I model my main save after golden age sitcoms (50’s, 60’s, 70’s) and the fictional suburbias of yesteryear. There aren’t many black families in my worlds. Does that make me ... racist? Just checking because if so I should probably inform my wife and daughter.
You can do whatever you want in your game but there were tons of Black families in 50s-70s so Idk why you mentioned that as if it wouldnt be accurate for Black people to be in that time. I mean, maybe we weren't living amongst white families due to segregation, but fortunately the Sims world never had a racist history...
Um, I agree that including more shades and tones is long overdue… like ever since the beginning.
But… didn’t she work for the studio in the past? If this is as important as she’s stating here, why not advocate it when she was in a position of power?
Yeah she was the CM prior to SimGuruFrost and honestly she should have.
Also thanks to the skin tone topics, I did further recent research on migrations of humans which was interesting and brought everything together. I really love history and learning about origins.
My grandmother was really big and taught Egyptian and Roman history, so it rubbed off on me being interested in bones. Probably will change with time, since scientist tend to change their theories over time as more bones get introduced like how King Tut was actually a 19 year old with twins that didn't survive.
I think that is part of the reason why I wouldn't mind an Into the Past pack too as a way to introduce different cultures and locations from different time periods.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Wow, he looks amazing, so authentic. One of the best looking & most well made Sims I've ever seen. I think I'm in love.
Holy Simoly! o.O Thank you so much! Very appreciative you took the time to share that. Noah's special to me. I tried very hard to make him look authentic, so it made my day reading your post!
According to this tweet we’re supposed to go out of our way to diversify the creators we follow for no other reason than to be more diverse?
No thanks. I’ll follow the creators whose content I like, thank you very much. The content will determine who I follow.
This post just gave me THE biggest eye roll of the century. The virtue signaling is unparalleled. I think its kinda funny how TS4 boxed themselves into this mess. If they wouldve put their focus in the game instead of appeasing to this Diversity™ & Inclusion™/ cancel culture theyd wouldnt be in it. Im also tired of being pulled into this race drama. She is a former employee right? Thankfully. Im black. We are all human and deserve respect - period. No race is greater than the other. This update is great, but this us vs them and all this shaming stuff is so stupid.
It is super weird! Like we were promised super smart almost artificial intelligence-level Sims. That obviously didn’t pan out so they pivoted to this mess about being able to be and play yourself.
Of course everyone should be able to do so, but it’s so ridiculous how much TS4 continues to bury itself with these ongoing diversity and inclusion allegations. Like, dig up, dummy! Fix it or don’t! You can’t rest on your “diverse” laurels if you don’t include everyone.
Wow, he looks amazing, so authentic. One of the best looking & most well made Sims I've ever seen. I think I'm in love.
Holy Simoly! o.O Thank you so much! Very appreciative you took the time to share that. Noah's special to me. I tried very hard to make him look authentic, so it made my day reading your post!
he's is really cool @Karababy52 he is really well made
According to this tweet we’re supposed to go out of our way to diversify the creators we follow for no other reason than to be more diverse?
No thanks. I’ll follow the creators whose content I like, thank you very much. The content will determine who I follow.
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
I model my main save after golden age sitcoms (50’s, 60’s, 70’s) and the fictional suburbias of yesteryear. There aren’t many black families in my worlds. Does that make me ... racist? Just checking because if so I should probably inform my wife and daughter.
You can do whatever you want in your game but there were tons of Black families in 50s-70s so Idk why you mentioned that as if it wouldnt be accurate for Black people to be in that time. I mean, maybe we weren't living amongst white families due to segregation, but fortunately the Sims world never had a racist history...
You conveniently missed the part where I said I modelled my save after sitcoms, not reality at the time. Not sure how you missed that, but it’s a pretty important distinction.
Because I create so many analogue families (and buildings) based on my favorite classic shows such as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, etc., my game tends to be short on what one might consider diverse or even accurate representation.
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
Done.
She's not trying to send people on a guilt trip. It's also not a hateful request. She's just asking them to look at the creators they follow because they may be missing out of a lot of good ones who could interest them. The United States and the rest of the world have track records of being racist and discriminatory without even knowing it at times. There are literally thousands of examples of this (for instance, Americans with traditional black names on resumes in America are less likely to get a job than someone with a more culturally white name and women were less likely to be hired as musicians until auditions became blind).
You are following POC simmers, so her tweet isn't directed at you and maybe that's why you don't get it because you focus on content, but a lot of other people only follow white simmers. Thus, this is the first time they ever heard about the issue with the skin swatches and hair, etc. etc. and they're probably blowing up her twitter mentions about it. So she's recommending that they diversify who they follow, which makes sense, because they wouldn't have missed a lot of good content or these issues if they followed a more diverse group. That's all.
