Sims with Disabilities? «12345678...Next Go

Gamer_34567544

Never, EVER should this be thought of as a mockery!

There are disabled simmers out there, who may want to feel included in Sims' diverse world.

Again, this is not meant to be a mockery. This is intended to include people with conditions- physical, mental, psychological, etc, and to offer a window into real life challenges.

Have your sims have trouble in school, but excel at other aspects. The old lady who can't walk could win the grand prize in a knitting competition. The child who struggles in school paints like a master. The one disabled with mental health aspires to become a doctor and aid others who have conditions.

Added features: A mental health hospital to visit, and meet people involved with the career. Experience therapies, feel pride in getting new crutches so you can walk again, and experience the emotional struggles.

New Aspirations: Become a neurologist, psychiatrist, or become a therapist.

Skills: Medicine: experience working with doctors to construct medicine to aid people with conditions. First Aid: Work on people who get injured using basic first aid- simple things like band-aids. Perception: Recognize a condition faster and understand medications for treatments. Necessary for doctors, useful for those who want to better understand their friends... and maybe find useful items in game. Sign Language: Speak with those who cannot.


So, let's start! Any other thoughts on what they should add/change/remove?

A few things that would definitely help IMO would be if EA would add at least 2 new trait slots, maybe more, to add more depth to the characters without having to remove other important aspects.

Gamer_34567544

Who would like to have an expansion pack that would allow one to have disabled sims?

Here's an idea on why it might be a good idea.

1. There are simmers who are/know people who are disabled.
2. IRL there are people who have them, and this is, after all, a life simulator.
3. Story progression and new challenges

As an example: An elder cannot walk and requires a wheel chair, or a child is diagnosed with something. They both have trouble doing certain tasks, but the elder might let their creativity soar in knitting or writing. The child has trouble in school, but wins practically every game tournament they get into. The child grows up and has trouble finding a job that fits their skills and mental issues, but they can do well in (insert skill here).

As for careers and aspirations, one could work to become a psychiatrist, neurologist, neurosurgeon, etc. Explore the mind, try to see if meds work/fail to help, and ask for advice on a help hotline. Aspire to become one who helps those who have these conditions and study the sim minds.

Alternatively, have someone with the disability aspire to get an excellent, challenging career. It can happen IRL, though it couldn't have been easy. Struggle to learn what you can, go to therapies, and learn about your conditions through various books.

This does not have to be a trait, though making it a life state makes Vampires, aliens, and witches unable to have issues as well, if I understand correctly.

Pamtastic72

After the breakdown some people with lactose intolerance had over that being added and expressing they felt it was being mocked I just don’t see how it would ever be possible to add more serious physical limitations without causing a massive uproar.

Gamer_34567544

That's why I mentioned up top that it had to be realistic.

I'm not asking to have it mocked. I was more asking for it honestly, so that the issues are not some unfamiliar condition. It would be a ton of work to get right, but what if life simulations helped others understand those that had these issues?

Lactose intolerance might need more work than it was given.

StrawberryYogurt

I think it should be a base game update or be in Sims 5 if anything, shouldn't have to pay for it

Gamer_34567544

I wonder if vegetarian is more of a life style? Allergies, though, should be their own thing.

Pamtastic72

Gamer_34567544 wrote: »

That's why I mentioned up top that it had to be realistic.

I'm not asking to have it mocked. I was more asking for it honestly, so that the issues are not some unfamiliar condition. It would be a ton of work to get right, but what if life simulations helped others understand those that had these issues?

Lactose intolerance might need more work than it was given.

The Sims never does anything hyper realistic and there’s always an element of humor so I just do not see how it could be done without Twitter and the forums filling up with people screaming at the devs about how insensitive it is, I also am sure there will be twitchtv streams and YouTubers who will use it to make fun of people and do cruel things which will also cause people to be absolutely up in arms about it. I just see it causing tons of trouble and hurt feelings.

ETA: behold

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/992929/new-traits/p1

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/991684/remove-the-lactose-intolerance-trait-from-cottage-living/p1

MichelleW

It feels gross to charge people money for this type of inclusion. If they were to include disabilities it should be as an update.

PlayerSinger2010

No no no no no. There is nothing I want less than disabilities in the game.

BrookeBCreativity

I like the idea but it should be included in the base game instead of making people having to pay in order to make themselves accurately.

Gamer_34567544

BrookeBCreativity wrote: »

I like the idea but it should be included in the base game instead of making people having to pay in order to make themselves accurately.

Could not agree more, but they didn't. There should at least be something for those who experience/want to understand these conditions.

Chazzzy

We all know people who are disabled. I still don’t want that in my game. It appears the developers don’t want it in the game either because they are constantly asked about this. So… I guess that’s that on that.

I personally find some of the mods I’ve seen to be tasteless, like a body dysmorphia trait or a cerebral palsy trait. It’s just a weird concept all around to add to a fun, utopian game. To me, they make light of the issue like it’s a joke or something.

Pamtastic72

Chazzzy wrote: »

We all know people who are disabled. I still don’t want that in my game. It appears the developers don’t want it in the game either because they are constantly asked about this. So… I guess that’s that on that.

I personally find some of the mods I’ve seen to be tasteless, like a body dysmorphia trait or a cerebral palsy trait. It’s just a weird concept all around to add to a fun, utopian game. To me, they make light of the issue like it’s a joke or something.

Exactly there’s no way to do it where the game devs won’t be accused of mishandling it and sparking a firestorm of controversy.

