When Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen tweeted last week that Nintendo had rejected a planned Nintendo 3DS version of the game over "questionable religious content," many weren't surprised. After all, a game about a religiously fanatic mother who hears a voice from God telling her to kill her son doesn't really fit in the same family-friendly box as the kind of Mario and Pokemon games Nintendo is best known for.

But McMillen tells Ars Technica that Nintendo's decision only came after months of discussion. During that time, the company expressed a serious desire to release a port of the PC game. In discussing his dealings with Nintendo, McMillen paints a picture of a company struggling with real internal divisions over the best way to expand the breadth of its content while maintaining its squeaky clean image.

"Honestly, a lot of people [said] 'Oh, there's no way, it's so obvious they would say no,' but... they were saying yes for a long time and they were very confident that it was going to be approved for a long time," McMillen said. "For two months I was told it was looking really good and it was something they wanted for the platform... and it just moved up the ranks but it was just one of those things that seemed to be on the fence because they weren't sure if this would cause controversy for them..."

The discussions

From the start, McMillen says he felt Nintendo was likely to approve The Binding Of Isaac for the 3DS partially because the game had already received a 16+ rating for its retail release in Germany—roughly the equivalent of an M rating by the ESRB. Nintendo previously agreed to let M-rated games like Manhunt, Mad World, and Eternal Darkness onto its "family friendly" systems. Even McMillen's blood-and-fetus drenched Super Meat Boy was approved for the Wii before technical issues scuttled the port. The Binding of Isaac shouldn't have been any different, in theory.

But that turned out not to be the case. "All I heard from the very beginning was that the only thing that would hold it back was religion," he said. "They even said, 'even if we could get [an M rating] it would still be a question of the higher-ups being OK with the religious aspects.' I never got to talk to the person who said yes or no, but I do know for a fact that the core of it was the mother trying to kill her kid because God told her to As long as we didn't get an Adults Only I was told it would be fine, but I think it went to the one person who was like 'Nope, I don't want to deal with this, we shouldn't deal with this for Nintendo's image.'"

McMillen recalls Nintendo representatives he talked to making a distinction between blasphemous content (which would have been surprisingly acceptable) and overtly "religious" content that might be more sensitive. "If there's blasphemous content it's probably fine because blasphemy is in most games everything is blasphemous for one religion and not for another. Since demons and stuff are in games all the time, and that's considered blasphemous to some Christians, that's fine. I guess the way I talked about things in the game wasn't necessarily blasphemous, but also considered religious and something they don't want to deal with."

Potential changes and "sliding by"

At one point during the approval discussions, McMillen says Nintendo actually asked him if he'd be OK with changing some of the game's content in order to "slide by" on the 3DS. But the company never presented a list of specific changes it was looking for, he said. That's likely because the company objected to the game's underlying theme, which couldn't easily be excised. Still, McMillen said he would have been willing to bend a little if Nintendo had demanded some incidental changes.

"I learned from Meat Boy, you'd be surprised what people think is bad and what would raise a rating," he said. "In Meat Boy, I thought for sure grabbing a fetus and smashing it into the ground would make a rating go higher, but no, that's not even slightly the most questionable thing... the most questionable thing was Brownie farting. And if it came down to that—'We want to give Meat Boy an M because Brownie farted'—I'd be like, 'I will take out that fart!' because that fart doesn't matter that much; it's not that core of a thing."

The elements Nintendo was worried about with The Binding Of Isaac ran much deeper than that, of course. "What I really did hear from a few people at Nintendo is, if a bunch of people really see Nintendo as this 'E for Everybody'-type system, and this kid has a 3DS and he's playing Yoshi, Mario, whatever, and he sees this game that looks like Zelda, and he downloads this, and its shooting your mom and crapping all over her, peeing on her, it probably wouldn't get a good reaction in that environment."

McMillen sees downloadable 3DS games being judged by a slightly different standard than their retail cousins on this score. "It might be different if it was retail and you could see the box and stuff but I think since the eShop is kind of a budding new thing and anyone can get on with credits and buy whatever they want, any M-rated game in general might not be something you see for a while. Sadly it might just not be the place for the game."

Internal conflict at Nintendo

Despite the rejection eventually handed down by Nintendo, McMillen said the decision didn't reflect the will of everyone he'd worked with at the company. "I know for a fact there were quite a few people there really pulling for the game," he said. "I know there are a lot of people out there saying 'Eeesh, why did Nintendo do that, aren't they trying to get away from that image?' Trust me, a lot of people that work there are exactly the same way. They're saying, 'Aw fuck, we're back where we started again,' because they're trying to pull away from the image of Nintendo being only family-friendly over there and censoring games."

"Of course they want to feed this demographic that is starving for games and leaving them to go to other consoles," he continued, "and I know for a fact there are a lot of people there that want to get away from the image of Nintendo being just a kiddy system, because of course that hurts them. But in the end I think this might have just been too risky for their system, because their core is a family-friendly atmosphere. You can do weird, but you can't do [all this]."

"It's not a big fucking deal."

While McMillen said he's upset more people wouldn't get to play his game on the 3DS, he stressed multiple times he understood where Nintendo was coming from with its decision. The rejection was "not a huge deal" for him personally. In fact, he and his publishing partner really hadn't put much effort into the port yet.

"There was no rug pulled out [from under me]," he said. "A lot of people are like 'You should be pissed because you lost money!' No, I didn't lose money... I didn't start in on development before I got the yes or no. I wasn't doing shit, no one was doing anything, we were just waiting for Nintendo to respond."

McMillen said Nintendo's decision might have even made him money, in a way, by "tripling [Binding of Isaac] sales on Steam for the past couple of days."

McMillen said there's definitely no bad blood between him and Nintendo, and that he'd be willing to work with the company again. "I definitely appreciate all the kind words [from my fans] and the whole 'Fuck Nintendo' thing," but really it's not a big fucking deal .. don't take it like your team lost, because we didn't lose, we just decided not to play that day."

Indeed, the mindset that led thousands of Internet commenters to express their rage at Nintendo over this decision might actually point to the reason the company turned down the game in the first place, McMillen said.

"Here's why Nintendo said no, "McMillen said. "Go to any website that talked about it and read the comments and look at the fucking religious wars that happen in it. That's why [they rejected the game], because people are too fucking stupid to realize their opinions are isolated to themselves and don't apply to others. The end. Fuck off."