I don't understand why everyone's trying to explain what's in their personal individual game? This was never about individual saves, but about what the game offers in general. We can all play as we like, that's what we're all trying to do, this is why consumers review for things that matter to them in a thing they enjoy and are paying for.
All I can say about SimGuruKate's twitter post is wow. I do know Sims is an American game and reflects on USA more than any other country, but to say it is bad white people weren't aware? Is she talking about her fellow Americans or all people that play Sims? My game is pretty diverse because of all the Sims the game itself creates but when I create a sim I create a white sim because that is how I and my world looks like...and now that's wrong because if I had been more inclusive I would have known about the other bad color swatches. No, it's not problematic, what's problematic is that it took so long for the developers to change it and too many Americans forget there are other places in the world outside of US.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for it, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
I wonder if they regret yet not adding the color wheel to TS4. If they gave us at least the same options for creating sims as they did for creating pets... the lack of skin tones wouldn't be an issue.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough diverse creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
This is Noah Noonday, the founder of my TS4 Build Newcrest Challenge. He's a full-blooded Potawatomi Algonquian Native American from the Ottawa Nation, a part of the Council of Three Fires. He married Cassandra Goth and they have two children; a daughter, Kewanee and a son, Payson.
He's supposed to be a direct descendant of Chief Noahquageshik Noonday of Michigan fame. There is a statue honoring Chief Noonday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My husband and I both have Michigan Three Fires Native American ancestors and I wanted to create a Sim from this culture to honor them. This Sim is the best I could do two years ago on my old under-powered laptop.
I looked at a lot of photos online in an effort for accuracy, with hours of research. I did this because while my husband still looks somewhat Native American, he's not full-blood (1/8th) and neither am I. I look more like my German/Danish ancestors. I wanted my created Sim to look like a full-blood Potawatomi. I think he turned out quite well using the CAS assets we have available, but still not as accurate as I would like since his skin tone should have a more reddish undertone. I still love him though.
I would welcome many more skin tones, hairstyles and colors in the game for all races, but while creating Noah, the idea of the lack of accurate skin tones as having racist connotations never once entered my mind.
Happy Simming!
@Karababy52
Wow, he looks amazing, so authentic. One of the best looking & most well made Sims I've ever seen. I think I'm in love.
@Karababy52 You did a good job which preset did you use for him or did you just use sliders? I love it thank you for proving me wrong and showing it can be done in-game but we still need more presets and improved and better sliders.
My husband is part Lakota we learned when he found his family a few years ago. I'm part Mayan and Cherokee which had me asked if I was Latino by white people a lot as a kid
Playtesting - not just tabletop games and card games any more. Really that should have been playtested in Beta and not [img]just with accounting and marketing but actual players. https://i.imgur.com/t48COW6.jpg[/img]
All I can say about SimGuruKate's twitter post is wow. I do know Sims is an American game and reflects on USA more than any other country, but to say it is bad white people weren't aware? Is she talking about her fellow Americans or all people that play Sims? My game is pretty diverse because of all the Sims the game itself creates but when I create a sim I create a white sim because that is how I and my world looks like...and now that's wrong because if I had been more inclusive I would have known about the other bad color swatches. No, it's not problematic, what's problematic is that it took so long for the developers to change it and too many Americans forget there are other places in the world outside of US.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for it, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
I wonder if they regret yet not adding the color wheel to TS4. If they gave us at least the same options for creating sims as they did for creating pets... the lack of skin tones wouldn't be an issue.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough colored creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
This term can be considered offensive. I'd advise you to research it if you're interested.
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
Done.
She's not trying to send people on a guilt trip. It's also not a hateful request. She's just asking them to look at the creators they follow because they may be missing out of a lot of good ones who could interest them. The United States and the rest of the world have track records of being racist and discriminatory without even knowing it at times. There are literally thousands of examples of this (for instance, Americans with traditional black names on resumes in America are less likely to get a job than someone with a more culturally white name and women were less likely to be hired as musicians until auditions became blind).
You are following POC simmers, so her tweet isn't directed at you and maybe that's why you don't get it because you focus on content, but a lot of other people only follow white simmers. Thus, this is the first time they ever heard about the issue with the skin swatches and hair, etc. etc. and they're probably blowing up her twitter mentions about it. So she's recommending that they diversify who they follow, which makes sense, because they wouldn't have missed a lot of good content or these issues if they followed a more diverse group. That's all.
I appreciate what you’re saying and I’m always willing to try and look at things from a different perspective.
I seriously don’t believe it’s the first time people heard about the swatch issues. The complaint has been all over the place, for years. On twitter, on forums. Not just by POC, but by everyone. It has always been about the missing ‘Colourwheel’. The tool that will give a lot of simmers more freedom. Every simmer should get more freedom. Whether it’s through swatches or colourwheels.
If people failed to notice until a couple of popular YouTubers mentioned a detail that’s missing from CAS and if it has to be made that specific, I’m completely lost. I should become a full-time hermit.