LeGardePourpre

Like Toddler and Gender Options, it must be a basegame feature.

Disabilities can't be a "game" as if it was fun, that would be very awkward.

Simmingal

It's just all too complicated
trying to get it done right
without hurting anyones feelings
and yet in way that actually impacts game

So I wouldn't say I am very into the idea

but if they do disabilities it should surely be update not something you have to pay 40e for

and they should be possible to toggle off because many people would rather not be reminded of their disability when playing a game

DoloresGrey

Sign language would be nice, maybe some prosthetics. But that's it for me. I am not interested in adding any other handicaps.

DoodlyDoofus

Nay..

EliteGirl

I agree with the majority of simmers who don't want the the sims series to have disabilities in the game. I don't want disabled sims in my game. The game the sims series is supposed to be fun WITHOUT being too realistic and depressing, which the sim series is.

CAPTAIN_NXR7

Not a hope.

I’m still waiting for people with glasses to give out about sims with glasses.

“WHY ARE THERE NO READING GLASSES??!! OMG! I’M FAR SIGHTED! I FEEL OVERLOOKED!”

Well eat this baby: I’m short sighted. You see far. I see close. You can’t see close, I can’t see very far.
Together we see both sharp and very blurry at the same time. 🧐

Do glasses matter in the sims? Not one Diddly Bit. They just kinda look fashionable. Why am I talking about glasses? They’re a disability aid.
But did you notice that sims can’t even tell the difference between a friend and their enemy? It’s obvious those glasses don’t work.
Sometimes sims just stare into space for goodness knows how many sim hours. What are you looking for dude? Aliens? Be careful. They may abduct you and some folks have a problem with that too.

Does representation of bad eye sight matter in this game? Nope. Will representation of other visible disabilities be wise to have in this game? Not really. Because look at those sims. Look at them. They’re a friggin’ cartoon! It’s a cartoon folks! You can only go that far with disabilities in a cartoon and they’ve gone far enough already because as others mentioned…this community can’t take it. Disabilities CANNOT be realistic in a satire slash cartoon game. Let it go folks, paid or unpaid, it’s not worth the trouble. It really isn’t.

Now where’s me bodyhair menu?! Those male sims still seem to suffer from a rare condition called “Ken”. 🙄

Ellupelluellu

Nope, nope and again, nope.

Onverser

Sorry to those who want it but it's a definite no for me. Even aside from the issues of people using the game as escapism from real problems, it just wouldn't work. The game would have to be completely redesigned with every single animation altered to work with wheelchairs and other disabilities. For example, it would be a pretty big animation to animate a sim getting out of a wheelchair and into bed, even just that one single animation would be massive to add. And even then you would get endless bugs of sims miraculously getting out of their wheelchair to do push ups and ride a bike.

Then when you get into anything mental or psychological, representing it whilst being accurate and non-insulting is basically impossible because things differ from person to person. It just wouldn't work all around and would be a mess, and as others said it definitely shouldn't be paid DLC to have it represented

SnowBnuuy

If EA ever did decide to add some form of representation for such a thing, it definitely shouldn't be an expansion of any sort- theoretically I think it should be a free basegame update.

Calico45

I agree with most of the people posting before me: 1) there is next to no way I can see EA being able to do it in an inoffensive way since it is such a sensitive subject with a lot of opinions surrounding it and 2) it should not be DLC and should be a free update because of both decency reasoning and that this is the stance EA has taken prior, that we should not have to pay for representation, and to exclude the disabled community from that would be a publicity and moral nightmare.

Now, I also agree that probably the reason they haven't done it is the sheer workload of new animations, programming, research, etc. This would be much easier if it had been designed in from the beginning. Plus, deciding the scope of disability representation will be very difficult. So I believe the devs genuinely want some sort of representation for disabled people, but I can understand why 4 cannot handle it.

Also, a combination of both paragraph points, do you remember the romance bugs with children/toddlers? Yeah, obvious bugs that were never meant to happen, but people lost their minds and raged against the devs accusing them of condoning/ supporting those things IRL. Now imagine all the bugs with disabled Sims. It is an absolute hornets' nest.

InuMiroLover

Im not against the idea, but it WILL cause an uproar no matter how well done it is. Whenever a discussion for disabilities occurs, there's always these 3 arguments that come up:

"Disabilities is politics and isnt needed in the game! Why cant they use that time and money to fix the game instead?"
"I have a disability and I dont want to see this in the game. My disability makes my day to day life difficult, why would I want to be reminded of in game?"
"I have a disability and I do want to see this in the game! But they have to include every disability that exists or else they are not inclusive."

Im neutral to the idea of disability representation in the game, but I do not want to be around for the poopstorm that will occur should the team decide to go that route.

Lady_Ballora

No to disabilities in Sims 4 or Sims 5 or any other Sims game. The Sims is supposed to be a game where people can escape from real life things such as politics, wars,pandemics and other real life issues. I'm disabled myself but I don't want to see disabilities in a Sims game.

LadyEmillye

Absolutely Not! As many people said, EA doing this would just cause an uproar, because whatever way EA did handle it, people would take issue and offense. I don't want it in my game either. This game is meant to be for fun and creating our own stories. Just imagine playing a sim with a disability when you yourself don't have that disability, how can it be seen as anything but mocking. Unless you live with a disability you have no idea what a person goes through to live their life and that is not something that should be simulated in a game ever! It's not something to play in a game for the LULZ.

Also, there are certain subjects that EA will just never touch and this is most definitely one of them.