"SimChic1;c-17885144" wrote:
I don't see how a couple of things here and there is overwhelmingly leaning towards one group. Skin types were one update and a much needed one. Gender neutral pronouns are a one-time thing. The LGBTQ community just gets a couple of flags on clothes here and there. None of that is special attention.
Instead of saying "Stop representing these groups so much," why don't you go down the more productive route of listing what groups you think have been left out?
There's a famous quote, that seems to not have a clear source on who said it first. It's kinda over-charged in this context because it's meant to be a mean snapback in the context it's usually used. But that's not what I'm trying to do here:
"When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression"To soften that... basically - because we don't "see" our own norms so much, when those of others come before us, it can look like those others are getting special attention.
But consider...
Much of what many think of as 'normal', 'baseline', 'default', 'just the way things are', 'plain', 'regular', 'everyday' - all of these things actually are in fact extremely 'ethnic' and specific to one globally small group.
And when you realize that, you realize that this group is extremely over-catered to compared to any other group. When other groups get some focus, it seems like they're getting disproportionate favor when in the larger context they are likely still under-represented.
Everything in there is somebody's representation.
Look at something like a Pride flag - one item among how many items in CAS that are not pride flags? Everything in the game that isn't a Pride flag is a representation of somebody else's non-LGBTQ culture.
Equality is when 8% of the game is LGBTQ items, if my old sex-ed teacher was right about the natural disposition of humanity on that topic - but by the same token, equality is when ONLY 8% of the game is Hetero. 84% of humanity is by default in-between and gets swayed by cultural pressure to make a choice. That was the 80s when I learned that though, during an extremely anti-diversity era - modern psychology has probably found an even more complex picture.
Look at the new skintones. First, they're new - which speaks volumes so loud it could knock down a skyscraper if you think about how global a reach games had even when Sims 4 first came out. Second, the vast bulk of the tones still don't reflect the actual human distribution. And the premades are still even a more narrow slice of that. So while it can look like 'People of Color' have been getting unusual amounts of focus and attention - we are actually still under-represented because there's just so much 'backlog' of beforehand content and the update still has more variation in tones for Sims resembling those from one ethnic group from a small continent than among the rest of the globe.
(ps: the very term 'People of Color' is just so weird when you realize it's the description for maybe 98% of humanity that is somehow seen as the exception to the norm of the remaining 2%).
Everything people consider as 'normal' and 'default' IS the representation for that group.
Look at the music choices when my sim plays a guitar. A screenshot I shared recently, in naming off a list of choices I would go to in real life that were not on the list: Reggae, Spanish, Marriachi, Classical, Tejano. Someone else immediately replied with yet more entries I had missed because after all - I am ALSO blinded from my own perspective.
From the choices that are on there, only 'Blues' is from a group not represented by the other choices, and it's a style now often popular with the folks who make up the 'main group represented'.
I applaud Maxis for the work they're doing. It's in the right direction. But far from having gone too far, the road still has many more miles to be trod. I'm just so glad there's a company that seems to value trodding it after fighting over this very issue with more hostile other companies for so long.
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