Bullying in the Sims 4.

No.

JoBass24us wrote:
This has to be one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard! There are many aspects and things that happen in real life that do not and should not be included in this game. Because of how ridiculous this idea is I have to assume the OP was trying to start some sort of war or argument on here. tsk tsk.....

I really don't think that the OP was trying to start an argument or some sort of war considering how everyone is responding to his thread in a civil manner and no one is really yelling or screaming at the OP. I just think that when people come up with ideas such as this, they just don't think about how it will effect others. He may have felt that by adding this in the game that it will help others learn to deal with it when in fact it just may bring up bad memories for others. Or he may just like the idea so that he can recreate the person who was or is doing the bullying and turn the tables on the bully he made for the game so he take any anger or aggression that they may have against the bully.

I know some people do make sim versions of people they know and may hate and do bad things to them in the game. I know when I got laid off of my job 2 years ago, I got in the game and made a sim of my supervisor since she was probably really happy that I was being laid off and the fact that she had been getting on my nerves for the past year. So I sent my simself over to her house and had my sim insult her and start a fight with her since I myself is not a violent person in real life so I took out my anger on a sim version of someone that just made me mad.

Now just because I took up for linklover on this thread does not mean that I support his idea. I feel that since we can insult, fight and declare enemies with other sims and get insulted by other sims as we are talking to them in the game then this is as close as we will get to bullying and I am fine with this.

No thank you. Thankfully in growing up I was usually in that "middle group" of kids that neither were the popular kids (which sadly oftentimes can include the bullies) nor the bullied group, but I saw enough of it to make me sick to my stomach. Every time I read or hear about some kid being beaten or worse in the news it makes me question where our kids are going these days (I know not all kids, in fact a very low percentage, are bullies, but I do question it anyways).

I'm all for finding ways to decrease bullying in real life, and I fear that putting it in Sims would actually be detrimental to that end.

Ladyliberty1301 wrote:
I am all for bullying in the game. It happens everywhere,especially on here. I was bullied majority of my life. Its a fact of life, if the game were to not include anything that could be sensitive to someone, the game would not exist. The fact that a sim can get pregnant may be extreamly sensitive and upsetting to someone who is not able to have children, or someone who lost a child.But we act like this is perfectly fine. Sim houses can get robbed or caught on fire, what about the people who have been robbed or had their house burn down? They find a way to play the game and deal with their fears or sadness.

I took a class in university on how the media effects people, and why we use media. One of the reasons media is used is to get things such as violence or other sensitive topics out of our system and as a source of coping with something.
While I understand some people may not use the game for coping with their past, others may use the game for coping and dealing with issues. So why deny it for those people. Most of the more sensitive stuff currently in the game is at such a low chance of happening that it probably wont happen in your game.

Also we have no idea what the game will be like, what if it has lots of things that can be turned on or off, they already introduced us to that nice feature, so there is a good chance we will see more of it. What if bullying was an option to turn on or off? Would that make everyone happy.

We do have younger people playing the game, they may subconsciously use the game as a learning experience. What if they are getting bullied and the game showed them that its alright to tell someone and not just take the bullying ? or it showed a bully what the victim was feeling?

EA will never touch upon this with a 10 foot pole. How is a game going to teach children how to deal with being bullied? It can't, only the parents, teachers, counselor and other people can teach children how to deal with it, not a video game. EA would get a lot of backlash for adding it to the game and people would think that EA supports bullying when there are groups of people who want to make a law against bullying as they should.

I was bullied as well but I wouldn't like to see it in-game. I don't see why anyone would. The Sims is supposed to be fun and a nice version of the world if you will.

Ladyliberty1301 wrote:

We do have younger people playing the game, they may subconsciously use the game as a learning experience. What if they are getting bullied and the game showed them that its alright to tell someone and not just take the bullying ? or it showed a bully what the victim was feeling?

How in the world would incorporating bullying into a game that kids play teach them not to do it? Having kids be able to have their sims rob, hurt, and push around other sims just because? Respectively, I don't know if you have kids, but that certainly wouldn't be the way I went about teaching mine about bullying.

Bullying actually is against the law, its a form of harassment, but it happens so often that it is sometimes overlooked. Kind of like speeding tickets. People see that it happens a lot and don't really think much of it because hey, everyone does it and you really don't get in much trouble for it (unless it happens repeatedly, obviously.) Unlike something like murder, where its more of a rare crime with severe punishments.

I don't mind some light hearted mild bullying like we have now (call someone a llama, be rude, get into fights etc) I wouldn't be bothered by some more negative interactions, but I wouldn't want to see bullying in the true sense of the word.

I don't think it would teach kids anything, I think most kids would find it funny to be a bully sim, or even control a bullied sim, because its not real life and the animations would have to have some sort of entertainment factor (my daughter finds making a sim wet themselves in public hilarious, she also finds the way sims end up in a cloud of dust when they are fighting hilarious, so if she had more ways to make her sims life a misery she would be entertained for hours, I dread her cottoning on to the fact she could kill her sims off) Now in real life she wouldn't find it funny, and she regularly stands up for kids around her who are bullied, but in a game it wouldn't teach her anything other then more ways to cast misery on her poor sims.

I don't think a game could teach the effects of bullying in a good enough way, its down to the adults in the childrens lives to teach them.

I was bullied as a kid. I don't need to be revisiting it in game. Kids have committed suicide over being bullied. Having it in game is not necessary and is in fact, counter-productive.

If anything, it would teach teens and kids that bullying is funny because it's in the context of a lighthearted game. And we know that kids younger than teens play regardless of rating.

I'm very against adding bullying.

No thank you. I want them to keep the game nice and bully free. =3

I've been bullied aswell and about ten years on I still suffer from the consequences but I'd never want it in the game.