The Sims 4’s High School Expansion lets Sims adds asexuality, aromance

The Sims 4 publisher Electronic Arts continues to update the game’s gender and sexuality options with its Year of High SchoolThe expansion will take place later in July. A press preview was held Wednesday. Sims 4 developers detailed new options for sexual orientation in the Create-A-Sim menu — players can choose who their Sim is romantically or sexually interested in.

However, the only limitation is that there are just two options: men or women. Sims 4Jessica Croft is the lead designer. Year of High School free update is a first version of the intended feature — the team recognizes that the language here does not reflect the addition of nonbinary pronouns for Sims that came in May. It was designed to support nonbinary Sims.

Image: Maxis/Electronic Arts

Croft elaborated further on Friday’s developer blog:

I’ll try to be very transparent with this one. It is because of technical limitations. As stated above, mechanically, non binary Sims don’t yet exist in TS4. No matter what pronoun setting, you still need to choose a binary gender for your Sim when it is created. We hope that we’ve shown our commitment to improving representation of gender identities with features such as Gender Customization, which allows you to modify physical frame, clothing preferences, pregnancy and toilet use options. The pronouns update is another step towards better representation of non-binary genders. However, we recognize that pronouns and gender identities are different.

The new options in the Sexual Orientation tab are “This Sim is romantically attracted to: Men, Women,” “This Sim is exploring romantically: Yes, No,” and “This Sim is interested in Mess Around with: Men, Women.”

Each of these options is independent from each other which makes it possible to have a wide range of choices. For instance, alongside choosing options that let Sims identify as asexual or aromantic, the “exploring romantically” option will make Sims open to different genders romantically — something that Croft said is representative of the high school experience, when people trying to figure themselves out. For a Sim to be asexual, you forgo adding an answer to the “Mess Around” option, or for an aromantic Sim, leave an answer off the “romantically attracted option.”

Electronic Arts worked closely with LGBTQ+ organizations, as they did with previous gender- and sexuality-related updates.

The Sims has long been a game franchise that’s been important to gender-diverse players, allowing for a wider gender spectrum. A 2016 update removed gender-specific clothing options, speech and hair choices. Electronic Arts added custom options to allow players to select whether Sims prefer masculine or female clothes. They can also get or give someone else pregnant and whether or not they want to sit or stand.

Electronic Arts also has made some changes in order to offer more variety to skin tones, hairstyles and other aspects of the game. This initiative was mainly led by Black Simmers who created their own content to improve the game.