8th May 2014, 7:20 PM
For anyone who hasn't heard, the issue is that Tomodachi Collection, a 3DS game releasing soon (watch the quite amusing Nintendo Direct!), doesn't allow for gay relationships or marriages -- it's heterosexual only. Naturally, while this wasn't too controversial in Japan where gay rights aren't nearly as far along, it's caused quite a problem here, even though the game isn't out yet. Here's a good summary of why this is an important issue:
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/ChristianNutt...roblem.php
This doesn't surprise me at all, of course. Nintendo has always been a conservative company, with backwards views on gender roles present in many of their games. I wouldn't have expected anything else on the issue of gay rights from them, unfortunately. I just hope that they change in the future, because greater equality is the future. They do seem to have been trying for the past year or so to have more female characters in some of their games; hopefully this is next.
Oh, for another issue that came up a while back, Animal Crossing (the newest one, for 3DS) was criticized for not having any darker skin colors available; it's light-skin only, unless a character gets tanned from the sun or something.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/ChristianNutt...roblem.php
This doesn't surprise me at all, of course. Nintendo has always been a conservative company, with backwards views on gender roles present in many of their games. I wouldn't have expected anything else on the issue of gay rights from them, unfortunately. I just hope that they change in the future, because greater equality is the future. They do seem to have been trying for the past year or so to have more female characters in some of their games; hopefully this is next.
Oh, for another issue that came up a while back, Animal Crossing (the newest one, for 3DS) was criticized for not having any darker skin colors available; it's light-skin only, unless a character gets tanned from the sun or something.