Streamer Spotlight… EnglishSimmer
The EnglishSimmer, aka Mollie, is a British content creator with a passion, as the name might suggest, for The Sims.
Mollie has been creating content for over 10 years on her YouTube channel and through twice-weekly live streams on Twitch. Her content is primarily based on The Sims, but does occasionally stray out into other story heavy games like Life Is Strange. She loves games with strong LGBTQ stories which she can bring to her community, and the world, with her own spin on the narrative through her commentary.
To explore more about what The Sims has meant to her and what it has done to normalize the LGBTQ community, I had the pleasure of sitting down with her for this Streamer Spotlight interview.
Mollie, thanks for joining me, you’ve been creating content with The Sims for the last 10 years, but how long have you been playing The Sims for in total?
I’ve been playing it pretty much since the day it came out when my brother brought it home. I’m the baby of a seven child household, so I’ve grown up with older siblings playing video games all the time, and I was really lucky that it’s kind of always been a constant for me, anywhere from handhelds playing in the in the backseat of the car, or playing on the family PC.
It was kind of a virtual doll’s house. I wasn’t really a person who played with a lot of dolls when I was younger, so it kind of bridged that gap because it felt like dolls, but it was virtual.
Not wanting to age you or anything, but are we talking OG The Sims here?
It was the original The Sims, and then I got a couple of expansions for birthdays like The Sims: Vacation and House Party. I definitely shouldn’t have been playing some of it when I was six, for example with the dancers that used to pop out of cakes and especially in The Sims 2 where they had the cutscenes for the romantic interactions. There were times where I had to turn my laptop screen away from my parents whilst I was playing!
As a kid, what are some of the standout moments in some of those classic versions of The Sims?
Definitely having a baby and then instantaneously having it taken off you because they were so hard to take care of in The Sims, and the fact that they never ever aged up so they just stayed a baby forever. So after about three Sims days, you’re like “Hey, I’m I’m over it. Take it back. Just take it!”
I always like a little bit of chaos within my game, especially when the game does something that I wasn’t really anticipating it to do. Obviously playing with Bella and Mortimer Goth for the first time is iconic too. Then you have that childish thing of, “Oh, I’m gonna create my celebrity crush, or maybe someone that I like in school, and then if they do me wrong, well, sorry, there’s been a fire!”
Well, I was going to come on to the famous ways to be mean to your Sims, what have been some of the more evil things that you’ve done in The Sims?
I really, really enjoyed my Black Widow challenge, which was a challenge I did over in The Sims 4, which was all about this woman who had to marry 10 different Sims, steal their money, cheat on them in front of her new partner so that they could witness it, and then you have to kill off the old partner.
I decided to make it much harder on myself where for every new Sim that she got in a relationship with, she would take their interests into account and we’d give her a makeover to make her look like someone that they were attracted to. Then we decided to send them off in different ways.
And the deaths have gotten more extravagant in later releases…
Yeah, so obviously you’ve got the classic pool, which is even more aggressive nowadays in The Sims 4 because they can get out of there, so you have to build a wall around it, and of course there’s also fire and electrocution. But, The Sims 4 really upped the deathly scale I feel.
The old ones just used to be to lock them in a house and set it on fire, or lock them in a pool and take the ladder away. But The Sims 4 has gone evil! It’s one of my favorite things when they’re showing a new preview live stream, and all everyone asks is “is there a new death?”
At what point did you start to explore your own identity through The Sims?
The thing is, with The Sims, it has always just been there and it was always quite normalized to me. The Sims didn’t make a big deal out of two same sex Sims kissing, it was just, OK that’s a thing that you can do in The Sims.
Then in The Sims 2, they introduced Union, which was basically gay marriage, but it was called a Joined Union, which moved to towards marriage for any gender within the game in The Sims 3. Then obviously, The Sims 4 has made huge, huge strides with equality and representation.
So, I think it didn’t even really feel like I was exploring what I could be or my sexuality at all. It just felt like there was no judgment there, and I didn’t really see it any differently from any other romance within the game, which was really, really nice to see. Obviously, I didn’t really see a lot of that in traditional media at the time back in the 90s when I was growing up, but to see it in my favorite game was lovely. I think that kind of carried with me in my life where I didn’t really hold any judgment for any form of sexuality or romance, because I had seen this diversity from a young age.
Are there any particular examples where you created a storyline or character that echoed how you were feeling at the time as you grew into your own identity?
Yeah, it was actually later in life for me, I was 19 or 20 when I was in university and I had never really fancied boys in school, although I tried to make myself fancy boys because everyone else was. But when I was in university, I joined the women’s football (soccer) team and started meeting people who were lesbians and bisexual, and I realized this isn’t just like The Sims!
Obviously I knew by that time those relationships existed and there are different sexualities, and a lot of my friends from school had come out. I was a very strong ally at that point, I was very vocal and we were going to gay clubs in Manchester when we were back home for the summer holidays.
So as I continued to play in The Sims, I progressed into playing with different sexualities within the game, and then learning more about that as I became more involved in the LGBTQ+ community. I was also watching a lot of coming out videos on YouTube at the time too, and that’s what really made me feel like this is a legitimate thing that I could possibly be and that was really, really nice to see.