To me it seems like Kate is performing the same stunt as the ‘White YouTubers’. Twitter suddenly got spammed with tweets about the dark skin tone issue and oh yes, let’s remember, POC also have a voice. And so let’s make videos or start lecturing simmers about their lack of appreciation for other content creators.
Better customization in CAS should have been prioritized by Maxis ages ago, so we didn’t have to read nonsense like this:
‘And it will do you a massive benefit to find and support creators who aren’t just cis-White people.’
What do they know about what simmers benefit from or not? Or who simmers follow and from who they download content?
I don’t appreciate the tone, because it doesn’t sound like an encouragement or a mere suggestion. It sounds like lecturing others about something that they shouldn’t really be blamed for.
I believe Kate should just stick to sharing links to talented content creators if they want to make their point clear and stop lecturing folks. If Kate has any followers, it’s the only way to really encourage simmers to get some good cc by a variety of talented artists of all colors and backgrounds.
In the meantime - although it’s great we’re getting skintone updates in Fall- I hope Maxis will fix CAS adequately and not by adding a little bit of colour here and a little bit of colour there. The Colour spectrum is too great. Do it right or don’t do it at all, because this discussion will never end until the essential tools have been fixed.
All I can say about SimGuruKate's twitter post is wow. I do know Sims is an American game and reflects on USA more than any other country, but to say it is bad white people weren't aware? Is she talking about her fellow Americans or all people that play Sims? My game is pretty diverse because of all the Sims the game itself creates but when I create a sim I create a white sim because that is how I and my world looks like...and now that's wrong because if I had been more inclusive I would have known about the other bad color swatches. No, it's not problematic, what's problematic is that it took so long for the developers to change it and too many Americans forget there are other places in the world outside of US.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for it, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
I wonder if they regret yet not adding the color wheel to TS4. If they gave us at least the same options for creating sims as they did for creating pets... the lack of skin tones wouldn't be an issue.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough colored creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
This term can be considered offensive. I'd advise you to research it if you're interested.
I'm not interested, but I will edit it for the sake of specifics since Kate was not just talking about race in her post.
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
Done.
She's not trying to send people on a guilt trip. It's also not a hateful request. She's just asking them to look at the creators they follow because they may be missing out of a lot of good ones who could interest them. The United States and the rest of the world have track records of being racist and discriminatory without even knowing it at times. There are literally thousands of examples of this (for instance, Americans with traditional black names on resumes in America are less likely to get a job than someone with a more culturally white name and women were less likely to be hired as musicians until auditions became blind).
You are following POC simmers, so her tweet isn't directed at you and maybe that's why you don't get it because you focus on content, but a lot of other people only follow white simmers. Thus, this is the first time they ever heard about the issue with the skin swatches and hair, etc. etc. and they're probably blowing up her twitter mentions about it. So she's recommending that they diversify who they follow, which makes sense, because they wouldn't have missed a lot of good content or these issues if they followed a more diverse group. That's all.
I appreciate what you’re saying and I’m always willing to try and look at things from a different perspective.
I seriously don’t believe it’s the first time people heard about the swatch issues. The complaint has been all over the place, for years. On twitter, on forums. Not just by POC, but by everyone. It has always been about the missing ‘Colourwheel’. The tool that will give a lot of simmers more freedom. Every simmer should get more freedom. Whether it’s through swatches or colourwheels.
If people failed to notice until a couple of popular YouTubers mentioned a detail that’s missing from CAS and if it has to be made that specific, I’m completely lost. I should become a full-time hermit.
To me it seems like Kate is performing the same stunt as the ‘White YouTubers’. Twitter suddenly got spammed with tweets about the dark skin tone issue and oh yes, let’s remember, POC also have a voice. And so let’s make videos or start lecturing simmers about their lack of appreciation for other content creators.
Better customization in CAS should have been prioritized by Maxis ages ago, so we didn’t have to read nonsense like this:
‘And it will do you a massive benefit to find and support creators who aren’t just cis-White people.’
What do they know about what simmers benefit from or not? Or who simmers follow and from who they download content?
I don’t appreciate the tone, because it doesn’t sound like an encouragement or a mere suggestion. It sounds like lecturing others about something that they shouldn’t really be blamed for.
I believe Kate should just stick to sharing links to talented content creators if they want to make their point clear and stop lecturing folks. If Kate has any followers, it’s the only way to really encourage simmers to get some good cc by a variety of talented artists of all colors and backgrounds.
In the meantime - although it’s great we’re getting skintone updates in Fall- I hope Maxis will fix CAS adequately and not by adding a little bit of colour here and a little bit of colour there. The Colour spectrum is too great. Do it right or don’t do it at all, because this discussion will never end until the essential tools have been fixed.
Perhaps it's just me, but I take the use of "legit" as an adverb combined with "YEARS" in caps as a means to lecture.
