The Sims 4 has been around for over six years now, with many patches and packs being released during that time. Most recently, there’s been a movement from The Sims 4 community to improve a basic foundation level aspect of the game—its skin tones. The first of these updates supposedly got patched into the game a few days into October, along with bonus items to celebrate Hispanic Heritage month.
However, backlash quickly followed after the surprise items and skin tone update were revealed to players. The Hispanic Heritage items didn’t go over as planned, presumably because many Sims community members found the clothing designs to be stereotypical or completely unrelated to Hispanic culture. While the skin tone update was supposed to fix the blotchy, pixelated appearance of darker skin tones in the base game, many players reported not seeing any difference in appearance at all. Both of these issues have left the developer in hot water with fans of the franchise, but there is a way for them to fix these shortcomings.
Transparency may sound unusual when it comes to game design, especially because many aspects of a game are kept secret until close to its release date. However, transparency is something Sims players have been asking of the developers for quite a while now. These players want to be as involved as possible with the ideas and development of the game franchise that they’ve played for so long. The developer has tried to keep players involved by conducting community surveys and formulating community-voted stuff packs, like Nifty Knitting, yet they’re still missing the mark.
Community surveys can be wonderful tools to gauge where audience interest lies and make new content based on what players are interested in. So far, it seems the developers have taken stock of the community’s interest but not done anything with it yet. The new expansion pack is set to be announced within the coming months, but the developer has already stated that highly requested items from previous games, like bunk beds and cars, will not be in the next pack. Perhaps this means different items that ranked high in its survey have made it into the game instead.
Transparency is a slippery slope because no game developer, EA or otherwise, is required to let players know what’s coming in advance for a game. However, the issue for players isn’t needing to know all the new and upcoming expansions of The Sims 4, it’s simply being kept in the loop about highly requested items and how they are progressing. Players would much rather hear that a complete overhaul of the skin tone swatches is taking longer than expected and receive a new estimated date for when it’ll be completed instead of being told the update has been finalized and implemented but see no change in the game.
To give credit where it’s due, EA did collaborate with both SOMOS EA and Chicano artist Mister Cartoon to figure out what items to add to the game for Hispanic Heritage and how they should be designed. Going forward for future updates, this strategy of reaching out to people who are part of the culture they want to add to the game and working with them to get things right should be implemented again and again.
The issue then lies in how EA goes on to label these items. The statement from the developer mentions that SOMOS EA is made up of a variety of different Hispanic and Latinx people, but many Sims fans were unhappy and criticized the new items and clothing as being very Mexico-centric. There’s nothing wrong with having items styled specifically after Mexican culture, but they shouldn’t be labeled “Hispanic” if the items are only inclusive of Mexico. In fact, it may be better to separate these items into specific categories because it can give the developers time to make sure it’s doing each country and culture justice and not falling prey to stereotypes.
The Sims 4 players are very outspoken about what they want from the game because they genuinely love it and want to see it grow. The developers of the game have proven that it listens to fans by promising to fix and add over 100 new skin tones to the game by the end of the year. If the developers continue with that transparency and continue to reach out to other artists and people to create new items to represent other cultures, there may be hope for The Sims 4 franchise yet.
The Sims 4 is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
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