I think from that moment, when I was playing in The Sims 4, I didn’t really create any boundaries within romance and sexuality within the game. Then when I came out, I then started introducing more WLW relationships and strived to be that representation for other people.
Through my content, I was able to say “Look, this is where I started. This is where I am now. This was my journey. This was my coming out.” But also, I can show other people’s relationships and sexuality and gender, and I can give people that place where traditional media was lacking for a while. I can show that happy endings can exist, and to just have fun with it. I wanted to make people feel represented, but also not having their identity at the forefront of the stories that I was telling, just normalizing it and seeing it as a way for them to see representation of themselves.
You mentioned about starting your content creation on YouTube, what was the jumping off point that got you into that world?
I think it was my coming out specifically. Then once I started to get more confident in myself and learning about other people’s stories, the inspiration grew.
The inspiration continued to grow as I grew, especially when community members came up to me at conventions and told me about their coming out or at least the journey they were on, and they were excited it was happening in The Sims because it made them realize that they could do that too.
That’s when I took that experience and created a series called Belong There on my channel. It was called Belong There because it had the letters LGBT in the title, I was really proud of that one at the time! The series came out in 2016/17, closely after my own coming out and being in my first relationship with a woman. I decided to make three different Sims, all of which had different sexualities and there was also a trans woman in there as well. I wanted to have this representation, and I wanted to talk about their labels, and I wanted it to be part of their story and their family makeup. They all had extended family and back stories, it was an incredible moment.
While I had been telling stories for such a long time, I hadn’t really put that much thought into it up until that point. I felt like for this I wanted to do it right and have that representation in a very specific, very LGBTQ-focused series that people know that they can come to and learn more, not only about The Sims and how relationships work in there, but also to just have a fun time.
That was probably the pivotal moment in my channel where people started approaching me saying “I can see myself represented in this Sim, thank you so so much for this” I’m still so incredibly proud of that series.
On a broader level, not just with The Sims, why do you think it’s important for people to see that kind of representation of various identities?
I think it’s incredibly important across all media and all the genres as well. We’re not just this monolith of a community, we’re not all the same. It’s so important to tell diverse stories and have people working behind the scenes on those stories, giving direct representation and true representation of communities. We see it in the Black Simmers community as well with hair, clothing, geographical location, all of those things that make up a person and a culture. It’s important, especially for live simulation games, but also any game in general for people to see themselves and be like “Oh, this was made not only for me so that I could see myself represented, but it was most likely made by people like me as well.”
There was a base game update back in February this year which brought in binders, top surgery scars, and more, where do you think the next frontier for The Sims, related to the LGBTQ community particularly, should be?
Yeah, we also got pronouns in English as well, hopefully we continue to work on that as we know that not every language is the same, and there’s grammatical rules to follow and people to talk to within communities that use those languages, especially the queer community in those spaces. I think continuing that would be incredible. I know a lot of people are excited to have that representation within the game. It’s unfortunate that pronouns are only in English now, but it’s also understandable at the moment. They have said that it’s the first iteration, so hopefully, fingers crossed, we’ll see that develop more.
Every Sunday in Pride Month, I do a queer themed video, and I’ve had these conversations with my audience, asking what they would like to see next, what would help with representation within the game? And a lot of people have said to me, it still feels quite binary within Create a Sim. Whilst we have options that allow you to wear different gendered clothing, they do still refer to them as masculine and feminine. Also, when it comes to the sexuality settings that were introduced before High School Years, it’s still very ‘man’ or ‘woman’, it’s still very binary. I’m not a programmer, I don’t know how they would go about doing this, and obviously our community is so broad, but we’ve talked about the option of having a third, or more, genders actually listed within Create a Sim, including, trans non binary, gender queer, gender non conforming, etc.
It’s difficult to know which direction that could be taken in, but I think that would be such an important update. I know so many people who have requested it, and I would love to finally see them break out of that binary just a little bit more.
Pronouns within the game could also be a little bit more accessible too, because right now, it refers to your Sims a lot in the way that the notifications work in the game, but when you hover over a Sim and it comes up with their nameplate and age, I think it would be really handy if it had their pronouns in there. That would help when I’m recording and making videos, I know how to refer to a sim, because it’s not every day that I hop into Create a Sim and check their pronouns before talking to them. Usually, I’m quite good at knowing based off of promo and things of that nature, but selfishly, that’s definitely an update that I would like to see just and it also just continues to normalize pronouns.
In terms of your own content creation, where do you see yourself going? You’ve been doing it for 10 years, what does the next 10 years look like?
Wow, that is a huge question! I still love telling stories. I still love getting to show off this game, and it’s full potential. In 10 years maybe I’ll be working within gaming? I think that would be really cool to have the studio perspective on it while still creating content on the side.
I know that I always want to talk about a game that I love and have so much passion for, and also other games too, like Life is Strange. Continuing to showcase these stories and exploring them with my community is my priority. My community is at the forefront of what I do right now in content creation, thinking about what they’d enjoy and trying to bring the best quality content to them. Having a space where they feel like they can come and explore, make friends and interact with each other is extremely important.
Last question, where can people find you on the internet?
I am on YouTube and Twitch as the EnglishSimmer. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram as the EnglishSimmer too. You can probably find me by just typing in EnglishSimmer, but don’t let it autocorrect it to English Summer, it tries to do that all the time!
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