"bellagoth_;c-17612608" wrote:
"muzickmage;c-17612535" wrote:
Personally, I think the major problem is - somewhere along the way in our sims' journey we stopped inviting the sims' world into ours, and started imposing our world into theirs.
Is there such a thing as an African American Sim? Or a Spanish Sim? They certainly don't speak Spanish. How much of our reality can we impose on a world of fantasy before that world isn't about fantasy anymore but instead becomes a graphic representation of our very own lives.
Also, this is a prime example of a one sided argument. If we are going to create an argument over the sims not representing our world of reality, with the current argument being about race, then lets address as well the opposite side of the coin.The idea of vampires being in the sim world but not in ours. Where's our green aliens? The blue people? The mermaids?
Yes, the sim world is missing a lot that we have here in our world. But our world is missing ideas that come naturally to the sim world as well. Maybe it's a good thing the sims don't have a voice of their own because they might accuse us of being racist for not having blue people.
I blame technological advancement over the years for allowing for this argument. With graphics getting better and better, and the tools to manipulate things more to our preference improved, it was just a matter of time before someone somewhere got their hands on a sims CAS and tried to actually create "themselves". Once we discovered we could do exactly that.... create ourselves in CAS, the game then became more about us and our world, and less about the sims and the sims world.
And here we are today reading a blog about EA/Maxis being accused of racism because the sims don't look like us.
ur so right, also i think ts4 marketing has had some fault on all this drama. they keep pushing the whole inclusivity, representation and escapism idea onto their players and so they opened the door to backlash and accusations cuz it's impossible to please everyone. but people is taking it too far. i still remember when games were about having good fun and not about doing yourself with precision. i mean it's fun to make a sim with precision but it shouldn't make anyone upset nor should anyone take it seriously, especially given how ts4's cas is one of it's best features alongside build mode. besides there's also tons of cc to help.
maxis main concern in the sims now should be working on the core of it, which means the sims AI, personality, actions, animations, you know all that stuff that will do for the gameplay.
I agree. I think EA is maybe a little too proud of their CAS by marketing it to be on such a pedestal. And yes, by doing so, they became their own worst enemy. Now they have themselves caught up in a race war they may have a difficult time getting back out of.
I'm glad we are getting an update to the CAS. But I don't think EA/Maxis did themselves any favors by allowing their decision to be influenced by racial conflict. Now EA/Maxis has opened the door for comparative arguments that will suddenly come out of the woodwork.
IMO, what EA should have done, with their agreement to update the CAS, was point out clearly that the game wasn't created for personal identification. Just because we can (to some degree) create ourselves in CAS, doesn't mean that the CAS was created for that purpose. The color swatches are for the purpose of creating sims.... not real people.
It's sad that we sometimes get so wrapped up in ourselves that everything has to be about "us". I can't create "me" in the sims to EA/Maxis is racist.
But, unfortunately, that's the world we live in. We can't simply enjoy a game anymore without making it about some political statement.
