Nintendo may have dropped the ball on the gay marriage front by neglecting to include it in Tomodachi Life, but the good news is that there are other options. Specifically, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
According to The Advocate, producer Naoki Yoshida announced that the upcoming 2.4 patch would allow players to enter “bonding ceremonies” with anyone they wanted to, no matter their sex. Think of it like Canada’s Civil Marriage Act, if Canada happened to be overrun by Chocobos and Moogles.
As Yoshida explained during a question and answer session, “We realized: Within Eorzea, why should there be restrictions on who pledges their love or friendship to each other? And so we decided to go this way.”
Personally, I kinda wish they had this back in Final Fantasy X. Not to go into detail or anything, but I had a thing for Kimahri’s strong, stoic warrior thing, and I feel like he’d make for a very stable virtual life-partner. And he wore a loincloth. Do you have any idea how few men can pull off a loincloth? That’s a catch.
Point is, if marriage or life bonding or whatever you’re going to call it is going to become a more regular feature in video games, why not make it more inclusive? It’s a tiny detail, but it’s a detail that helps flesh out the world you’ve created and opens it up to a broader audience. And really, it’s all pretty much a matter of programming anyway. How much harder could it be?