The Sims 4’s Create a Sim body types set a good standard for the video game industry

Fashion was something I loved for a large part of my childhood. Before I started dressing Disco Barbie up in shining purple pants, I became obsessed with Flash-based dress-up games. After I discovered my favorite fashion game ever, Style savvyMy DS allowed me to create looks and manage my inventory. I also competed in fashion shows, which proved that I could be the best stylist. Style Savvy games is what ignited my interest in fashion and management simulations. But even though I loved them, they definitely weren’t perfect. When I was a teenager, I started to notice the thinness of everyone I saw on television.

A lack of body diversity obviously isn’t just a thing in video games. A steady diet of Project RunwayClick here to read moremerica’s Next Top ModelI was made aware that there was an established body standard that all women had to follow. I knew the standard existed but didn’t realize until later that it plagued even my favorite games. The Style Savvy Series Love Nikki. Each had only one model type, skinny and traditionally feminine. They both came from the Style Savvy Series. Love NikkiOver time, the option to dress in traditionally masculine fashions was introduced. However, these models are not suitable for thin people.

It could be down to logistics. You would need to redesign each item of clothing to make it fit the new body. It reminds me of an argument that was used in the real world to oppose size inclusion in fashion modeling. In 2016, model scout Carole White was quoted as saying designers “want their clothes to fall as they designed them. This is absurd considering most women are rumpy. I can’t change that. It’s just how it is.” This is the same spiel I heard growing up, that models have to look a certain way because they are meant to be hangers and mannequins for the clothes and not people. It’s easy; it’s the way it’s always been. But maybe it’s time for fashion games to move on from the way it’s always been, and the technology is already there. It exists in a mainstream game that doesn’t really present itself as a fashion game: Sims 4.

Sims 4’s Create a Sim, or CAS for short, is a good example of a size-inclusive fashion game. Simmers will appreciate that CAS only allows you to customize your character and is not a game. However, it takes hours to create Sims in CAS. For many players, dressing up and personalizing Sims is their favorite part. I have spent time and effort giving Sims perfect sets of outfits, hair, and accessories to go with whatever preconceived backstory I’ve given them, only to play with them outside of CAS for maybe an hour or two. Sims 4’s flourishing modding community also contributes to the game’s fashion options, as modders have given Sims an incredible library of custom content clothes in a plethora of styles for free. CAS might as well become its own title.

“I love it. I’ve been in the industry for 25 years and I love when I see people buy a PlayStation to just play FIFA… They get exactly what they want out of just that one part. Right? There’s all these different types. I’m glad to see it’s robust enough that it can keep expanding and adding things to keep them interested,” says Mike O’Connor, an art director on Sims 4. He says that the main goal is to Sims 4It is important to continue expanding the network and make it more accessible for all.

Sims 4 allows for a large amount of body customization; its drag-and-drop system allows you to manipulate the shape and size of the Sim’s individual body parts, making it so you can sculpt a variety of different bodies. You can also customize your body’s muscle definition and width as well as tattoos. Recent upgrades have added scars and body hair. While the game asks you to choose between having a “masculine” or “feminine” frame, Sims can wear any piece of clothing regardless of body type.

Meshes instead of 3D static models are used to create clothes. They mold to any body shape. You can use any clothing piece you like in this game. “We’ll have a kind of a standard rig of a character,” says O’Connor. “Let’s just for this purpose [say]A female adult, so when designing we use a 2D template. So we’ll take those characters and pose them pretty simply and create templates of all different types.” On designing for different body types, he says, “We have technical considerations like what will this look like in every variety we offer. So, for example, if we put something in the high chest area, it can get deformed a lot and by a player so we’re careful not to try not to put a button there that’s gonna get horribly deformed and ruin the experience. Straight representation design is important to us. We want it all available as it would in real world. And the people working on it have choices. We’re always trying to make it as authentic as possible.”

It has its good points but it is not the best. Sims 4CAS is certainly not perfect. Some clothes may not fit certain bodies correctly, as has been reported. For example, when Sims with the “masculine” frame wear certain clothes designed for the “feminine” frames it sometimes adds cleavage shadows that don’t exist on the actual Sim. It is still important that a game with a large-inclusive style is included. Sims 4This is unlike other fashion games. It’s a good example of what fashion should look like in games and it makes me hopeful that one day we may get full-fledged fashion games that let you style models of many different body types.

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