The Sims 4 celebrates inclusivity and will add a new sexual orientation feature

EA and Maxis, who are responsible for The Sims 4Expect the next free update to the base game that will seek to create more comprehensive experiences for gamers and players. Along with the release of the secondary school years expansion -which will focus on teenage Sims and their time in high school- in parallel New sexual orientation feature is coming.

“As a team, we consider creativity, discovery, inclusion and playability as core values We strive every day to celebrate diversity, equity, and the inclusion of our people and our community“, through a post on the game’s official page- SimGuru Jessicalead designer of The Sims 4 Years High School expansion pack.

SimGuruJessica explained that this feature and a recent update that allows choosing pronouns for sims are in line with the goal of being a game that “respects and celebrates nuance”. “There is still much to be done, and we are committed to continuing to improve our representation of the LGTBIQA+ community,” he added.

The game has been constantly changing and updating, with this progress the game reaffirms the commitment – which they constantly express – to generate game experiences that increasingly represent the realities experienced by all players.

How will this new feature work?

As explained in the lengthy article, the sexual orientation feature will allow you to set attraction parameters for sims in the Create A Sim instance. With this feature, the gaming experience will become more customizable and players will be able to define how they interact with others in more detail.

configuration “My sim is attracted to him” It would be a positive definition. If the sim receives a romantic interaction from a segment with a gender that does not match the chosen one, the character will reject it. At this point, they made it clear that more gender identities not considered today would be included later.

“My Sim explores romantically” It will allow the sim’s sexual orientation to change throughout the game experience. And they explained in the post that they seek, through this option, to reverse the story of “a person who is still discovering himself.” As your Sim experiences romantic interactions, they may find themselves in a completely different place than where they started.

with “My Sim is interested in Woohoo Woohoo with” Interesting alternatives will emerge, such as – for example – building the story of an asexual character by leaving all options for this feature unchecked. On the other hand, to create an aromatic-oriented simulation, no element of romantic attraction would be selected.

One of the points they tackled in more detail in the article concerns that only two gender options were available at the time this new feature was launched. Although the pronoun modifications have allowed greater breadth regarding this topic, they know that it does not solve the total representation of all the identities that are involved in the game.

We see pronoun modernization as an important step towards a better representation of non-binary gender, but we also recognize that pronouns are not the same as gender identities.

In this sense, The Sims 4 is a game that was released eight years ago and since then there have been many changes at a general level that have allowed for an increased demand for acting. It is a fact that it was originally designed to think only of the binary types, but with these amalgamations it is possible to progress in line with the changes taking place in society. “I want to admit once again that these issues are complex and delicate. We consider this version 1.0 and are excited to see what other tools we can add to allow the player to tell a wide range of stories.“Progress SimGuru Jessica.

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