The latest update for life-sim The Sims 4, out now, lets you customise the pronouns that each Sim uses.
You do have to dive into create-a-sim screen to do this, but the cool thing is that it’s not just a case of clicking on he/she/they. The Sims 4 now lets you write in the customised pronoun you want which will be used by the game when it addresses or talks about that Sim.
It lets you define “Subjective, Objective, Possessive Dependent, Possessive Independent, and Reflexive forms of the pronouns you wish to use”, which sounds horrifically complicated but the new feature provides sample sentences for you to pore over until you’ve got it absolutely right.
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Your Sims will still, mostly, use gibberish when talking to each other, so there’s no way of telling whether a Sim is using your sim’s preferred pronoun, coming to grips with it but apologetically slipping, or using a different pronoun entirely, just because they’re a complete arse.
A brand new update to The Sims 4 is here ✨, & with the help of the @ItGetsBetter Project & @GLAAD, players can now add custom pronouns to their Sims in Create A Sim ???? pic.twitter.com/D5N1gvfNNc
— The Sims (@TheSims) May 24, 2022
But dialogue boxes, pop-ups and the like will make use of the pronoun whenever they talk about a sim and they should also figure into phone conversations. However, EA has stated that this is just the first iteration of the customisable pronouns feature. Why? Because, right now, it only handles English pronouns – Maxis and EA plan to expand it to other languages.
There’s a dev diary where can find out more about the work that went into bringing custom pronouns to The Sims 4. The It Gets Better Project and GLAAD were involved, to ensure EA and Maxis were on the right track. The latter was a smart move – if Maxis had got this wrong, it could really have backfired.
The update should be out now for all PC and console versions of The Sims 4. If you’ve yet to dive into this life-sim/virtual dollhouse, check out our review here.
