She can date a guy in a panda suit, but not another girl Nintendo has ruled out allowing gamers' characters to be gay in a game which is meant to simulate life. A 23-year-old gay gamer from Arizona, Tye Marini, has led a campaign urging the gaming giant to add same-sex relationship options to upcoming English versions of the hand-held Nintendo 3DS game Tomodachi Life. The game features personalised avatars, known as Miis, living on a virtual island where they can do everything from shopping to dating. "I want to be able to marry my real-life fiance's Mii, but I can't do that," Marini says in an online video. "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." The Sims is among the games which embraces gay romance However Nintendo says it “never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of Tomodachi Life”. "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,” it says in a statement. "We have heard and thoughtfully considered all the responses," Nintendo continues. "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 organisation." The Sims, Fable, Dragon Age II and The Elder Scrolls are among games which allow players to date same-sex characters, while Grand Theft Auto IV, The Last of Us and Gone Home, have included gay characters.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 8th May 2014 - 9:38am