All I can say about SimGuruKate's twitter post is wow. I do know Sims is an American game and reflects on USA more than any other country, but to say it is bad white people weren't aware? Is she talking about her fellow Americans or all people that play Sims? My game is pretty diverse because of all the Sims the game itself creates but when I create a sim I create a white sim because that is how I and my world looks like...and now that's wrong because if I had been more inclusive I would have known about the other bad color swatches. No, it's not problematic, what's problematic is that it took so long for the developers to change it and too many Americans forget there are other places in the world outside of US.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for it, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
I wonder if they regret yet not adding the color wheel to TS4. If they gave us at least the same options for creating sims as they did for creating pets... the lack of skin tones wouldn't be an issue.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough diverse creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
Yeah, thats whats going on unfortunately. Now with people pointing fingers at who's not 'diverisfied' enough to get the point. Lets just update CAS without casting blame on people and without the lectures & shaming? Pretty please? This update is going to benefit all simmers - not just black simmers. Now everyone can use all the new skintones should they please. Any other further developments in CAS I welcome but I play the sims for gameplay, stories, and fun. Not 100% representation and not shaming or attacking people. Its making everything personal. More options is always a plus, but doesnt require a soapbox lecuture.
The Sims has currently lost its identity. Bring it back for TS5
All I can say about SimGuruKate's twitter post is wow. I do know Sims is an American game and reflects on USA more than any other country, but to say it is bad white people weren't aware? Is she talking about her fellow Americans or all people that play Sims? My game is pretty diverse because of all the Sims the game itself creates but when I create a sim I create a white sim because that is how I and my world looks like...and now that's wrong because if I had been more inclusive I would have known about the other bad color swatches. No, it's not problematic, what's problematic is that it took so long for the developers to change it and too many Americans forget there are other places in the world outside of US.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for it, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
I wonder if they regret yet not adding the color wheel to TS4. If they gave us at least the same options for creating sims as they did for creating pets... the lack of skin tones wouldn't be an issue.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough colored creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
This term can be considered offensive. I'd advise you to research it if you're interested.
I'm not interested, but I will edit it for the sake of specifics since Kate was not just talking about race in her post.
You know, if we're getting into representation and diversity and stuff, I hope they focus on creating different worlds, too. I like to tie my sims' cultural origins to worlds in the game, so they can visit and embrace their culture.
Still waiting for a Portuguese world. I know the country isn't that romanticized or interesting, but it's one of Europe's oldest country and has a lot of great travel destinations.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
You know, if we're getting into representation and diversity and stuff, I hope they focus on creating different worlds, too. I like to tie my sims' cultural origins to worlds in the game, so they can visit and embrace their culture.
Still waiting for a Portuguese world. I know the country isn't that romanticized or interesting, but it's one of Europe's oldest country and has a lot of great travel destinations.
Portugal is beautiful!! My brother and his wife visited last year. I could only see through pictures and videos. I wish I couldve gone. I hope they add more different kinds of worlds!!
The Sims has currently lost its identity. Bring it back for TS5
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
Done.
She's not trying to send people on a guilt trip. It's also not a hateful request. She's just asking them to look at the creators they follow because they may be missing out of a lot of good ones who could interest them. The United States and the rest of the world have track records of being racist and discriminatory without even knowing it at times. There are literally thousands of examples of this (for instance, Americans with traditional black names on resumes in America are less likely to get a job than someone with a more culturally white name and women were less likely to be hired as musicians until auditions became blind).
You are following POC simmers, so her tweet isn't directed at you and maybe that's why you don't get it because you focus on content, but a lot of other people only follow white simmers. Thus, this is the first time they ever heard about the issue with the skin swatches and hair, etc. etc. and they're probably blowing up her twitter mentions about it. So she's recommending that they diversify who they follow, which makes sense, because they wouldn't have missed a lot of good content or these issues if they followed a more diverse group. That's all.
I appreciate what you’re saying and I’m always willing to try and look at things from a different perspective.
I seriously don’t believe it’s the first time people heard about the swatch issues. The complaint has been all over the place, for years. On twitter, on forums. Not just by POC, but by everyone. It has always been about the missing ‘Colourwheel’. The tool that will give a lot of simmers more freedom. Every simmer should get more freedom. Whether it’s through swatches or colourwheels.
If people failed to notice until a couple of popular YouTubers mentioned a detail that’s missing from CAS and if it has to be made that specific, I’m completely lost. I should become a full-time hermit.
To me it seems like Kate is performing the same stunt as the ‘White YouTubers’. Twitter suddenly got spammed with tweets about the dark skin tone issue and oh yes, let’s remember, POC also have a voice. And so let’s make videos or start lecturing simmers about their lack of appreciation for other content creators.
Better customization in CAS should have been prioritized by Maxis ages ago, so we didn’t have to read nonsense like this:
‘And it will do you a massive benefit to find and support creators who aren’t just cis-White people.’
