Gender Options - Sims 4 update

There has been a lot of progress made in getting game companies to take notice of their impact on the queer community. Whether it be only programming in heterosexual romances, making lewd or harmful jokes on a queer persons behalf, or forcing gender roles into their male and female characters, there is a long history of restricting a queer person’s ability to identify with the characters they play or interact with in games.

Which is why the latest EA update for Sims 4 is so welcome. Many developers have been taking note of campaigns like FemFreq and #INeedDiverseGames, listening to the requests of under-served fans, and taking the time to get these things right. It looks like Sims 4 is a great example of this. In a FREE updated (which, with the state of DLC these days, also surprises me) they have completely overhauled their Create a Sim options, and unrestricted options that use to be gender coded.

Announcement here: https://twitter.com/TheSims/status/738837692864139264

From their statement: 

“The Sims is made by a diverse team for a diverse audience, and it's really important to us that players are able to be creative and express themselves through our games. We want to make sure players can create characters they can identify with or relate to through powerful tools that give them influence over a Sims gender, age, ethnicity, body type and more.”

The Sims community have been playing with gender mods for a long time now, it’s great to see the EA take on their own design and make it better.

Pride Month - Show Me The Money!

Look at these shoes. LOOK AT THEM!

They are just one in a line of Pride shoes Converse has recently posted to their website. Here, have a link: http://www.converse.com/us/en/regular/chuck-taylor-all-star-pride/154793C.html

We live in a highly capitalistic world. Money is influence, power, and control. Companies want to acquire it, and people need to spend it. But we now live in a world where many of us have options opened up to us. And we have more information about those options. Who runs the company, where the money is going, how they treat their employees. We share that information, and social media makes it ever-so-easy. The small ecosystem of social influence you and your friends have on each other is now tool, and one being used by enough people that money has gotten involved. More and more, people are deciding that their money is a vote. Ticks in the Progressive boxes, if you will. And enough people are voting to cause a snowball effect. In local, country, and even global economies, companies are taking notice of the social atmosphere, and courting the Progressive’s in response. Money goes where the majority is, and the majority wants progress.

Adweek ran an article dissecting the relationship between progressive companies and local (U.S.) politics, and how companies have shifted based on public opinion.

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-brands-became-most-powerful-advocates-todays-battle-lgbt-equality-171491

It’s Pride Month. Time for something different.

I consider myself an activist. I don’t have the largest voice, sure, but I use it to point out and boost those things we like to call capital P Progressive. Usually that takes the form of Yelling About Things We Don’t Have Yet. Things like gender equality, queer rights across the full spectrum, and a whole host of things that require a deep breath and a moment to focus before diving in. But it’s Pride Month. A month full of weekends of colorful parades commemorating the queer Progressives of a generation past. A month in which to inspire the generations after. A month of reminding ourselves that It’s Not All Bad.

On that note, I’m going to use Pride Month as an excuse to remind ourselves that It’s Not All Bad is an okay thing to talk about too. My mind likes to dwell in the Why Isn’t It Better Yet, time for some Things Got Better.

Each day I want to highlight at least one thing in the queer space that made me smile. It has to be current, It has to be inclusive and/or intersectional, and it has to be happy. For example, this is the first time the Pride Flag has been raised on Parliament Hill in Canada. https://twitter.com/seamusoregan/status/738108360361422848. Very Cool.

Pride Month is about celebrating. And I’m going to do just that.