Should Nintendo be Politically Correct?

@DocSanchez: read up on Roman times. Homosexuality was largely accepted, even back then.

Keep all that optional romance bullshit out of games. It always suck anyway. If there has to be romance, make it part of the story.

I also think some of the posters in this thread are as guilty of being myopic as Nintendo. Whatever the view is in your area or country is not always the perspective or culture of other areas.

I think there is too much of a tendency in the media and on the internet for those in north America and western Europe to act like they have the market on cultural standards. They do not and need to stop acting like whiny babies about it.

I think people keep forgetting Nintendo is a Japanese company and their games are made by Japanese developers. Just in case you haven't noticed, there aren't many people of color in Japan. And whether you agree with it or not pale skin is held up high in Japan and many parts of Asia.

Secondly Nintendo is still a family orientated gaming company. There are still a lot of parents who don't want their kids exposed to homosexuality in their games.

I don't think Nintendo has any obligation to be PC.

What does that have to do with my comment?

@MirkoS77: But there was about a thousand years since where it wasn't. So it's irrelevant. Including relatively late into the last century and around the world today.

So calling for Nintendo to move with the times is still accurate.

If all the characters in Mario were black and I white person complained we'd be told to '**** off' it's celebrating black culture.

If you could only have gay relationships in Tomodachi and a straight person complained, we'd be told to '**** off' it's celebrating gay equality.

My answer to them is '**** off' these are children's games and there is no room for political agendas and besides there are enough pretentious politically correct complainers, we don't want to raise any more. If that makes me a homophobic, racist bigot then I suppose I better stop talking my black, gay friends!

Oh, I forgot. You're the authority on homosexuality... LOL. Just gonna leave this here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan#Monastic_same-sex_love

I think that this whole issue wasn't even supposed to be this big. And really, I hadn't even heard of this game before the "controversy" so all this is doing is giving the game free publicity. I highly, highly doubt that Nintendo actually said "let's take gays out because we hate them" when they made the game.

Nintendo should add mario kart DLC to add that tingle fairy from zelda. That would make some people happy.

All my friends are white. Am I racist?

@FireEmblem_Man

"Before anyone says that Toad and Toadette aren't human, their skin color is still white! And Peach is white!"

I don't know if you are intentionally being nasty about this or just don't understand. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say you don't understand.

Premade characters are NOT the issue. There's no issue with Peach being white and straight. She is a premade character in a premade story. The player passively experiences her tale the same way they'd experience a straight white female in a film. Same thing with any preset, premade character like Nathan Drake or whoever. That's not the issue.

CREATED characters are the issue. Because at that point, there is no premade story or background for them. It is the PLAYER'S CHOICE who they decide to be. And when you limit those choices, whether it be no gays, or no blacks, or no Muslims, or any other similar restriction, you ARE EXCLUDING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BE THEMSELVES.

You can criticize political correctness all day long but I'm going to go ahead and guess YOU aren't the one being excluded! I'm from nasty old Catholic Ireland and see gay people (including close friends) get an absolutely horrendous time from all sides when all they want is just to be included and treated like humans. Their demands are so basic, so simple, so inoffensive, and yet they get rejected with such vitriolic venom, violence and hate in return.

Is it so fucking hard to just let 2 male video game characters hold hands? What is the big push back against just treating these people with equality and letting them play as themselves? What is so awful about it? Did the world end when Bioware RPGs and The Sims allowed gay folks to play as themselves?

LOL, did you not read my entire post clearly?

When I read hilarious crap like this, I'm just glad I don't live in America, where, by the looks of things, permanently outraged blowhards expect each and every medium to shove their political propaganda down everyone's throats.

Not when it's fantasy. There's simply no reason at all here. One can talk about semiotics all you want, but it won't make sense in this case and will be contradictory.

Games supposed to take place/ be based in a realistic or at least semi-realistic ambience or context should be a bit politically correct to some extent. Though even these ones shouldn't be forced to be if the purpose is to criticize what is "politically correct", it's very purpose or meaning, which is also a very pertinent theme and shouldn't be limited by rules that narrow freedom of speech in anyway.

One thing though: we must be cautious with creating behavioral policing and creating "crime-thoughts". This would only avoid the solution seeked, which is cooperation and harmony between very different social segments. Instead, it could be a way of creating or giving reason to further conflict.

Yes I read it. Including the sarcasm tag. I don't know what you're doing. Are you just mocking people who feel left out? Pretending their exclusion is like wanting a black version of Toad? That's malicious.

