For gay gamers, Maxis' 1996 release, SimCopter has more historical significance than the game itself warrants. Back then, Sim games were pretty common and few were as compelling as Maxis' bread and butter title, SimCity, which made players into city managers. SimCopter was a minor departure, instead letting players fly a helicopter through Sim City and handle familiar problems (traffic jams, riots, etc.) while interacting with Sim City residents.

But what made SimCopter memorable was a surprise hidden in the game. On certain days (such as Friday the 13th) the city changed. Male residents of Sim City were suddenly scantily clad in swim trunks and were seen kissing each other. This "Easter Egg" (as such hidden surprises are called) caused a minor sensation -- as back then, gay people were rarely acknowledged in games.

Meanwhile, since this particular Easter Egg was added in secret, Maxis had reason to justify firing the designer who added the gay Sim City residents -- causing discussion groups to debate if the firing really was inspired by a failure to follow procedure or if that were a cover for homophobia on Maxis' part. (Maxis rushed out a game patch so that SimCopter customers could de-gay their game, adding fuel to the debate.)

Jacques Servin, the designer who added the man-kissing to SimCopter, said at the time that he was inspired by heterosexism he saw on the development team, noting that characters in the game were a sadly-typical mix of sexy females and dumpy male characters. Severin noted that scantily clad women weren't considered objectionable in the game, so he added hunky men with a similar level of sexiness (don't get too intrigued, this was "hunky" in terms of 1996 graphics) in reaction to the double standard.

Since then, Maxis has gone on to release The Sims, a game that lets players determine the sexual orientation of their characters and was promoted with a gay-friendly commercial.

So what has happened to the designer who was responsible for the first sights of gay men in a Sim game? Servin (aka Andy Bichlbaum) has continued to provoke discussion of social issues as part of a "culture jamming" activists The Yes Men, who often pose as corporate and government spokespersons. In 2004, Servin posed as a Dow Chemical spokesman who was interviewed by on BBC World to announce that Dow would be cleaning up an industrial disaster that a Dow subsidiary was responsible for, a prank that brought attention to the disaster and the lack of action taken on it. The group also criticized news media for reporting statements from Dow uncritically, failing to challenge untruthful statements.

(Thanks to GayGamer.net for reminding us of this moment in gaming history.)