Maxis will provide updates on its progress with pronouns in The Sims in January of next year.
The most recent Inside Maxis livestream (on Twitch) featured a discussion with Stefan Cooke about The Sims 4 Modern Menswear Kit, a sneak peek at the upcoming update, and a few hot topics.
Adding pronouns is one such hot topic, with over 20,000 signatures on a Change.org petition started by Twitch streamer Momo Misfortune.
Sims 4 producer, SimGuru provided updates on the team’s progress saying that they revealed their quest for non-binary language in The Sims this past May, and since then they’ve researched global language characteristics, connected with consultants, and gathered data on areas where change may be required an though they have a path ahead of them, they’d like to take users behind the scenes and show them where they are in the process before they can update the game.
Also, they are hosting a fireside chat with members of their development team in January 2022 during the first Inside Maxis of the new year, where they’ll share an update, including the research completed to date, more on their partnership with their external experts, and work-in-progress wireframes.
The LGBT+ community loves The Sims 4, and despite the fact that different gender options can be customized, the game is still based on the gender binary.
Momo Misfortune writes in their petition that it would be impactful for those people who are still unable to truly feel represented in the game by having their sims selves misgendered if they could have the option to choose pronouns for their sims or for the team to switch older game texts to be gender neutral like current pack dialogue and that the recent packs added more gender neutral language or the option to refer to a sim by their name rather than he/she, but gendered language still exists.