I miss you buddy! Where have you been?

Who feels left out? Don't speak for people that don't really care about the gaming issues as they have better things to do than worry about adding political correctness in video games like yourself. The only people I'm mocking are the likes of you that is wanting everyone to try to shove down government on everything.

Away, not caring enough about video games.

I agree. In my country, the same thing happens, a lot. While social integration is still a ways to go (all over the world), there are some times when social movements and even their goals that are meant to unify people become an end themselves, or are utilized as a means to an entirely different end, segregating instead of unifying.

Example: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/19/why-i-don-t-watch-orange-is-the-new-black-or-any-shows-with-black-people-in-prison.html

This is a perfect example: someone who's supposedly combating racism is actually diving into the ignorance and determinism that drives it, perpetuating the problem. That can happen with any form of prejudice. Seeing the problem everywhere, like if we are searching for it, especially where it's not intended or even not present at all, generates and perpetuates that very problem, preventing people from moving on to the next stages of social integration.

Another problem is something very commom in my country: instead of trying to solve the integration problem through discussion, collaboration or any pacific method, it's almost standard to present it with a very aggressive tone, accusing people and appealing to a sense of collective guilt, as means to change something. The excuse is that it's a form of "self-defense" way of solving what's posed to them as a conflict anyway: they didn't choose to be treated that way, and a confrontational method would be the most effective since it would equal the opposite aggressiveness. I completely disagree.

We are not in the same situation of the 30-60s... we must acknowlegde that things have changed a lot, even if we're still a long, long way from complete integration. But there're still a lot of people that, like you said, propagates division under the call of political correctiness, politicizing things that're not supposed to be so, or at least not intended to. Another example: why can't we see the toadstool people as a different ethnic group, a perfectly integrated one, with the mushroom heads, and Mario, Luigi and Peach's non-mushroom heads as a metaphor of what we're used to distinguish through different colors? But that would be politicizing what's not supposed to be so anyway, even if for a very positive message...

That's why I admire Nelson Mandella so much... when the opressed people finally headed the government (and had power by consequence), many thought it would be the moment to reverse apartheid against the white people, making them suffer what everyone else suffered in their hands. But Mandella knew that wouldn't bring an end to racism, instead, it would aggravate it, so he made a government for real integration, tolerance and equality, and managed to avoid a civil war/genocide.

Of course not. Nintendo should stick to their guns and make a game as they intended it, free from outside pressure. If the haters don't like it, don't buy it.

Not being represented in one game is easy to ignore, but to be ignored in hundreds of games? That can be more difficult to deal with and starts to decrease your enjoyment of the medium as a whole.

I'm really befuddled by people being irked by feeling they are not "represented" in games. What does that even mean? And why do people feel they should be represented in games?

I've never felt affinity with my digital avatar because of their appearance, gender, sexuality and so on (or lack thereof). Strong writing and situations I can emphathise with are what help create investment. But I don't see or feel like a character designed by someone other than myself represents me or acts as something I project myself onto. And I never have.

This is true even when creating a character that technically is mine to play (Dragon Age, Mass Effect); those characters aren't me, they aren't even an idealised me, they are simply another character I choose to play, albeit one I have more creative influence over than most games.

And this isn't true just of videogames but television, comics and so on. I just don't see my race or people like me depicted in any medium really. So this idea that I am somehow missing out or being excluded when playing a game has never occurred to me because I've always approached the game as the character's story rather than my own. After all, when Auron turns to Tidus and tells him "this is your story" he isn't breaking the 4th wall and addressing the player, he's talking to Tidus. D'uh.

Honestly, the idea that games are supposed to allow you to project yourself into them sounds like entitlement from gamers who, for some reason, see games as their story rather than that of the characters. Given that agency/role-playing (as yourself) are much bigger in the West perhaps it isn't surprising that westerners feel the projection-pinch more than their eastern counterparts; outside of the west I don't think people actually look for games to represent them (which explains in part why so many Japanese games include beautified characters who don't represent their players; the players don't care).

IIRC wasn't homosexuality even considered a virtuous ideal (above heterosexuality) in ancient Greece?

Or people should stop being overly sensitive about every little thing. For instance I'm Indian and in all tv shows here in the US with any Indian character is a dork that can't get girls (phineas and ferb, the Big Bang theory are examples that come to mind). Do I care? No. So obviously I'm colored also and do I care about nintendo and lack of colored people in their games? No.

No offense to anyone, but I automatically think you're a weak minded person if you take offense to anything of this nature.