Tomodachi Life and Surveillance
May 12, 2026
Lately I have been dabbling in the latest Nintendo craze, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. (rest assured that nintendo did not receive payment from me for this - I will not be giving them money until, at minimum, they cease Gary Bowser's wage garnishment.) All in all, it's been silly fun. It really captures a feeling I haven't felt in a while, something like playing-with-dolls. Creating Miis based off of your friends, original characters, or characters from other medias, and just setting them loose together and seeing how they interact and respond to the various situations the game has, all proves to be pretty entertaining. There's lots of customization in this title - the mii maker is at its most robust form ever, even before you get to face-painting letting you draw practically anything onto the mii's face.
As you may already know, I'm a sucker for dress up games.
You can make custom food, treasure, pets, and more to give your miis, and there's plenty of existing treats to choose from besides. I've seen a lot of people making food out of things like cigarettes. Best of all, there's no content filter - the game opts out of any online play in favor of this, and I think it's much better off for it.
They let the miis say fuck!
But as I play on, in between guessing which mii is represented by a silhouette or which food is pixelated, checking the shops every day to see what's in stock, and denying mii's requests to build a fifteenth seesaw on the beach, something bothers me. One small, overlookable detail, scratching at the back of my mind the entire time. Upon the default house of every mii, mounted on the exterior wall next to the front door, there is a doorbell camera.
Honor tells me it looks like it could be just a doorbell, but that looks like a camera lens to me.
As far as I've seen, there's absolutely no mechanical interaction with this device. It serves no purpose as far as the game goes. Miis never knock on another mii's door, they simply walk right in when they feel like it (or are dragged in by the player). You can even design (basic) custom houses for your miis, and the camera will simply not be there anymore if you do. Regardless, its presence-by-default in the world has me pondering the game's themes of surveillance and control.
Surveillance is something that is constantly on my mind nowadays. I live in an apartment complex. My neighbors recently installed one of these doorbell cameras (despite it being against the rules of the complex - management does not seem to care about rules right now), and I have to walk past it every time I leave my home. Worse, it points directly across the hall toward another neighbor's front door, which means it sees into their home every time they open the door for any reason. It sickens me. I have a powerful disdain for these devices, stemming well before they started advertising them being able to track "lost pets".
In Tomodachi Life, you have access to - and in many respects, utter control over - the intimacies of the lives of your miis. While they can and do develop friendships and relationships at their own whim, they will often ask you, effectively, for permission to be another mii's friend or lover. You can eavesdrop on their conversations, usually just gibberish intermixed with lingo you've given them, though sometimes longer cutscenes. You have full control over what they're able to eat and wear. You can even peer into their dreams! The only privacy your miis are ever afforded is during the brief animation where they are changing into a new piece of clothing or outfit you've given them - a curtain appears from nowhere to give them a little modesty.
This is all maybe an uncharitable reading of the game. As I said above, it's just playing with dolls, right? And yet, I can't shake the thought... why even add the doorbell camera in the first place?
Do you remember the discourse when those elf-on-a-shelf things became a popular christmastime fixture a few (oh god is it more than a few) years ago? All the talk about how it was helping to normalize the concept of surveillance to children - every move of yours is being watched by santa, so you better be good, or else you might get coal instead of presents! I think we're well past that era of normalization at this point. Kids know they're being watched. Everyone does. Everyone feels the psychic burden of it. But it's just a part of life now.
I don't think they added the doorbell cameras to the game "maliciously" in service of some intentional goal of normalizing surveillance or anything. But, intended or not, doesn't it end up contributing to that anyway..?
...
Having already written all of the above, this piece fell into disuse in the notes app of my phone. Try as I might, I struggled to come up with any kind of "real" conclusion or solution to build toward. And so, I became distracted from it for some time, and continued to go about the other aspects of my life, as well as continue to play Tomodachi Life. The shops restock, I gift the miis food and treasures and clothes, and the fountain of wishes fills and fills. The doorbell cameras have simply faded into the background - and I suppose that's the intended goal in the real world as well... still, I cover my face when I notice them.
Well, at least it's funny.
