LGBTQ+ Premade Couples

"Flexono1;c-17564560" wrote:

"Lustianicia;c-17564539" wrote:
To those of you who "don't understand" and think it's considered "whining".

Well it is whining. If you need your entire existence to be validated by a video game that is a you problem, and tbh getting this worked up over pixels in a game suggests you have some serious deep seated issues. The world doesn't owe you anything, you are not entitled to anything from EA.

There is literally nothing stopping you from creating the sims and the stories you want. Rather than waste time crying on the forum, load up the game, open the gallery, download some gay couples, add a few kids, place them into the world.....

Ta-da problem solved

It would be one thing if this wasn't a life simulator. But this is. Unless you can find a study that says that gay couples are significantly less likely to exist than lesbian couples or that gays are less likely to raise a family than lesbians, then EA should at least attempt to be realistic in their addition of LGBTQ Sims and couples.

It would also be one thing if EA started out all premades as single with no kids and unset gender preferences and let the game randomize at the start of each save with %'s that were at least somewhat realistic or adjusted by the player on a save by save basis. Like a player could choose to play for a story a neighborhood where everyone is straight except the couple they created. Or a player could turn the situation on its head and say LGBTQ was the norm and being straight is the outlier. Or be realistic. Or have every type have equal chances.

But it's not. EA decided to add couples and premades with preset gender preferences. They should attempt to maintain some equality in the gender preferences they add keeping to at least a semi-realistic amount. And be equal in who they give and don't give kids and pets to.

And this is as a player who tends towards straight couples when there's nothing that randomizes gender preference in game. And I've only ever made one Sim out of CAS with the intention of them being anything but straight. So this issue doesn't directly cause me any problems or discomfort.

Your suggestion is a solution to the current situation, no one is denying that. The OP and others want EA to fix the situation so they don't have to go download or make couples themselves to fix the imbalance.

come on y'all don't be hard on op, (i meant the other op, forgot the thread got closed lmao)
while i too dislike people wanting to be represented 24/7 (especially on the sims where you can make literally anyone), he kinda has a point

ea goes all about how progressive and inclusive they are, they shove down everyone's throat how lgbt friendly they are, yet the only sims they keep including are lesbians
if i was a gay man it probably would kinda annoy me as well to be left out because well...media does indeed seem to cater more the lesbians for the whole women empowerment or something like that (not my opinion, i'm just basing on what i read/see around google)

also, the sims has a majority female player base (again, i don't say this, google does) so of course ea will try to fit their agenda to represent the majority of its players, it's nothing personal, just ea doing business pretending they care just to get media approval and peoples money

ts4 is very biased towards the female young adult and it shows not only on premades, but in content as well

to be fair and letting the premades apart, ea just wants to cater the young adult in general, and the romance system is so bad that no matter how gay or straight is a sim, if they get in a flirty mood they gonna flirt even with the talking toilet

Representation is extremely important. I find it deeply concerning that no male couple with children has been featured.

In general, The Sims is aimed at females, so it doesn’t surprise me that there are more female couples. To me, the issue is the makeup of the couples. A male couple with children has no reason to be absent.

Here is a quote that may help explain the issue for those who don’t understand:
“Representation creates relatable and powerful role models and sources of inspiration. What many seem to take for granted is the power of having a role model that you can look up to and relate to. Having a black female role model was the reason the talented Lupita Nyong’o felt she could make it in acting. This point is also made abundantly clear in an emotional story around a queer girl’s struggle in coming out. You can read the full story here, but the short of it is, a character coming out as gay in Supergirl helped a queer girl from committing suicide whilst struggling to deal with her own coming out.” (From criticalhit.net)

Of course people can create whatever characters they want, and other people can delete whatever characters they want. But the characters the game is shipped with matter. You can bet EA spends a lot of time figuring out what premades will sell the game. It’s a statement that they decided that male couples with children would not sell.

I've often found in my games that long term characters and NPC's autonomously generate many gay and lesbian couples usually becoming pregnant or already with children. It's done I suppose because I like filling up the neighborhoods with the tons of awesome choices from the gallery of all the different homes/lots so the game will often come in and put sims in them before I do when I go back to do any customizations I would like.

I have to be honest I get a lot of diversity from different ethnic groups from across the world represented too, to my delight! My long term favorite save started right off the bat with Don Lothario autonomously moving in with his alien boyfriend who became pregnant from his alien abduction?! :D So I'm wondering if that may be due to MCCC that I will not play without. I never fooled around with tweeking the settings that are pre-set with MCCC so I'm just wondering if anyone else has any opinion about that?

"Rouenpucelle;c-17564634" wrote:
Representation is extremely important. I find it deeply concerning that no male couple with children has been featured.

In general, The Sims is aimed at females, so it doesn’t surprise me that there are more female couples. To me, the issue is the makeup of the couples. A male couple with children has no reason to be absent.

