Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Electronic Arts, lgbtqia, pronouns, The Sims 4

The Sims 4 Introduces New Customizable Pronouns Feature

Electronic Arts announced a new addition to The Sims 4 as the developers have included new customizable pronouns for your characters. Now it doesn't matter how you identify, or how your character identifies, you can now set up how you'd like them to be addressed inside a new menu within the character creation system. The company posted a full article, including an FAQ here, which we have a snippet for below. But essentially this covers practically every pronoun in English across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. This is a totally optional addition, you don't have to change the pronouns if you don't wish to. If you're fine with the identification the game gives your character at the start, you can still use it. But the option is now available if you wish to take advantage of it.

This first version focuses on customizable pronouns in English only, but our intent is to update and expand this feature over time. These updates will allow us to ensure we're catching areas where the conversion may not be taking place right away, so we can continue to make the feature even better.

The feature has been fully tested and works to change out instances of default pronouns to the custom ones you may have chosen, however there may be times where the feature doesn't choose the correct form pronoun or it uses the default pronoun of the assigned gender. This is due to several factors such as the complexity of how the feature was implemented, as well as rules around conjugation in English. An example of something you might see is "They likes…". In this situation, the correct grammatical structure should be "They like…," The feature works by  replacing the pronoun token itself rather than the pronoun and the following verb. In the future we'll be working to make sure that the text is crafted in a way that reduces this type of issue, but we will work to fix instances of this when found in previously released content. If you notice anything that may be off, please let us know by posting a screenshot in this Answers HQ thread.

This first update for customizable pronouns to be supported in English is a step in the direction of a more inclusive experience for Simmers, and I'm excited to see how we'll be able to evolve the game and feature over time to support more languages. While this update isnt the be-all end-all of representation of nonbinary and other gender diverse folks, we strongly feel that it's important for us to approach better inclusivity over time as we figure out ways to work within the limitations of our code.

We don't have anything to share about the roll out to additional languages yet, but stay tuned to our social media channels as we'll share more info once it's available.

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