What do they know about what simmers benefit from or not? Or who simmers follow and from who they download content?
I don’t appreciate the tone, because it doesn’t sound like an encouragement or a mere suggestion. It sounds like lecturing others about something that they shouldn’t really be blamed for.
I believe Kate should just stick to sharing links to talented content creators if they want to make their point clear and stop lecturing folks. If Kate has any followers, it’s the only way to really encourage simmers to get some good cc by a variety of talented artists of all colors and backgrounds.
In the meantime - although it’s great we’re getting skintone updates in Fall- I hope Maxis will fix CAS adequately and not by adding a little bit of colour here and a little bit of colour there. The Colour spectrum is too great. Do it right or don’t do it at all, because this discussion will never end until the essential tools have been fixed.
Perhaps it's just me, but I take the use of "legit" as an adverb combined with "YEARS" in caps as a means to lecture.
Indeed. In several tweets they tend to address folks in a rather imperious tone.
I understand what they’re trying to say, but their attitude doesn’t always go down well with me.
You know, if we're getting into representation and diversity and stuff, I hope they focus on creating different worlds, too. I like to tie my sims' cultural origins to worlds in the game, so they can visit and embrace their culture.
Still waiting for a Portuguese world. I know the country isn't that romanticized or interesting, but it's one of Europe's oldest country and has a lot of great travel destinations.
Portugal has a fascinating history, Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, Columbus, Kings and Queens, Peninsular War, beautiful scenery and all. I've read a lot about it but haven't visited yet.
Re; World. I just take a world and create my own world in those nearest in style to my country, English suburbia in Willow Creek and Newcrest, Tudor in Windenberg and go fantastical with an area 52 in Oasis Springs. I refuse to go with the worlds imposed on me.
They didn't give me enough lots in Britechester which is most like and that annoyed me a lot. I do hope you get your world with enough lots in it, unlike mine!
However, the game is bad with minorities. Whether it's problems Black simmers have had every right to ask so they can be properly represented. Latinos/Hispanics. There is only one generic Latino/Hispanic head for both male and female I believe. Asians looking too generic and needing more skin tones too. Not all Latinos/Hispanics look the same. Not all Asians look the same. It's ignorant to believe that they do.Honestly, Google is the devs friend to gather resources needed to mimic the material being used for skin tones and hair colours along with hairstyles.
*
Third, we need better-improved sliders and more presets.
I totally agree with the need for an improved variety of sliders and skintones.
However, presets? How many would you suggest?
If the devs need to do it absolutely right, you’re talking about every variant of every single ethnicity.
There’s about 7.5 billion people in the world. Does it mean we need 7.5 billion head presets? Because we can’t forget mixed ‘race’ if we’re talking ‘race’ at all.
Due to TS4’s art style, none of the heads even look like a specific ethnicity. They’re just a suggestion of something that appears familiar to us. They’re there for us to tweak a little.
Instead of having an overwhelming amount of presets, maybe we can take our own advise and say, Google is not just the dev’s best friends, but the simmer’s best friend too, and try and put some effort in practicing and creating the sim we want.
Some simmers in this thread have already proven that it’s possible. If it’s possible for them, it should be possible for everyone.
If it’s too time consuming, and you have an on-line connection, there’s always the gallery. There are some beautiful cc free sims on there from all kinds of different cultures. Downloading and modifying those a bit may be easier than creating them completely from scratch.
I'm frankly getting tired of my race being put on a pedastal and white people being shamed for simply being unaware, especially for something as minor as skintones in a videogame. I find her post quite annoying. Besides, as the above points out, Kate's being rather hypocritical.
EDIT: Assuming she didn't know in the past either.
That's exactly what I was thinking, and instead of looking into her own self she had to make herself better by shaming others. Plus the fact that she is a former employee.
I hate that this all encourages a racial divide.... like its an "us vs them" kind of thing.
IMO, EA/Maxis walked themselves into a difficult position to get back out of. I hope they don't think this will all go away soon because they are updating CAS with new color swatches. There will likely be more demands of equality rising up. They allowed the door to be opened, its too late to shut the door again now.
...and this.
I am one that was unaware of this. I don't follow gamechangers and Twitter people and neither do I create much in CAS but that's not the point. That it took a movement in RL, a TV show and white simmers to fix this I find sad. But on the bright side it is getting fixed (hopefully) and I think Maxi's has learned from it as well.
Well then everyone is at least a little racist because I bet with all of you, you all have accidentally exluded or overlooked at least one race, sexual orientation etc. in your game. So nobody is innocent.
Also exlusion is not nessecarily always based on the belief that one is inferior. Like you said sometimes it's accidental because we tend to create sims that feel familiar to us.
If we are on the topic of exclusion, there attempts to be non-binary and I’ve seen multiple instances where they are inconsistent with gender.
