Last year, Maxis announced its plans to add gender-neutral language into The Sims 4 through the introduction of options such as pronouns for each sim. This week, the team went more in-depth into how the pronoun system may look during a live stream and revealed it'll be allowing players to fully customise them.
Everything is very much a work-in-progress right now, but the stream provided a good framework for how things will work when pronouns are eventually added. The current name option in Create-a-Sim will be changed from "Hello, my name is..." to "Hello, my name and pronouns are..." with four options selectable in a drop-down menu.
He/him/his, she/her/hers and they/them/theirs are the default three, with a fourth option allowing you to type in your own pronouns with examples of how they'll work in a sentence. The custom option will also contain a profanity filter similar to what's currently used for the gallery to try and deter improper use.
MomoMisfortune, a Twitch streamer who began a petition to introduce pronouns in The Sims 4 tweeted: "I started this, but we made it happen together. Thank you all, this means so much to me and so many others," while fellow Sims YouTuber lilsimsie said she was "SO excited to see this progress on the pronoun update."
There's currently no date for when customisable pronouns will be added, with the stream showing that it's still in the early days of design and implementation, with producer SimGuruDuck saying "this is still a work-in-progress and our research and design will continue until we feel the feature is in a good place to be launched into the game."
