; plural noun: simulator programs
Now, I do not take these definitions as gospel. It’s pretty clear to me that a game such as Tomodachi Life was never meant to be The Sims or Mass Effect. That doesn’t stop me feeling for Tye Marini–he wants to be able to marry his fiancé in any way possible.
My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or my fiance’s Mii or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it.
To show his character, no pun intended, Tye Marini has gone on to express that he doesn’t want anyone to boycott Tomodachi Life. He expresses his wish for an update to the game, or if that isn’t possible then he’d like to see it in future installments in the serious.
Nintendo responded:
We will continue to listen and think about the feedback. We’re using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization. We have been looking to broaden our approach to development whenever possible as we put all our energy into continuing to develop fun games that will surprise and delight players.
Nintendo have handled this very well. The divide between the east and west is used a lot to prove points, but when ‘united’ states can’t agree upon something together, then how can we expect others to do so?
If you would like to support Tye Marini’s campaign by using #Miiquality on Facebook and Twitter.
