Man the trolls are really coming out of the woodwork for this one.

Well I'll leave them to their ignorance while I continue to evolve. :D

As part of the minority group. I do understand the views for and against, and with social media puts these issues out front alot more. Its a reality and also sadden me people still have such views on people that are different that didn't choose this. Who the fk would want to choose to be a minority where you don't have the same rights as everyone else and if you travel to certain countries you could be executed or jailed.

Onto the whole Mii game thing, well it looks lame, more boring than the sims even. Life simulator really. At least in the sims you could do some entertaining stuff, like drowning sims in the pools, putting them in a trapped room with no toilet, I think maybe even fires too. It was amusing at first, tho I got tired of it after Sims 2.

Another note, I've been gaming my whole life, never had a problem being a pac man blob, or a overweight male plumber/ effeminate elf saving a princess. As long as the game is fun, I'll play it happily.

I haven't read so much crap in quite a while.

The gaming industry is so against us of the disabled variety, there is never the option to use a wheelchair for the Player character.

I guess I need to hunt me some Devs with one of these

:P

Keep in mind I'm talking about "hissy fit" in relations to media like games, movies and books - NOT real life. In RL I would be right there with you fighting for equal rights for LGBTs. But when it comes to fiction, art and creative freedom I don't like the demand to be included from gays or females. Again it's great if we can get more gay, disabled, female etc. protagonists in our games but I don't think you can demand it if you also want to maintain creative freedom for devs.

It's the demanding tone and the shame tactics I take objection too here, where if games don't have gay or female characters in them then it MUST be because of discrimination against minorities and not just because the devs chose not to include it due to time or monetary reasons or perhaps they just didn't know about it or forgot. So it's absolutely fine to ask for or make them aware of or remind them of LGBT inclusion in games but please stay away from the boycotts and the shame tactics because it's not always for malicious reasons that gay options are not in a game.

Right there with ya, man. Off to develop my prehensile lips and peripheral tentacles. :)

1) I'm a great believer in the concept that "hate" in all it's many forms; racism, bigotry, homophobia etc... are things children are taught, not born believing. So when a company that makes games for children excludes a fairly large section of the population, they are not teaching children that homosexuality is genetically as much a part of being human as is heterosexuality (regardless of percentages). This is especially true in the case of a "Life Simulator".

For the children that play this game and who also happen to be gay, what message does the exclusion of this option say to them? Personally I think it continues a fear and loathing campaign that the world would be better off doing away with. And for the children that play this game who are not gay, it sends another message about what is "normal", i.e., only hetero-sexuality. I think Nintendo seriously under-estimates the intelligence of children...

2) Everyone should endeavor to change the world for the better - even and maybe especially large corporations. When we allow big corporations to take a pass on human rights,environmental and social justice issues, well what are we saying? Hey, Walmart - go right ahead and don't pay your employees a living wage, even though it's the wrong thing to do. Monsanto, go right a head and genetically alter our food even though it's the wrong thing to do. Hey, Exxon - go ahead and spill oil wherever you want - no worries, you don't have to clean it up and hey, don't worry about making your transportation practices safer in the future. Need I go on?

Big corporations are made up of human beings and they have a profound impact on all our lives - so yes, we should ask them to step up to the plate on social justice issues. While I agree that profit is important, it is not everything - I don't think "Corporations" should get a free pass on being good members of the human race just to make a bigger profit.

3) Me too but then I'm for everyone having the freedom to express themselves fully as human beings inasmuch as that freedom doesn't harm others.

Depends on how you define "accepted". While Western culture often sees homosexuality as "aberrant", Japanese culture tends to see it as okay as an early stage of development - training for the "real thing", which "of course" gets abandoned once you're experiencing "real" sex. Now, one could probably argue whether it's better to be called "immature" than "aberrant", but the important point is that neither lets the people who belong to this group feel particularly accepted.

That said, Nintendo's concern was probably more with the US market than with the Japanese one.

I'm out of popcorn, but boy has this been an interesting, or rather factinating story to watch unfold.

Its amazing how a non-reply from Nintendo sent this ball rolling so fast and hard.

Still, this is the company that didn't fire Sakamoto after the story of Other M was revealed to the world in all its glorious [REDACTED], so one has to wonder how real the 'Nintendo Bubble' is, and just how willingly conservative they stand to be, not only fiscally, but socially.

I still find it hard to believe that people don't keep their sexual preferences and/or experiences to themselves. To me, it is just a matter of respect that transcends either polarity.

Personally, I have about as much interest in your sexuality as your bowel movements; keep them private, please.

Sorry that I picked you two, I could have picked a couple others for the point I am going to make, and chose randomly ;)

I see many comments calling this an "omission" or a "decision to include or not include". Actually things are a bit different, and that may be part of the problem, at least for some of those who feel indeed discriminated by such a decision. Please allow me to explain.

