Last week Turbine, Inc. of Westwood, MA released a new online role-playing game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings called "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar". Salon.com just posted a very interesting article over the controversy that erupted at the company over the issue of whether the game would allow same-sex marriage (the article also examines gay gaming issues in general). Ultimately, Turbine decided to completely remove the game's marriage feature rather than allow same-sex marriage. While it seems a silly decision, I prefer that over discriminating against gay folks who want to swap those Middle Earth Rings with each other.

We've written about gay-gaming issues before including the recent controversy over Bully's same-sex kiss. The issue here doesn't seem to be out right homophobia on the part of the game-designers. The article points out that one of the designers, Nik Davidson, is pro-gay in real life, but voted against including same-sex marriage in The Lord of the Rings. His (and others) reasoning? That since same-sex marriage wasn't in Tolkien's original creation, it couldn't be here as their goal was to be as authentic to his vision as possible. (Does this mean online role playing games were part of his vision?) As an example of sticking to Tolkien's game plan, the article cites how during beta testing they discovered a gray squirrel, a creature which Tolkien apparently abhorred. The color was promptly changed.