I’ve been seeing this subject pop up more and more. I’ve been trying to not really get into it, but as someone who is really looking forward to the game and seeing people saying how they want to protest it because of this, I kind of felt the need to. Firstly, I just want to say Calm down. Just stop, pause, and think about it for a second.
The only thing that protesting and boycotting the game is going to do is make it incredibly likely the game will never come over again and they will never have a chance to fix it. It’s not like the feature was properly in the game and then removed–the “feature” was a glitch that could actually break the save data/game file. A literal game breaking glitch is not a simple “few lines of code” fix. It would take quite a bit to fix it. And whatever it is that caused it would need to be looked into to make sure it didn’t happen and how the game is made, it may not be possible right now.
That said, I think Nintendo’s Press Release on trying not to make a statement with the game was a problem as then no matter what is said, it does look like a Political statement even if it’s not. I think if they focused more on the fact that it’s a glitch, it wouldn’t have gotten blown up so much. Nintendo DID apologize though and I don’t think they meant for it to ever get blown up like this. They DO want to make it better. They may not be able to right now and with this game, but they do care.
While I understand people are upset, the fact that it’s not there isn’t that surprising. There are so many games where you can only play as one gender and games where you can’t even choose your skin color and even stuff like that has never been blown up to this proportion. I mean, look at Pokemon–we only finally got to customize our trainers in the mainstream Pokemon games with X/Y–before that, it was always a pre-set. And the fact that we even got to choose our skin color? I mean, Animal Crossing still doesn’t let you choose a skin tone–you have to just sit on the beach/island for hours on end and keep going back when it starts to fade.
The game may be a simulation game–but that doesn’t make it perfect. I mean, Style Savvy is one of my personal favorite games and I know many guys who also play it, but they can only make girl characters. And I’ve picked up more than a few shooter games and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get frustrated when all the characters I can customize/play as happen to be male.
And while the game is a simulation game and has emphasis on marriage, the main thing is the fact that it’s supposed to be about all the silly antics these Miis end up getting into. It’s like how Harvest Moon has a marriage emphasis, but the main point of the game is farming.
Everyone has the right to be upset. As I said, I do get upset when I pick up a game and see a giant cast of male characters with no female option, but I wouldn’t turn down a game that I still think looks enjoyable–instead, I’d pick it up and hope that maybe they’d be able to fix that with the next one. Every game has something to learn but I think it’s a bit of an overreaction to protest on something that they can’t do anything about right now.