Is there a PRIDE location in your game?
I never really played LGBT sims so I never focused on a hang out for them, but now I'm turning the Spice Market karaoke bar into a mixed hangout, which is open to everyone but will be a hangout for th...
Forum Discussion
A Pride location would be like a Chinatown in both it's purpose and effect.
If you look at these places in the real world, and as a native of San Francisco I'm blessed with the 2 most famous of them both being in my hometown, ask why they formed and what purpose they serve and the answers come back to some very unpleasant events and motives.
These are communities that were formed to protect people against attack in the case of the Castro District, and because the city forced them to live in cramped underserved quarters where they could be more easily targeted in the case of Chinatown.
Neither is a natural thing.
Castro District gave people the ability to organize their political and economic power together in order to change laws to go from having their heads bashed in by police to being in City Hall and able to hire and fire those police... It gave them a 'crowd' so when the cops showed up, there'd be a million of them standing around making it harder to beat one guy to death.
Chinatown was created because the city made laws that all Asians had to live with in a tiny few square blocks, where they could cut off many city services, defund their schools, beat them to a pulp if they tried to walk across the street to the next neighborhood, and routinely let white mobs run in and loot people, attack women, and so on... It got that iconic look because the local businesses got together and met with the architects of Disneyland to come up with a 'theme' in order to turn a forced ghetto into a tourist attraction as a way to make the place safe to live in. Suddenly the city went from using the ghetto to abuse them, to having a financial stake in promoting it to visitors.
Now you have to ask yourself if the LGBTQ sims of your game world are a people at risk of sudden violence and/or discrimination from the other sims. If not - they don't need a rally point to protect themselves.
If your 'imaginary world' of your Sims game either has moved past bigotry or is some alternative universe that never had it, ethnic and 'identity based' districts would not have a need to exist.
That noted, we obviously exist in the real world, so having things like Pride symbols / flags to place inside your game is important not for the sims that live there, but for the human that is playing them as a way to feel that this space was provided for their play by a real world community that values them.
.
If you look at these places in the real world, and as a native of San Francisco I'm blessed with the 2 most famous of them both being in my hometown, ask why they formed and what purpose they serve and the answers come back to some very unpleasant events and motives.
These are communities that were formed to protect people against attack in the case of the Castro District, and because the city forced them to live in cramped underserved quarters where they could be more easily targeted in the case of Chinatown.
Neither is a natural thing.
Castro District gave people the ability to organize their political and economic power together in order to change laws to go from having their heads bashed in by police to being in City Hall and able to hire and fire those police... It gave them a 'crowd' so when the cops showed up, there'd be a million of them standing around making it harder to beat one guy to death.
Chinatown was created because the city made laws that all Asians had to live with in a tiny few square blocks, where they could cut off many city services, defund their schools, beat them to a pulp if they tried to walk across the street to the next neighborhood, and routinely let white mobs run in and loot people, attack women, and so on... It got that iconic look because the local businesses got together and met with the architects of Disneyland to come up with a 'theme' in order to turn a forced ghetto into a tourist attraction as a way to make the place safe to live in. Suddenly the city went from using the ghetto to abuse them, to having a financial stake in promoting it to visitors.
Now you have to ask yourself if the LGBTQ sims of your game world are a people at risk of sudden violence and/or discrimination from the other sims. If not - they don't need a rally point to protect themselves.
If your 'imaginary world' of your Sims game either has moved past bigotry or is some alternative universe that never had it, ethnic and 'identity based' districts would not have a need to exist.
That noted, we obviously exist in the real world, so having things like Pride symbols / flags to place inside your game is important not for the sims that live there, but for the human that is playing them as a way to feel that this space was provided for their play by a real world community that values them.
.
