A new video game from Nintendo lets you have relationships and marriages… but only with people of the opposite gender. And at least one person wants to help change that.
Tomodachi Life, an upcoming 3DS game that’s best described as The Sims meets Animal Crossing with a dash of hallucinogens, revolves around relationships you build with the other virtual characters in your world. Your characters can become friends, date, and even get married — assuming that one is a boy and one is a girl.
Tye Marini, who started a campaign he’s calling “Miiquality”, is fighting to get Nintendo to change their mind about that. He wants marriage equality in Tomodachi.
“Because the game has such a huge focus on relationships, this is a problem for many LGBTQ gamers,” Marini said in an email. “I believe this is a significant issue that should be resolved or at least acknowledged by Nintendo, so I started a movement in hopes to convince Nintendo to add same-sex relationships to Tomodachi Life via an update, or at least ensure that it is included in a future sequel — the Miiquality movement.”
Marini released the above video to get his message out, and created Facebook and Twitter pages for anyone interested in supporting the campaign.
In the Japanese version of Tomodachi Life, which was released last year, male characters could briefly marry one another thanks to a bizarre bug. A few weeks after release, Nintendo patched Tomodachi Life and got rid of the bug, taking gay marriage away with it.
“I believe this movement could not only potentially influence Nintendo’s stance on the issue and future game development, but the video game industry as a whole as well,” said Marini. “If a mass audience Nintendo game like this supported same-sex relationships, it would be a huge step forward for the industry.”
We’ve reached out to Nintendo to see if they’d consider adding gay marriage to Tomodachi Life. The game is out for 3DS on June 6.
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