It’s a good thing. It does serve to remind us, though, that a lot of the options in videogames to let people play as their own sexuality and gender are there by default and have to be intentionally removed by coders. You don’t want characters of the same sex getting married? You have to write,
if (sim[1].gender!=sim[2].gender) alert(“No gays!”)
In the code. In this case they put gender tags on a bunch of clothing and hairstyles. They did work to exclude people from certain customizations. The default setting is that anyone can love anyone, anyone can marry anyone, anyone can dress however they want and cut their hair however they want.
Anyway, they’ll save themselves a bit of work in Sims 5.
Years ago, I loved playing Sim City and felt curious about Sims but never played. Is it fun? And is(are) there still a Sim City option(s) that’s intersting?
The Sims is one of my favorite game series. It’s kind of silly but I love it still. I’m glad they finally did this.
For me, it’s a super addictive blast. It kind of depends on your interests though. Like if setting your own goals in a game and then working to achieve them sounds like fun, you’ll probably enjoy it but if you like something a bit more defined it may not be for you.
You are tempting me to try it out. I used to love the city game though because it was the closest thing to an RPG that emphasized policies. OTOH I felt like there weren’t enough variables and assumptions embedded into the game interfered. For example, it wasn’t possible to socialize different industries.
It’s nothing like SimCity. The ones I played (1 to 3, I think) were more like a virtual house + dolls playset with a lot of visual customization available in both fronts. They got a bit micromanagey for me after a while and lacking in meaningful goals beyond pure consumerism (more expensive furniture = happier lives). I think the newer ones have more things to do.
Oh, and the classic thing to do is make versions of yourself and people in your life to make it fun to see who gets along and who dies in an oven fire. Works for XCOM, too (replace oven fire with alien laser blast).
The one time I tried playing the game I was frustrated by how much attention had to be paid to things like scheduling bathroom breaks at the expense of ostensibly bigger objectives. If the difficulties and accomplishments were weighted properly, “not accidentally pissing yourself with oddly blue liquid” should be one of the easiest tasks of the day.
I remember trying playing Sims 1 properly, raher than just ‘cheat code interior design’ style. I made a single guy who went to work every day, paid his bills and hoped to get ahead, and a family who could only afford a tiny, shitty house. The single, bill-paying guy became lonely and depressed then killed himself. The family’s kitchen was constantly on fire, and they fought all the time, but they were happy. Metaphor for life, really.
Cities Skylines is a nice modern take on the Simcity Genre. Doesn’t sound like the policies are in depth enough for you though, it’s more focused on building a really impressive looking huge city/ies.
The latest Simcity has been through the EA Fuckup Machine, and isn’t worth bothering with.
The last Sims game I played, I set up the Neil Gaiman’s Endless as a household. Dream was a musician, Death a doctor, Destruction a chef, and Destiny worked at the library; I forget what the others did but Desire and Despair kept swapping jobs. I remember that Dream kept setting fire to the kitchen, and Death was a surprising good doctor.
One of my favorite things about the Saints Row games was that all customization options were available regardless of what gender you made your character. Your petite lady-assassin in a cocktail dress could sport a full beard, and your burly bald bravo guy could be in a pink Jackie O skirt suit and pearls.
One of the Soul Calibur games also allowed some limited cross-gender options, which I abused by making a custom character that was the biggest, burliest, hairiest guy possible and then putting him in what was basically a maid outfit. I took him online to play and had people suicide their character rather than fight me.
Myself and my old roommate got ahold of it once, and after giving it an honest go, ended up amusing ourselves by building a house with just a telephone, a fridge, and no toilet. Our Sim kept drinking liquid and then wetting his pants over and over, yelling "EWW!!"and called people to come help, who ran around outside, unable to get in. He died of humiliation.
Another time, we set the house on fire and called the fire department and pizza delivery at the same time to see who’d get there first. The pizza guy arrived almost immediately and kept demanding his tip as everyone ran around on fire.
