Hello Sims 4 developers! It’s nice to meet you!
Your wonderful game has become a big part of my life’s digital aspects. It has helped me a lot with my depression. Creating my own worlds and characters has given me a slow paced and safe place to go to when I need it and has given me a few good smiles and laughs as well. For me it’s less a game about life simulation and more about socialization and building relationships and that’s what I love about it. In fact I hope Sims 5 doesn’t ever come out because this is already perfect and its millions upon millions of fans are testament to that.
I know you very much appreciate feedback so I would like to make a small suggestion regarding your recent July 23rd update. I like what you did a lot. I have nothing but support and love for the LGBT community and all expressions of pride so I think your changing relationship terms in the game and now using the terms spouse, engaged and partner was very progressive and sensitive. I like what you did a lot. The only thing is that as someone who is heterosexual, I personally love the terms husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend and fiancée/fiancé. I think they have a much nicer ring to them and I’m sure plenty of not only other heterosexual people but members of the homosexual, bisexual and pansexual communities who also frequently use those words to describe their lovers like those traditional terms. Just like how many, many people are perfectly happy identifying as male or female and would rather called “he” or “she” instead of “they” even in this era of progressive identity. One of my favorite aspects of the Sims world is creating romantic relationships. Making people and households and introducing them and setting them up together and until the change it made me very happy and proud to hover over sim relationships and see husband/wife and to see the “ask to be girlfriend/boyfriend” interaction.
So here’s my suggestion. One thing I love about the game is all the ways you can tweak it to your liking, not only with mods but with base game features like disabling automatic aging, disabling automatic content downloads and so many other options. So how about creating another feature following the recent update for customizing relationship terms? It would be just as inclusive to everyone as what you just did but even more so in allowing players to show pride in whatever their individual sexuality is in their own way. How about the option to select existing sim relationships or make a default setting for future relationships where you can choose from pre-existing terms “partner,” “spouse,” “engaged and also the traditional “husband/wife,” boyfriend/girlfriend,” “fiancé/fiancée” or even type in your own custom terminology and whatever you select or type in is what shows for those particular relationships. I think this would make people of all sexualities happier than just automatically changing their content to show those new terms. After all, you already have numerous options in place for similar things under the “identity” section of “Create a Sim.” Thanks! It would mean a lot to see such features implemented in future!
