Valid point. Though, I actually don't remember a game where the marriage dialog per se was gender-specific in a way that mandated two genders to be present. The most elaborate marriage ceremony I know of is in Skyrim (including special events and quests attached to it), and even there, same-sex marriage was not a problem.

I'm usually not very interested in in-game marriage features though, so if there are games that feature more specific marriage ceremonies, I probably wouldn't have noticed. ;)

I don't mean that. I mean, making it so it's nobody's business what people do during their free time and making it so people don't have to deal with what other people do during their free time. This offers everyone, a life of peace(for religious people and for gay people) even though it might not be a perfect solution for everyone. This is the only solution that my mind can come up that doesn't involve two groups of people battling each other to the death until there is only one side left standing.

I myself am Disabled! and Yes I agree with your POV I don't throw a friggin Hissy fit because There are no Disabled people in games Oh NooOooOoo.. I'm gonna have to throw a hissy fit that there are no Cripples as the main protagonist in video games in Deadly Premonition the Main protagonist is Schizophrenic though!

There is also Professor X from the X-Men. Are there any X-Men games that let you play as Professor X?

2nd strait post to you from me. :P Yes there is, Ultimate X-Men for sure and I'm guessing others. Also Daredevil in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. That's actually really cool because when you first get him the screen is totally black and all you see are little echo patterns coming from baddies moving around. You find them that way, very nicely done.

hedwards has succinctly put my feelings on the matter. As a creator of content myself I don't want to have the form of my work dictated to me either. But at the same time it is useful for me to have feedback on that work, especially if that exposes me to viewpoints and experiences that are outside of my own. Each of us has a wide number of factors (our gender, our language, our geographic origin, our family structure, etc) that essentially filter out various experiences from us. Taking in the experiences of others and expanding our created universes only makes things richer. Not that every single work needs to be all-inclusive, but there are reasonable baselines that I believe are fair to push for and which make the whole field more accessible and engaging for users.

See, I wasn't kidding when I said hedwards was succinct. :)

As for the tactics employed by folks to push for these changes, there is a whole range of them, and each will attract or repulse us according to our individual natures. Some people like boycotts, others prefer name-and-shame, yet others practice silent personal protest. Personally I think most forms are valid, as long as they are appropriate to the level of insult. Of course there are people looking for any slight upon which to vent their rage, so you get responses that are out of kilter. But that's human nature and I'm not sure anything will really correct that. Each of us is capable of that kind of over-reaction, given the right stimulus at the wrong time. Too much indignation can be as unproductive as not enough. The crucial thing is for each of us to try and hear where these various perspectives are coming from, and from that try to forge an accord.

Whew, that's enough from me on this topic. If you made it through all that, grab yourself a cold drink and a Kit Kat. ;)

It's not rationing, it means that everybody has the possibility of spending the rest of their lives with somebody. OK, perhaps not everybody, but it's far more likely than if people are allowed to multtiple people.

Also, you're smarter than this. This is an asinine argument to make.

Must be nice to live in a rich country. I've never met anybody in America that could afford to have one person just sitting around all day doing nothing while the help does everything. In most cases the home maker is actually doing a lot of work, far more than what she would have to do at a job.
Yes, absolutely it is. People who need more than one person can just not get married. Some people do have issues settling down with one person, but for those folks I can't think of any good reason why they should even bother with marrying in the first place. Seems to me like they'd be better off just dating for the rest of their lives. At virtually any age there are single people out there for dating. I don't think it becomes an issue until way far down the road.

I understand why Nintendo doesn't have any gay options; it's probably less intentional descrimination, and probably more the concept never even came up in thier minds. Japan is a very traditionalist country; people are expected to behave a certain way, which includes marrying a person of the opposite gender and starting a family. Cultural pressure is intense. Homosexuality is a shockingly foreign concept for a nation that once had a special kimono for male lovers of Samurai; gay people over there are seen as a 'Western' thing, often as comic relief expected to be a joke not to take seriously or objects of fantasy, hence things like Hard Gay, or overly pretty Bishonen in Yaoi mags for women. I have a friend in Japan who is gay, and it's not the greatest situation over there because of these representations and cultural views. It's not intentional; Japan doesn't hate gay people. It just doesn't really think about them, at least in a real world context.

Nintendo itself is, after all, familiar with gay and transgender people; look at characters like Birdo. They are aware of these things, but the idea of a legitimate gay romance that wasn't designed for amusement or the pawing over by women is entirely alien. There's no really vocal LGBT movement over there like in a lot of Western nations, or the media attention potential descrimination/gay rights issues gain in the West either. In a world where Nintendo struggles to understand the importance of YouTubers for thier games, killing off one of thier modern potential advertisers, does it really surprise anyone they are legitimately puzzled and not sure how to approach doing anything with this? It's not intentional, they just don't understand.

As for whether they should or shouldn't add a gay option, well...it'd be nice I suppose. There are a lot of gay people out there who see games with romance as a decent focus/option, but feel very alienated because they either have to pick the opposite gender option (which isn't great), or pretend to be the opposite gender in order to romance thier prefered gender, which a lot of gay and lesbian people feel just as uncomfortable/unsatisfied with. Gay people do exist, and a large portion of them seem to be gamers; there are people out there who buy games soley because they feature content that acknowledges thier existance. I know a few who do that. I'm not sure how much of a market they'd lose from the Fundamentalist Christian/Religious element, but at the same time the sort of people who would boycott a game because it had content they don't *have* to play are probably small (or hopefully small). The modern world, in particular Europe, Australasia, kind of the USA and some of Asia, are more accepting, and even getting very 'pro inclusion/pro gay rights'. I don't see making this kind of move losing them as many friends as they'd be making - and more friends equals more sales.

These days the gay community has moved on from defending their rights to force feeding their ways and beliefs on others. Saying that a same sex relationship should be included in the game is a classic example of this. I say they should be free to put only heterosexual, both or even only homosexual if they wanted too!

I'm usually on the "oh don't be so sensitive" side of these things, but in this case I think it makes sense that all couples would want to marry their Miis. If I were gay and lived with my male partner and we couldn't accurately represent ourselves in the game it would be irritating.

I don't think Nintendo are bigots, but I do think they should have included same sex coupling.

...and a voice from nowhere says "hush, hush, keep it down now; voices carry."

Now that I've interjected random stupidity, please enjoy F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0, and butter your biscuits as you desire, but please, don't tell me about it.

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I usually go to the toilet for poos two or three times a day, but sometimes I just chill out there rather than actually doing a poo.

Great.

I'm sure the world will reach a higher state of enlightenment after these revelations.

I like to chill out there because I don't have to take phonecalls when I am in there.

How wonderful.

It isn't hard to avoid phone calls when no-one is calling though.