Nintendo takes stand: Players are not allowed to create gay characters in its games

Nintendo has formally shot down a request made by a fan of the video game conglomerate, who asked the company to update its code to a life simulation video game so as to allow avatars of the same sex to marry one another. 

The request has turned into a bit of a campaign, and is headed by Tye Marini, a gay 23-year-old fan of Nintendo and its life simulation game, “Tomodachi Life.”

He wants Nintendo to allow same-sex relationships between characters in the game, which are modeled after real people, so he can marry his Mii (his personal avatar) with his fiancé’s Mii.

“I want to be able to marry my real-life fiancé’s Mii, but I can't do that,” Marini told the Associated Press.

“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.”

In response, Nintendo said it “never intended to make any form of social commentary” with its “Tomodachi Life” game.

“The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation,” Nintendo of America Inc., said in a statement.

“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.”

Marini, as quoted by the AP, responded by saying that same-sex relationships were “more of an issue for this game because the characters are supposed to be a representation of your real life.”

“You import your personalized characters into the game. You name them. You give them a personality. You give them a voice. They just can't fall in love if they're gay.”

To that regard, Nintendo cited technical difficulties with updating the game, saying “the ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan.”

“That game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan.”

So, for now at least, the company will not update its game. It did, however, conclude its response by leaving the door open to future discussions on the matter.

“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.”

Story via bbc.com