Revived on 21st Oct 2015 in response to this thread: 

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=209400&page=3#5

As with all sensitive topics, I must take my time to first of all state my personal position:

I believe in the fundamental human rights for all women, homosexuals and minority groups. But this will in no way prevent me from speaking objectively. Therefore, I would appreciate if all readers take their time to read and think carefully before jumping to conclusions.

Discrimination is an inhumane act. Those who are on the receiving end of it have to experience a feeling of worthlessness most of us will never endure. It is something we should all be vehemently against.

But unfortunately, discrimination still occurs. Many groups still endure the hate. Many groups still endure the pain. Out there somewhere, some jerk will discriminate. He/she will continue to make someone else feel inferior.

These persons deserve to receive our collective condemnation. This is because we are all equal, and those who do not believe we are, should be given a swift and firm reminder of this fact.

I honestly believe that most of us want to do right, and most of us sympathize with the plight of the discriminated. But this very concern can sometimes be used to manipulate us. Overzealous and aggressive human rights advocates can bully other persons/organizations into doing their will by quickly making accusations of bigotry and bias.

Though bias and bigotry is everywhere, I can assure you, not every accusation of the same is true. Despite this fact, most of us when we are accused of bias will never challenge the cries of these “victimized”, and I understand why.

We do not want to hurt others.

We care.

But this is the very reason why we are susceptible to be victims of covert aggression.

In North America, Nintendo released Tomodatchi Life on June 6^th 2014. It was a simple game which had a feature where Miis of the opposite sex could fall in love. To my surprise, Nintendo ended up being on the receiving end of an anti LGBT campaign. The accusations were many. All because there was no option for same sex love relationships.

If a developer wants to make an all homosexual game, they deserve the right to do so. If they want to make an all female game, they deserve the right to so. If they want to make a game with only dark skinned persons, they deserve the right to do so. The same goes for games with only straight couples, male only games, caucasian only games and everything in between.

To accuse someone of bias just because your group wasn’t included in their video game is dangerous. In order to expose bias, we must first of all prove that the other person is acting that way. Accusing Nintendo of being biased toward homosexuals just because there is no homosexual love relationships in their game is outrageous. Nintendo has that creative right. They didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t insult anyone, and most of all, didn’t have an anti LGBT agenda.

Yes, I agree, we all want to weed out discrimination. But we should be very careful when we accuse others of being biased. If the issue is simply us not getting what we want, then we should not accuse. What we should do is judge the person’s actions/motives and see if the individual is discriminating. If the individual is found guilty, we should act immediately because no one has the creative right to discriminate.

On the other hand, if the developer is not discriminating, one can simply make a request or a suggestion to the said developer to include your group in their game. The game developer still retains their creative freedom and as such, could choose to accept or respectfully decline your suggestion. There should be no coercion.

Using threats and false accusations is the tactic of a bully. This is why developers are beginning to feel pressured to include females, homosexuals and minorities in their games, even though creatively, they may never have intended to do so. That I believe, is infringing on the creative freedom of game developers and it should be exposed for what it is.

Leave your thoughts below.

No one is being forced to include anything.

yes they are! we need more lesbian chinese in war of the roses, they were common in medival england.

it depends on the game, and tomodatchi life is better now. i want to let link and mario marry.
but that had nothing to do with homophobia, they just goofed

Well, if you consider transgender women to be men, then there's indeed some hinted homosexual relationship in one of Nintendo's games, so to accuse them of being biased is completely dumb.

Creative freedom? No, I don't think so. But, I think smaller studios may not be able to afford spending time on something they're not sure many people will use. Take Mass Effect, for example, they went through the effort of putting in female character models, and only 18% of players used them. That's fine for a company the size of Bioware.

Though, I think it's probably fair to expect that if a game does well, the devs should put in char models for the opposite gender as soon as they can. Gaming is definitely expanding, so I expect devs to try to accommodate that.

Personally, as long as the character is strong (writing etc...) has depth, and the story is good, I'm not really concerned with the gender.

Discrimination is built in to our perception on society, it's inevitable. The moment we separated straight from gay or even use such terms is the moment segregation occurs; it's inevitable.

That being said we live in 2015. I'd say damn near everyone (certainly in my state at least) is on equal footing at this point and the only people crying about it are TRYING to victimize themselves for attention. We want to celebrate personality, identity, uniqueness and then we get pissed when others get the spotlight and we don't. Its all backwards!... (And forwards and a little bit to the side)

I think including women and people from other colors(other than your black or east asian that comes in the 2nd place) will make some games more exciting. I wanna play as a hot Middle Eastern, purple haired lesbian girl in the lead role of a 3rd person shooter/action adventure. Kinda tired of the 30 something white man.

Just because a developer includes homosexuals or women in their games doesn't mean they were forced to. It was their choice, ultimately.

At the same time, however, no company should ever feel like they have to include every minority for the sake of pleasing everyone if it's not in their creative vision. Unless they actively discriminate, they shouldn't be ridiculed for their choice either.

The fact that you felt the need to preface your post by explaining you believe in equal rights shows how ridiculous these sorts of issues have become.

To call anything along these lines "discrimination" is an absolute joke and is completely demeaning of actual discrimination. Developers can make any kinds of games they want and include any kinds of characters they want. The audience can then judge them by voting with their wallets. If people are that desperate for a game with gay characters, for example, any game that plays to that view will then see a lot of success. That's built into the free market idea. All you're seeing when people make a lot of noise on this is groups who want an over-representative say in what goes on.

In conclusion: Stop reading Polygon and Kotaku.

No but there is Pandering. Look at Mileena from Mortal Kombat X. After all the SJW nonsense she suddenly wears pants now when she NEVER did in any MK game. You can also see how they shoehorned in Kung Jin being gay when it added nothing to the plot or game. The pandering needs to stop. Just make the game how you want.