Here is a quote that may help explain the issue for those who don’t understand:
“Representation creates relatable and powerful role models and sources of inspiration. What many seem to take for granted is the power of having a role model that you can look up to and relate to. Having a black female role model was the reason the talented Lupita Nyong’o felt she could make it in acting. This point is also made abundantly clear in an emotional story around a queer girl’s struggle in coming out. You can read the full story here, but the short of it is, a character coming out as gay in Supergirl helped a queer girl from committing suicide whilst struggling to deal with her own coming out.” (From criticalhit.net)

Of course people can create whatever characters they want, and other people can delete whatever characters they want. But the characters the game is shipped with matter. You can bet EA spends a lot of time figuring out what premades will sell the game. It’s a statement that they decided that male couples with children would not sell.

You say that. That everyone can create who they want or delete whoever they want but when it comes down to it most of the people on this forum are judgmental meaning if you actually posted you were deleting a premade couple that happened to be lesbian/gay they would judge you and say you don’t like them. So it’s a double standard here because it is a game I don’t think anyone should be judged or put down on how they play their own game.

I'm going to go one further and say that there are no older gay couples whatsoever because Elder Sims are extremely unrepresented, especially ethnic couples and LGBTQ+ couples. It's as if they're saying to be gay, you have to be no older than an Adult, as if same sex attraction is brand new to the world.

I do think we could use more gay male couples because I think there is a valid point in saying that gay male couples aren't glorified the way lesbian female couples have been throughout recent history. And I really think it can be traced down to the patriarchic societies of not-so-old. I hope this isn't too controversial to say, but in general, straight males have ruled the world for a very long time and have also been known to glorify lesbians to suit their own fantasies. So lesbians have always been generally accepted (although not in the respectful way they should have been), while gay males have been vilified and treated as taboo. Of course, things have been changing in recent years and we continue to make great progress. That said...

I don't think it was a conscious thing done on Maxis/EA's part, as they are known to be very progressive. I do think there are more female Sims in general made then male Sims among players (and younger Sims as opposed to Elder) and their telemetry most likely reflects this. Unfortunately, their marketing tends to reflect it as well, which ends up tipping in favor of the "popular choices". So it's something that would be helpful for them to be aware of in the future, and maybe they'll address it with a little more sensitivity and diversity, which is what they always claim to be striving for.

Maybe in the near future we'll see a gay male Elder couple with a grown son and/or daughter living in a household together. :)

"pepperjax1230;c-17564588" wrote:
I still don’t understand why you just can’t represent lesbian/gays by making them in your own game. Why you think EA needs to provide the premade couples. Yes I know they need to be treated equal and they need not to be looked down on. But this is also a game and you are free to create whoever you want without restrictions. You can be whoever you want in the game. So to ask EA to provide more premade gay/lesbian couples in the game I would think you are restricting how the game is meant to be played. It’s only my opinion so you can take it with a grain of salt and agree or not.

I think what your point illustrates is the comparative value of performative support -- creating a male-identifying couple -- when matched with meaningful support -- the ability to create virtually any gendered or oriented character of your choice. There is only one premade same sex male couple, and it would be great if there were others, even if in Maxis' Gallery. However, I have to question the argument made in this thread when such an openly supportive studio has given the player the option to make whatever they like. Maxis has gone far beyond token support here, and I'm not sure how useful it is to argue that more symbolic support be given after-the-fact.

I hope the devs see this thread and make a point of creating a big gay family next time we get a neighborhood. I rarely play with premade sims but for all the folks who do.

I'll just do some copy and paste from another discussion I participated in.

Just giving my opinion here.

There have been more two-men couples in trailers than two-woman (Cats & Dogs reveal trailer, Seasons holiday gameplay trailer, and Discover University gameplay trailer). Additionally, I got an impression that Brent and Brant have just got married and haven't had previous relationships with female sims, thus they still have time to adopt a child. As they live in Brindleton Bay, they got a dog.
Also, the game suggest that Oliana Ngata has been previously in relationship with a male sim as her child, Tane Ngata, is only shown to be a child on Oliana, not Leila, suggesting he was already born when Oliana and Leila got married. Same with Tinker family with Yasemin and Olive. However, I find it strange that the same thing is shown with Greenburg family as the household description states that Blossom and Mary adopted Knox, but Knox is only shown to be Blossom's son. Usually, if a married sim adopts a child, the child has child-parent ties with the sim and their spouce. This could also suggest that Blossom adopted him when she was engaged or just going out with Mary. This could be a good explanation for that.

First of all as a gay man myself I don't find the action of turning make gay sims straight, because they don't fit with the story you're making right now etc., offensive. I can tell that the person doing that isn't trying to hurt anyone.
However deleting a gay couple and then posting it on the forums like "look I just deleted the gays hehe" is offensive to me because I can tell you did it for no other reason than because they were gay. (all of this in theory I don't know exactly what happened)

It is not the action itself that makes it offensive it is the thought behind it!

Now back to the topic. Is EA being gayscared because of the lack of gay couples? We don't know because we cannot see the thought process behind it. A lot of factors play a role in what premades they add to the gamep and some of them might be unconscious reasons so I can't blame them. Unless I have proof there are malicious thoughts behind the lack of gay couples then I cannot accuse the team of anything.

Homophobic is getting censored so I called them gayscared