Nintedo has no plans of yielding to pressure from LGBT groups and supporters who are calling for the inclusion of gay characters in the game-maker's upcoming 3DS game "Tomodachi Life."
Originally released in Japan, where same-sex marriage is illegal, the new game is a life-simulator series likened to "The Sims" and "Animal Crossing." Players can personalize their Mii or their avatars, build their virtual lives and form virtual relationships with other characters. They can also make friends, date, get married and even have children - as long as one of them is a boy and the other is a girl.
"Nintendo never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of 'Tomodachi Life,'" says the company in a statement to the AP. "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."
Last month, 23-year-old Nintendo fan Tye Marini launched #Miiquality, a campaign that calls for Nintendo and its U.S. division to include same-sex relationships in the American version of "Tomodachi Life."
"I want to be able to marry my real-life fiancé's Mii, but I can't do that. My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or fiancé's Mii, or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it," says [video] the Mesa, Arizona-based Marini.
Although Marini is not calling for a boycott of the still-to-come role-playing game, he is urging supporters to post the hashtag #Miiquality on Twitter and Facebook and to write to Nintendo to ask for the company to include same-sex marriage in the English edition of "Tomodachi Life."
It took a year for developers to localize the game, meaning they spent a while tweaking the likenesses and voices of the characters to suit the customs of a different locale. However, Nintendo seems adamant on not changing the code on same-sex relationships for its English version slated for the U.S. and Europe, where same-sex marriage has already been approved in some places.
"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," the company says.
Other life-simulation games such as "The Sims," "Fable" and "The Elder Scrolls," which were made by English-speaking developers, allow same-sex relationships between its characters. A number of narrative-driven titles, including "Grand Theft Auto IV," "The Last of Us" and "Gone" also support homo- and bi-sexual characters.
"Tomodachi Life" for Nintendo 3DS will be released in the U.S. on June 6.
