The Sims 4: Your Sim can soon be straight

So far in The Sims there have been no real limitations on the relationships your character can enter into. However, this was not particularly realistic, after all people have different preferences, which should be reflected in a life simulation like The Sims. The developers of the title probably thought so too, which is why the next Sims expansion, High School Years, will offer more options for setting the Sims’ sexual orientation.

New Sims update brings more sexual orientation settings

The update is free for the basic version of the game. So it’s not just players who buy the latest expansion that get access to the new options. SimGuruJessica, design lead of the new extension, writes how it all works. on the game page:

“Sexual orientation allows you to assign a set of attraction parameters to your Sim. This is a simple, affirmative statement of who your Sim is attracted to. When a Sim whose gender doesn’t match your Sim’s attraction settings engages in a romantic interaction with your If your Sim tries, they’ll be rejected. You can check any combination of attraction boxes (including none or all) to reflect your Sim’s romantic orientation.”

SimGuruJessica goes on to explain that these new options are just the beginning. For example, Sims players can only select male and female as their gender. In the future there should be more options for gender identity here, the biggest problem here is probably technical limitations, as written in the FAQ.

“At a later date we will be adding more gender identities that do not currently exist. I realize there will be concerns here about the initial options that conform to the binary gender order. Non-binary sims do not currently “mechanically” exist in DS4. While we’ve made great strides in representing abinary Sims with the pronouns update, we also know that pronouns are not the same as gender identity. We know we still have a long way to go in that regard.”

The developers are probably already anticipating that some players will not want to use this new feature for some reason, which is why they also address the question of whether the new feature can be deactivated in the FAQ:

“No. While we try to give players the ability to toggle certain gameplay features on and off, LGBTQIA+ identities are a real part of life and cannot be toggled on and off.”