We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I feel like the discussion here's basically already done but I conveniently stumbled upon a developer interview about how what you'd imagine is Tomodachi's main competitor dealt with the same issue, while simultaneously becoming the literal best-selling PC franchise that has ever existed.

https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/e...games.html
(The article name's a little overly dramatic though)

In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.

On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press. Following the kiss, talk of The Sims dominated E3. “You might say that they stole the show,” Barrett said. “I guess straight guys that make sports games loved the idea of controlling two lesbians.”

After The Sims’s successful E3 showing, the game’s future seemed secure. But Barrett and his teammates had a new problem to solve: how to decide the sexual orientation of individual Sims. “If you created a household with two same-sex Sims, they would always become gay just from the fact they were around each other the most,” recalled Barrett. “That’s when I came up with the system that determined a Sim’s sexuality through user-directed actions.”

In the game, players were able to interact with Sims in different ways, inspiring them to take a bath, eat food, go outside, and perform other actions. “Certain social interactions were tagged as romantic,” Barrett said. “The game kept track of whether these were performed by same-sex or opposite-sex Sims. The formula was a little more complicated, but, over time, as a Sim developed a relationship, his or her preference was set.” If the player was careful, a Sim could even become bisexual. “The system worked so well that the same-sex support was invisible and seamless. It is rare that something works exactly as you intend it to. A lot of my other simulations in the game fell apart. This one worked perfectly. Once the team saw it in action, they decided I could keep same-sex support, and the topic didn’t come up again.”

It doesn't really sound like it was all that hard, does it?