For my MerMan sim, the game used “her,” and last time I checked, merfolk aren’t gender exclusive. As a member of a merfolk community in real-life, I’m very aware of the gender disproportion. Regardless, I want to see more acknowledgment of the male mer gender. I don’t want non-binary language to play it safe. I don’t want the occult status to reinforce the stereotype that merfolk are a girls only thing. For me, I want to see them actually use the correct word before they try the gender neutral, non-binary language.
Also, I personally don’t want to use the pronouns they and them for myself. It does not mean I won’t show others the same courtesy by using their preferred pronouns. The game lets us customize gender, it should get the language right when we set it how we want it for a sim.
As for different ethnicities, I will say that my favorite world is Sulani. The ethnicities are largely Black and Asian there. It has made me realize that, if I had the chance to grow up being friends with more people of different ethnicities in my neighborhood, I wouldn’t stumble around socially awkward with these things.
I admit, I can be a little racist with my own biases, but I also want to treat others right and be less racist if I can manage that.
However, the game is bad with minorities. Whether it's problems Black simmers have had every right to ask so they can be properly represented. Latinos/Hispanics. There is only one generic Latino/Hispanic head for both male and female I believe. Asians looking too generic and needing more skin tones too. Not all Latinos/Hispanics look the same. Not all Asians look the same. It's ignorant to believe that they do.Honestly, Google is the devs friend to gather resources needed to mimic the material being used for skin tones and hair colours along with hairstyles.
*
Third, we need better-improved sliders and more presets.
I totally agree with the need for an improved variety of sliders and skintones.
However, presets? How many would you suggest?
If the devs need to do it absolutely right, you’re talking about every variant of every single ethnicity.
There’s about 7.5 billion people in the world. Does it mean we need 7.5 billion head presets? Because we can’t forget mixed ‘race’ if we’re talking ‘race’ at all.
Due to TS4’s art style, none of the heads even look like a specific ethnicity. They’re just a suggestion of something that appears familiar to us. They’re there for us to tweak a little.
Instead of having an overwhelming amount of presets, maybe we can take our own advise and say, Google is not just the dev’s best friends, but the simmer’s best friend too, and try and put some effort in practicing and creating the sim we want.
Some simmers in this thread have already proven that it’s possible. If it’s possible for them, it should be possible for everyone.
If it’s too time consuming, and you have an on-line connection, there’s always the gallery. There are some beautiful cc free sims on there from all kinds of different cultures. Downloading and modifying those a bit may be easier than creating them completely from scratch.
Yes, I did that math as well. About 7.5 billion people on earth. There are many different skin tones out there. Many different hair styles. Etc. etc. And as much as I try, I can't imagine a CAS that can, by society standards, assume responsibility for every possible racial, cultural, or religious scenerial.
I know, currently, to mention such an argument, or expectation that the sims CAS should assume these responsibilities seems like making a mountain out of a mole hill... I mean, after all, we are talking about some skin tone swatches and updated hair styles.... not the other ideas I have mentioned.......
....... However, there is already another thread on this forum directly petitioning for additional ideas to demand from EA/Maxis. What do we demand next? That's the question.
IMO, we are all on a train that has the potential to quickly lose control. I for one, and a bit nervous and concerned about this train ride.
Comments
You can do whatever you want in your game but there were tons of Black families in 50s-70s so Idk why you mentioned that as if it wouldnt be accurate for Black people to be in that time. I mean, maybe we weren't living amongst white families due to segregation, but fortunately the Sims world never had a racist history...
Also thanks to the skin tone topics, I did further recent research on migrations of humans which was interesting and brought everything together. I really love history and learning about origins.
https://www.businessinsider.com/discoveries-change-picture-of-human-history-evolution-2020-01#a-210000-year-old-skull-found-in-greece-may-push-that-migration-timeline-even-further-back-12
My grandmother was really big and taught Egyptian and Roman history, so it rubbed off on me being interested in bones. Probably will change with time, since scientist tend to change their theories over time as more bones get introduced like how King Tut was actually a 19 year old with twins that didn't survive.
I think that is part of the reason why I wouldn't mind an Into the Past pack too as a way to introduce different cultures and locations from different time periods.
Holy Simoly! o.O Thank you so much! Very appreciative you took the time to share that. Noah's special to me. I tried very hard to make him look authentic, so it made my day reading your post!
It is super weird! Like we were promised super smart almost artificial intelligence-level Sims. That obviously didn’t pan out so they pivoted to this mess about being able to be and play yourself.
Of course everyone should be able to do so, but it’s so ridiculous how much TS4 continues to bury itself with these ongoing diversity and inclusion allegations. Like, dig up, dummy! Fix it or don’t! You can’t rest on your “diverse” laurels if you don’t include everyone.
he's is really cool @Karababy52 he is really well made
Tweets like this make my blood boil. I just don’t get this girl’s mindset. Trying to send folks on some kind of wacky guilt trip? I really don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to achieve here.
