I think the point of the LGBT community being excluded from games still pretty much stands. Outside of Sims, and Bioware, and bethesda it's pretty hard and/or rare to find positively portrayed gay people.
Also, japan has -YAOI-, for cripes sake. Man on man love isn't exactly unknown to them. Heck, it's marketable in Japan.
Girl on Girl love isn't exactly unknown to them either.
Marriage? Don't really care. It's a fantasy game that needs not conform to the laws of any damn where. Make a frikking toggle to turn on, or off the LGBT theme, or something.
My level of giving a damn over excuses is dwindling. It's pretty easy for the majority to tell the minority to "get over it" and pull up excuses, but that doesn't fix anything! It makes no one feel better save the person making the excuses. It's absurd to the nth degree to expect people to swallow excuses about their exclusion, and be happy about it forever. Frankly trying to shove the LGBT community back into the closet is a pretty asshole move no matter how you slice it as far as I'm concerned. It's still oppression. Yes, Oppression. You're denying people the right to be themselves which is maddening in a game where you're supposed to play as you. Sure, it's "just a game" and thus trivial to you, the person who's likely pretty well represented across the board, but it's a matter of becoming culturally accepted to the minority. A matter of making progress towards being accepted. Which makes games like Mass Effect progressive because it furthers that progress. Right?
Are the LGBT as a whole hurting people? No? Then let them be. So long as they're not hurting other people, let them be, and more importantly, let them be represented. It's absurd to expect the people wanting representation to shut up about being represented when they aren't.
Here's a quote I've taken a shine to:
?You guys know about vampires? ? You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There?s this idea that monsters don?t have reflections in a mirror. And what I?ve always thought isn?t that monsters don?t have reflections in a mirror. It?s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn?t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ?Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don?t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.?
― Junot Díaz
I don't know the exact context of why he made that quote, but it's pretty applicable, IMO.
And for the hell of it:
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Play devil's advocate all you want. One of the few, if only upsides means it gets talked about.
The LGBT community aren't a species of monster, or evil, they're -people- as varied as any other group of people. Human beings like everyone else. Mistreating them means mistreating -people-. Period. Full stop.
Denying they exist, keeping them out of media, these things prevent people from changing their minds about them because of a lack of exposure, and ignorance. It makes it pretty easy for society to call them monsters, and the impressionable to only hear that side of the story. It certainly doesn't say "It's okay to be this way" to the people that might be that way, and end up pretty messed up because society hates them since no one's saying it's wrong to hate them.
Also, Nintendo has Senran Kagura Burst on 3ds for fnog's sake, and seems to be picking up a sequel! Katsuragi is an outright lesbian/bi (Never seen her attracted to guys, but she sure does love groping girls, and even used the term "motorboating") character, and the visual styling of the game is not exactly wholesome. Sure, Nintendo didn't make the game, nor did they make Mad World, or bayonetta 2 (Not that the latter 2 deal with LGBT themes AFAIK), but they're still in game libraries of nintendo systems.
I'm not saying that LGBT themes have to be in every game, mind you, still it'd be nice if people didn't pretend we don't exist, or keep screeching that we're "minorities" as if that makes us deserving of being treated as monsters to be kept in the dark corners, and/or attacked on sight.
It'd be nice if LGBT themes were somewhat more common, too. No, not 50/50, but some positive portrayal more often would be nice.
P.S. Oh, yeah, Nintendo also has Sims games in their libraries. Heck, I was going to step over Sims 3 pets to get Tomodachi Life as it felt a little redundant to have 2 similar games like that, but now I'm starting to reconsider.