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.
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