The Sims 4 developer Maxis has shared a sneak peek at a new feature that will allow players to give their Sims custom and gender-neutral pronouns.
Shared in a The Sims 4 Official Livestream update, producer John Faciane and experience designer Alister Lee demonstrated a work in progress build of the new pronoun options. According to Faciane, the team at Maxis worked with a partner from the It Gets Better Project - an organization that works with LGBTQ+ youth - to help advise the team on gender-neutral language.
In the video, Lee shows a very stripped-back character customization screen with the new options put in place. In the current build, fans will notice another option has been added in the "Hello, my name is…" section of the Sim creation user interface. Now, as well as giving your Sim a first and last name, players will also be able to assign he/him, she/her, and they/them pronouns to them too.
Not only this, but players are also able to give their Sims custom pronouns. In the livestream, the example given was ze/zir/zirs (another gender-neutral set of pronouns) however it appears that players are able to input whatever pronouns they like. The team working on the new feature stressed how this is currently a work in progress and that the version demonstrated in the broadcast may differ from the one that actually gets rolled out to the public.
In other The Sims 4 news, there’s a chance cinematic storytelling may be coming to the game if a recent job listing is anything to go by. Although the advert is no longer active, we are able to see that EA was recently looking for a storyboard artist to "visualize our designs, gameplay experiences, and technology solutions through animatics and storytelling" for a game that sounds very much like The Sims.
Looking for a way to spice up your Sims experience? Take a look at our best Sims 4 mods list for inspiration.
