Something that always bothered me about The Sims was the fact that your Sims could hypothetically end up with anyone. And as a queer person, that sort of freedom was liberating to an extent—but it became uncomfortable when I’d create a character that I’d want to be more ace-leaning, only to return to my desk and find them hooking up with Mortimer Goth. Yeesh.
Therefore, it’s exciting that Maxis is expanding its Create A Sim options to include sexual preferences. It’s a fairly simple feature, sure, allowing only for male and female preferences, although I think it’s interesting that they also allow players to differentiate between sexual vs. romantic inclinations. Ultimately, this culminates in a variety of options for players to experiment with.
Gender Options
The sexuality preferences are new, but The Sims 4 allowed players to wiggle around with gender since patch 34, back in 2016. Whereas the game originally restricted certain customization options behind gendered barriers (such as “masculine” hair options and “feminine” clothes), patch 34 removed these barriers to allow players to customize their Sims to their complete liking.
Players can be traditionally non-binary and trans, as well as cisgender, depending on their choices. They can choose whether or not their Sim can get pregnant, the cadence of their voice, the style of their dress, and so on.
Now, do they allow you to definitively choose what your Sim’s gender is? Not exactly. You can choose pronouns, which is absolutely a step in the right direction, but that’s the extent of it. Then again, many people don’t like being limited by labels anyways, so I suppose this is as neutral as they can get.
Sexuality Options
Under the Gender & Sexuality widget, players will be able to determine three things: what gender their Sim is attracted to, whether or not they’re romantically experimenting, and which gender they are interested to “Mess Around” with. The binary is strictly Male/Female, which dev SimGuruJessica claims is more an issue with the game’s code than with the ideals of the devs themselves.
Ultimately, this allows for quite a bit of wiggle-room regarding one’s identity. You can make your Sim Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual, Aromantic, or just, yanno, Straight. And as always, if you’re dissatisfied with your Sim, you can go back into CAS and tweak your choices as you see fit.
What’s funny is that, while this is definitely a revolutionary move for queer players, it also finally allows Sims to be definitively, 100% straight. Now your computer-science dude who wears khaki shorts and a graphic t-shirt can be fully himself. Diversity win!
Are you satisfied with these implementations, or do you wish the devs went a step further? Let us know your thoughts down below!
(Featured Image: Maxis)