Each to their own though, however in my book being a black, white or green content creator doesn’t count. Having talent does. I go out of my way to find that talent.
I financially support many modders and content creators. Some are clearly POC, but in most cases I know nothing about their background or their appearance. I don’t care either, because I judge by quality of content, not by the colour, gender or sexual orientation of the artist. That’s a complete truck load of nonsense.
What kind of game am I playing otherwise? A political one? I play the sims to avoid that kind of BS. That’s why I have Vampires fighting Alien Motherplants.
Done.
You conveniently missed the part where I said I modelled my save after sitcoms, not reality at the time. Not sure how you missed that, but it’s a pretty important distinction.
Because I create so many analogue families (and buildings) based on my favorite classic shows such as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, etc., my game tends to be short on what one might consider diverse or even accurate representation.
She's not trying to send people on a guilt trip. It's also not a hateful request. She's just asking them to look at the creators they follow because they may be missing out of a lot of good ones who could interest them. The United States and the rest of the world have track records of being racist and discriminatory without even knowing it at times. There are literally thousands of examples of this (for instance, Americans with traditional black names on resumes in America are less likely to get a job than someone with a more culturally white name and women were less likely to be hired as musicians until auditions became blind).
You are following POC simmers, so her tweet isn't directed at you and maybe that's why you don't get it because you focus on content, but a lot of other people only follow white simmers. Thus, this is the first time they ever heard about the issue with the skin swatches and hair, etc. etc. and they're probably blowing up her twitter mentions about it. So she's recommending that they diversify who they follow, which makes sense, because they wouldn't have missed a lot of good content or these issues if they followed a more diverse group. That's all.
That's exactly what this encourages. Already Kate has attempted to shame white Simmers for supposedly not watching enough diverse creators. Representation is an impractical goal to strive for in your game that must include not only gameplay content that would satisfy at least most Simmers, but content that would represent potentially all people in the world. For the developers, that has to be incredibly difficult.
Now of course, if it was actually possible to achieve this, pffft. Go for it, I say. Personally, I would love to play a blind/deaf/physically disabled Sim as I think that could entail some very interesting story-telling. But I completely understand if that's hard at the moment from a developmental point of view since there would be much in the way of coding, animating, etc to be done just to achieve even one of those.
...Heh. This brings to mind that unusual "Play With Life" video The Sims YouTube channel released almost a year ago where they attempted to elevate the game into more than what it really was.
@Karababy52 You did a good job which preset did you use for him or did you just use sliders? I love it thank you for proving me wrong and showing it can be done in-game but we still need more presets and improved and better sliders.
My husband is part Lakota we learned when he found his family a few years ago. I'm part Mayan and Cherokee which had me asked if I was Latino by white people a lot as a kid
This term can be considered offensive. I'd advise you to research it if you're interested.
@haneul
I appreciate what you’re saying and I’m always willing to try and look at things from a different perspective.
I seriously don’t believe it’s the first time people heard about the swatch issues. The complaint has been all over the place, for years. On twitter, on forums. Not just by POC, but by everyone. It has always been about the missing ‘Colourwheel’. The tool that will give a lot of simmers more freedom. Every simmer should get more freedom. Whether it’s through swatches or colourwheels.
If people failed to notice until a couple of popular YouTubers mentioned a detail that’s missing from CAS and if it has to be made that specific, I’m completely lost. I should become a full-time hermit.
To me it seems like Kate is performing the same stunt as the ‘White YouTubers’. Twitter suddenly got spammed with tweets about the dark skin tone issue and oh yes, let’s remember, POC also have a voice. And so let’s make videos or start lecturing simmers about their lack of appreciation for other content creators.
Better customization in CAS should have been prioritized by Maxis ages ago, so we didn’t have to read nonsense like this:
‘And it will do you a massive benefit to find and support creators who aren’t just cis-White people.’
What do they know about what simmers benefit from or not? Or who simmers follow and from who they download content?
I don’t appreciate the tone, because it doesn’t sound like an encouragement or a mere suggestion. It sounds like lecturing others about something that they shouldn’t really be blamed for.
I believe Kate should just stick to sharing links to talented content creators if they want to make their point clear and stop lecturing folks. If Kate has any followers, it’s the only way to really encourage simmers to get some good cc by a variety of talented artists of all colors and backgrounds.
In the meantime - although it’s great we’re getting skintone updates in Fall- I hope Maxis will fix CAS adequately and not by adding a little bit of colour here and a little bit of colour there. The Colour spectrum is too great. Do it right or don’t do it at all, because this discussion will never end until the essential tools have been fixed.
I'm not interested, but I will edit it for the sake of specifics since Kate was not just talking about race in her post.
Perhaps it's just me, but I take the use of "legit" as an adverb combined with "YEARS" in caps as a means to lecture.
