PaigeFTW: Please Don’t Touch My Body
There is little doubt that the Nintendo DS revolutionized gaming — not only through it ushering in a new renaissance for handheld gaming, but also through its legitimization of touch as a feasible gaming mechanic.
Who can forget the joy of chopping onions in Cooking Mama? The ease of accessing menus in Pokemon Pearl? The interactive map of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass? Sure, we take these things for granted today (they hardly seem remarkable when laid out like this), but once upon a time this was a huge deal.
In the intervening years, though, touch control has kind of, well, stagnated. The PlayStation Vita hoped that a back-panel touchscreen would do … something, but it really hasn’t. So while intuitive menu control has become standard, innovation has gone in a decidedly weirder direction.
Recently there has been some controversy over Fire Emblem: Fates’ “petting” mini-game being removed from the Western release (which hits the streets today, in fact). Simply put, the game once allowed you to use the stylus (or your finger) to gently caress the touchscreen, while eliciting all kinds of blushing and polite murmuring from the various members of your army.
Is it sexual? Yes. Yes it is. It’s impossible to watch without your thoughts uneasily drifting towards its presumed euphemism. Questions of consent bubble beneath the surface: Do your army members realize that you’re summoning them to be stroked? Are they OK with this (they can’t technically refuse you)? Is it an abuse of your power as leader? Is this morally OK? Does it become less of an ethical conundrum because they’re not real?
It may just be a cultural miscommunication, but I can’t help but think that Nintendo made the right call in removing the feature (it remains strictly as a way to “wake up” your spouse, who presumably, by marrying you, agreed that he or she enjoys being aggressively rubbed awake). I would rather touch go quietly into that good night than be used like this.