When you program a game, and include marriage, then - by default - gay marriages are always in. They don't need to be specifically "included". If you just program a feature that allows characters to marry, then there is nothing which would prevent same-sex marriages.

In order to _only_ have opposite-sex marriages, you have to specifically exclude the same-sex ones. You have to spend time and effort to sit down and write code that specifically checks the gender of the involved characters, and specifically says "No" to marriages of the same sex. It's a bit different from "not programming a wheelchair" or similar comparisons that have been made. The only way to not have gay marriages in a game that allows opposite-sex marriages, is to make a conscious decision to write code to exclude them.

For people belonging to a minority which is often the subject of discrimination, this can hurt immensely. As an example - imagine that someone wrote a business simulation that allowed only white characters to head huge corporations and become billionaires. Blacks can play, but can't rise high enough to earn that much money, only whites can. Given that about 5-10% of people are homosexual, whereas less than 1% of billionaires are black, it's even more "realistic" to exclude blacks from becoming billionaires, than it is to exclude homosexuality from a life simulation. Would that be okay? Moreover, would it be okay if the respective company said that they simply "didn't want to make a social commentary in one way or another"? Also, would it be okay if people defended that move with arguments like "They don't have to give blacks the opportunity to become so rich in their game, black people don't get so rich in real life either" (which is actually more correct than saying that gay people can't marry in real life, if you look at the numbers)?

The only difference, really, is that it's currently more socially accepted to discriminate against sexual orientation than it is to discriminate against skin color. And that's the problem: The failure to see that both are discrimination. And the people who are discriminated against have all the right there is to raise their voices. Yes, there may be bigger battles for them to fight than this particular one against Nintendo, but I would never criticize anyone for standing up against discrimination, no matter if the particular case is a "small" issue or not.

I agree with you. For me there wouldn't be any problems if Nintendo did include same-sex relationships in the game. The problem is, not everyone thinks like us. I don't think having same-sex relationships would suddenly make the game not "family-friendly". But we are probably still the minority. There are too many conservative/religious groups out there who would get all up in arms over the game if it had same-sex relationships.

Nintendo is just avoiding controversy. They don't want to be seen as the "company who made a game for kids that promotes homossexual relationships". Both you and me know this statement is far from being true, but this is what the press would probably say about it. Remember the Mass Effect "sex scene" controversy? The game doesn't even have explicit sex scenes, but the way the press talked about it made it look like there were explicit hardcore sex scenes.

I don't think Nintendo under-estimates the intelligence of children. I think that they just don't want to get caught in the middle of a controversy. Nintendo itself isn't "against" same-sex relationships or anything. They're just too conservative, especially in the US. For example, in the japanese version of one of the Animal Crossing games, there is a homossexual character, which was changed to a female character in the US version.

I don't think it's fair to compare Nintendo and its action to any of these companies. All the companies you mentioned violated human rights. Nintendo? I don't think so. I honestly don't think Nintendo is obliged to make games with same-sex relationships. I believe that developers should be free to make games the way they want to make.

I'm all for people having a voice to try influence a corporate to change its policies. It opens up debates such as this very thread where, in this instance, gamers can openly air their opinions. Any socially awkward avoidance of such topics leaves opposing views suppressed and that applies to a homophobic who has as much right to air their views as the gay community have.

FWIW, I'd like to see gays represented in a SIMS-like game as its core appeal does revolve around relationships. To SIMulate reality it should include the option of nurturing relationships of mixed race, same sex, people with disabilities and beastiality. :O

I think it depends where you are. Around here there were a series of votes on related issues and during that time period pretty much everything you did or didn't do was a sort of commentary on the topic. I was personally boycotting the whole stupid thing, but whether I chose to date men, women or nobody, I was ultimately lending support to somebody.

Even just keeping ones mouth shut is a sort of moral position.

In this case, creating a game where people are supposed to be themselves and then excluding GLBT options is a comment on the situation. This isn't the past when folks were out of sight out of mind in the developed world.

Thinking along these lines, one would also have to set up a concurrency check... which makes me wonder, mostly on a personal level - what's your take on polygamy? If you look up the data, it's not only shunned, it's outright ILLEGAL in most of the "Western World", yet on an ethical level it might be difficult to reasonably prove that a consensual union between more than two people is somehow deeply aberrant.
Then again - if I really wanted to raise eyebrows, I should probably mention the Mut'ah marriages instead. More novel, similarly eye-opening. ;P

Sorry, but I very distinctly remember that on our Intro to Social Anthropology we were first given a rich (if suspiciously specific) definition of marriage that, afterwards, got completely dismantled lecture by lecture, as we've learned of a bevy of different customs and cultures.