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Re: Suggestion - Sims 4 - Sims with Disabilities

Probably because it requires a lot of money and resources to make that happen, thus would warrant a game pack or even expansion pack.

Now this is just how I think EA works, but I think when EA decides on what packs to make, they look at:

1)  what do people most want to see.

2) what type of world/setting would add on to the game (e.g. jungles/islands/cities etc. so my next bet would be egypt-esque or high-tech world)

and

3) what is a fun game play we can offer to people.

1) There will always be some pack that the majority of people want to see rather than disabled. First it was pets/seasons/mermaids etc. now it's bands/university etc. 

2) No specific world comes to mind with disabled, the best I can come up with is high tech world with the ability to have sims become cyborg or have cyber-parts like a leg or an arm, but then what would the use be of e.g. a wheelchair?

3) it is increasingly hard to come up with "fun" gameplay for something as unfortunate as disabilities. 

It's all about demand, and they have to think of what is "safe" for them. It's a lot safer to make a pack like university and get backlash on that, because let's face it, a lot of the gameplay in sims 4 gets stale quickly. If they tackle something as difficult as disabilities, and let's face it, a delicate and personal matter that will pull at people's heartstrings, only to have it flop because people don't find it entertaining or their money's worth. 

Heck people are so entitled, they deem this and a 100 other things as things that should have just been in the base game of sims 4. It's like they have no concept of how much time and resource and money goes into the making of even a single gamepack. 

If you want EA to make disabilities a priority, the best you can do is to cause a hype for it, have simmers sign a petition and then wave it around on the sims 4 forums. It worked for mermaids! (though nobody is happy with the mermaids and how limited they are, so careful what you wish for) 

4 Replies

  • PugLove888's avatar
    PugLove888
    Hero (Retired)
    7 years ago

    @Unicorngirluk26, I understand many people want the Sims 4 to reflect their real lives, and that disabilities are a real life experience for many. 😢  @RaichiSims  gave some very good reasons why disabilities probably won't be added to the Sims 4.  But there are even some more reasons:

    1) To make wheelchairs, crutches, blind people walking realistically (with or without a cane for the blind & also with or without a seeing-eye dog) etc, would require a bunch of new animations for all instances of life! This would take an incredible amount of time, resources, and money.  

    2) Some people want realistic gameplay -- but other want fantasy gameplay.  The Sims has always been a mix of both.  Realistic gameplay lovers are why the Laundry Day SP was created! But fantasy gameplay lovers are why we also have the Vampires GP and the Realm of Magic GP!  Yes, a disability pack would fall in the realistic gameplay category... but it is only realistic for a small portion of the population.  Comparing it to Laundry Day, everyone in the real world does laundry or has it done for them.  (Personally, I'd rather make stories about the difficulty of living with a disability than try to make a story about doing laundry because a laundry story would be super boring!  But not everyone plays the Sims in order to create stories. 

    3) @RaichiSims  touched on this earlier, but no matter how many disabilities EA would put into the pack, there will always be some disability left out. 🤭  So by trying to be more inclusive, EA would actually end up excluding somebody!  😞  I've seen requests for not only wheelchairs, crutches, blind Sims, deaf Sims (with sing language), asthma, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, missing arms, multiple sclerosis, and even more!  An endeavor like this would probably need to be in its own separate game, not crammed into one pack.  And you would still have a lot of disabilities not being represented . 😞

    4) Many people with disabilities don't want to play a game that highlights their disability... they play the Sims 4 to escape for a little while the difficulty that is in their lives.   I do understand that especially for younger people with disabilities that they just want to feel understood, loved, and respected! ❤️  But there are a lot of older people with disabilities who play this game too, and most of them don't want disabilities in the game. Some of them have dealt with their disabilities all their lives, and they realize that most of these conditions would not make for fun gameplay. ☹️

    5) Which brings us to the most important reason.  Many people with disabilities wouldn't want their conditions to be trivialized.😢  That is all to easy to happen in a game.  One of the Sim Gurus a couple of years ago has stated that they were looking into having disabilities in the game, but they wanted to talk with actual people who had those disabilities to figure out if this would be a good thing to put into the game or not. If EA were to try this, it could go horribly wrong and hurt the very people they were trying to represent!  I can also see a lot of mean people harming their disabled Sims just for "fun" 🤒😠😢  I think this is why we haven't seen disabilities in the game.  

  • If they can create horses for use to ride, swimming pools where we dive, then can't they just create a wheelchair, its not a big thing to ask. It would make for a more realistic game play when one of your characters, broke her back falling off said horse. Or fell down the stairs, or what about a burns unit in the hospital, there are enough fires in Sims, surely they do end up suffering major burns or should.

    Wouldn't sims be more realistic if they just used there imagination. Maybe some canny creator can just do it for us. Sims have wasted more money and time on castles and crystals than what we really want. 

  • jpkarlsen's avatar
    jpkarlsen
    Hero (Retired)
    2 years ago

    @rowantastic 

    Please read already given answers in this thread why adding wheelchairs would be a "big thing". Basically the game would have to be rebuild from the ground up to accommodate this. I don't see that happening in TS4 maybe in project Rene though I personally doubt it.

    As for injuries you have to remember that this is a compressed game where 1 day equals 1 year real time so any injuries would be over in a couple hours hardly enough time to get to the hospital. With games you have to realize that not everything can be made realistic and the Sims 4 has loads of unrealistic things in it.

    Happy gaming.

  • You can slow the game down though, I never realised it was that fast paced, no wonder they age fast. Thanks for the heads up. Andrea

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