Sexual and romantic attraction are coming to The Sims 4
Alongside the launch of The Sims 4 The High School Years pack, EA and Maxis announced on Friday that they will be adding sexual and romantic attraction settings for Sims into the base game. This is a welcome addition in line with the recent addition of pronouns and pronoun customization to the game.
“Later this month, a sexual orientation feature will be available through a free base game update, introducing a customizable new way for Sims to experience attraction and for players to have more freedom to control the way they play,” the developers said in a press release.
Maxis partnered with GLAAD to get a broad range of feedback on how to best implement these attraction settings.
“By consulting nonprofit organizations It Gets Better and GLAAD, The Sims 4 has created a detailed and affirming option for players to experiment with various forms of sexual orientation for their Sims.”
Traditionally, Sims have been more or less pansexual and panromantic, capable of starting physical and romantic relationships with whoever the player decides to in that particular playthrough. But with the new features, players will be able to decide who their sims are attracted to sexually and romantically during the creation process. Players can even implement asexual and aromantic orientations by toggling attraction and tweaking certain settings.
Beyond setting whether your sim is attracted to others of the same or different genders, players can also have sims that are experimenting “with attraction naturally through interactions with other Sims over time.”
Right now, the gender binary within the game is a technical limitation in terms of including transgender and nonbinary people, but that should be addressed in the future as the development team continues to expand on the feature.
“Inclusivity has been a core value of The Sims since the franchise began 22 years ago, and the diverse development team proudly introduces this feature as a way to reflect the world we live in, the ways we interact with one another and represent real lived experiences,” the press release said. “The Sims team understands that sexual orientation is a vital, complex and inherent to how people experience the world and find community.”
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