Yeah, thats whats going on unfortunately. Now with people pointing fingers at who's not 'diverisfied' enough to get the point. Lets just update CAS without casting blame on people and without the lectures & shaming? Pretty please? This update is going to benefit all simmers - not just black simmers. Now everyone can use all the new skintones should they please. Any other further developments in CAS I welcome but I play the sims for gameplay, stories, and fun. Not 100% representation and not shaming or attacking people. Its making everything personal. More options is always a plus, but doesnt require a soapbox lecuture.
Personality,depth,humor,consequences,lore,customization.
Lol. Exactly why I didn't bother to elaborate.
Still waiting for a Portuguese world. I know the country isn't that romanticized or interesting, but it's one of Europe's oldest country and has a lot of great travel destinations.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
Portugal is beautiful!! My brother and his wife visited last year. I could only see through pictures and videos. I wish I couldve gone. I hope they add more different kinds of worlds!!
Personality,depth,humor,consequences,lore,customization.
Indeed. In several tweets they tend to address folks in a rather imperious tone.
I understand what they’re trying to say, but their attitude doesn’t always go down well with me.
Portugal has a fascinating history, Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, Columbus, Kings and Queens, Peninsular War, beautiful scenery and all. I've read a lot about it but haven't visited yet.
Re; World. I just take a world and create my own world in those nearest in style to my country, English suburbia in Willow Creek and Newcrest, Tudor in Windenberg and go fantastical with an area 52 in Oasis Springs. I refuse to go with the worlds imposed on me.
They didn't give me enough lots in Britechester which is most like and that annoyed me a lot. I do hope you get your world with enough lots in it, unlike mine!
I totally agree with the need for an improved variety of sliders and skintones.
However, presets? How many would you suggest?
If the devs need to do it absolutely right, you’re talking about every variant of every single ethnicity.
There’s about 7.5 billion people in the world. Does it mean we need 7.5 billion head presets? Because we can’t forget mixed ‘race’ if we’re talking ‘race’ at all.
Due to TS4’s art style, none of the heads even look like a specific ethnicity. They’re just a suggestion of something that appears familiar to us. They’re there for us to tweak a little.
Instead of having an overwhelming amount of presets, maybe we can take our own advise and say, Google is not just the dev’s best friends, but the simmer’s best friend too, and try and put some effort in practicing and creating the sim we want.
Some simmers in this thread have already proven that it’s possible. If it’s possible for them, it should be possible for everyone.
If it’s too time consuming, and you have an on-line connection, there’s always the gallery. There are some beautiful cc free sims on there from all kinds of different cultures. Downloading and modifying those a bit may be easier than creating them completely from scratch.
That's exactly what I was thinking, and instead of looking into her own self she had to make herself better by shaming others. Plus the fact that she is a former employee.
...and this.
I am one that was unaware of this. I don't follow gamechangers and Twitter people and neither do I create much in CAS but that's not the point. That it took a movement in RL, a TV show and white simmers to fix this I find sad. But on the bright side it is getting fixed (hopefully) and I think Maxi's has learned from it as well.
If we are on the topic of exclusion, there attempts to be non-binary and I’ve seen multiple instances where they are inconsistent with gender.
For my MerMan sim, the game used “her,” and last time I checked, merfolk aren’t gender exclusive. As a member of a merfolk community in real-life, I’m very aware of the gender disproportion. Regardless, I want to see more acknowledgment of the male mer gender. I don’t want non-binary language to play it safe. I don’t want the occult status to reinforce the stereotype that merfolk are a girls only thing. For me, I want to see them actually use the correct word before they try the gender neutral, non-binary language.
Also, I personally don’t want to use the pronouns they and them for myself. It does not mean I won’t show others the same courtesy by using their preferred pronouns. The game lets us customize gender, it should get the language right when we set it how we want it for a sim.
As for different ethnicities, I will say that my favorite world is Sulani. The ethnicities are largely Black and Asian there. It has made me realize that, if I had the chance to grow up being friends with more people of different ethnicities in my neighborhood, I wouldn’t stumble around socially awkward with these things.
I admit, I can be a little racist with my own biases, but I also want to treat others right and be less racist if I can manage that.
Yes, I did that math as well. About 7.5 billion people on earth. There are many different skin tones out there. Many different hair styles. Etc. etc. And as much as I try, I can't imagine a CAS that can, by society standards, assume responsibility for every possible racial, cultural, or religious scenerial.
I know, currently, to mention such an argument, or expectation that the sims CAS should assume these responsibilities seems like making a mountain out of a mole hill... I mean, after all, we are talking about some skin tone swatches and updated hair styles.... not the other ideas I have mentioned.......
....... However, there is already another thread on this forum directly petitioning for additional ideas to demand from EA/Maxis. What do we demand next? That's the question.
IMO, we are all on a train that has the potential to quickly lose control. I for one, and a bit nervous and concerned about this train ride.