Should Having Multiple Spouses Be an Option?

"Amapola76;c-18142300" wrote:

"Stormkeep;c-18054872" wrote:

"PenguinFoop;c-18054853" wrote:
Personally, I think that more than one spouse makes the point of having a spouse at all pointless. After all, the whole point of marriage is to forsake all others and commit ONLY to one other person.

That's not actually the "whole point" of marriage. There's far more to the concept of marriage, historically, then the notion of "commitment"...which ultimately is just about the uh..physical...aspects of the relationship.
Marriage also carries with it social and economic reasons, the division/sharing of labors, including child rearing, and much, much more. Most of these other aspects are actually enhanced with polygamous relationships.

That's the argument people like to make for polygamy, but the reality is that it tends to be accompanied by child abuse, coercive relationships, domestic violence, and a whole host of other extremely bad things. There are solid, well-researched reasons it's illegal in the US and condemned by the UN.

Yes, I watched Big Love. No, this is not the source of my information. I have extensive professional knowledge about this; polygamy in real life is almost always a terrible deal for the women and children involved, no matter how some people want to romanticize it for their own purposes.

Now, does that mean it should or should not be in a sandbox game? It depends. Yes, we have things like kleptomania in the game that we would not support IRL, and that's fine. But at the other end of the spectrum, we have things that we will NEVER have in the game, because they are so taboo. So taboo, in fact, that even a certain modmaker refuses to allow even any mention of them. I won't name them here, because I'm sure it's against forum rules, but I'm sure we could all come up with a few examples of things we will never see in the game and never should. So, the only question then is where does polygamy fall on this spectrum: is it more on the kleptomania end, or is it more on the Unnamed Evil things end of the spectrum. For me, it's on the Unnamed Evil end of the spectrum, because in my professional experience polygamy is inextricably linked to and entwined with some of those same evil things. I am almost always a proponent of the view that this is a sandbox, more options are good, and we should be able to play how we want. But there are some things, like child abuse, that we should never see in the game. For me, personally, this is like that.

Polyamory is a whole different story, I would have no issues with that being added as an option to the game, because that has to do with the personal relationship arrangements of consenting adults.

Actually, small caveat: if they wanted to add only polyandry (multiple husbands) and not polygyny (multiple wives), I would be fine with that, because historically polyandry has been FAR less abusive (and obviously more rare) than polygyny. But, you know, that's probably getting into the weeds too much...

heh forgot about this thread, i even forgot a guru was considering this

I know you were just replying to someone who was also relatively off-topic, but I think you're kind of missing the point, as your post seems largely biased because you (supposedly) have knowledge of polygamy in real life being tied to things like domestic violence. But this isn't real life, so everything related to the words "real life" in your post is not relevant (nor all previous posts). The game devs could just... not program that in. They never would. They programmed snow-boarding in, but didn't add broken bones or blood. You're also appealing to your own authority, which is a fallacy and isn't relevant here in the context of a hypothetical videogame mechanic. Disbelief and detatchment are always major ingredients in fictional worlds.

Now, closer to the topic, after thinking about it more, I'm not entirely all for this idea. IF they can do it and do it well, I am very open to it, but the biggest question I have for it is how exactly would it be implemented? At base, it would just let the game recognize when a Sim has more than one spouse, but take beds. They only fit two Sims at max. Is the third Sim going to sleep in their own bed? Because that's terrible, lol. What about Woo-Hoo? It's only between two Sims. Is the third just going to have to wait their turn?

So while I'm open to the concept, it doesn't seem very practical, unless the developers can get around these constraints, and honestly, I'd rather that they prioritize making romance intimate and meaningful with couples having good reasons for being attracted to each other and animations to show that off, like proper slow-dancing (instead of that safe crap we got in MWS), cuddling, hand-holding, chemistry/attraction as opposed to trying to create solid gameplay around the idea of 3 Sims being in a relationship.