[Video Games] That Time EA Accidentally Implemented Sexual Assault as a Gameplay Feature in the Sims 4

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Content warning: discussion of sexual assault for procreation purposes in the Sims 4

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Friendly Introduction

Ah, The Sims, the virtual dollhouse game franchise that has no competitors and keeps churning out content and drama with no end in sight. The game where for over two decades people have been murdering their Sims by drowning or starving them. You know the one.

The Sims 4 drama often revolves around the release of new packs with broken or unsatisfying features like the Wedding Pack that failed to deliver on its promise to have guests sit down and watch the wedding. Additionally, there’s a huge modding scene creating anything from script mods to cosmetic items that isn’t exactly drama-free. The pro-paywall and anti-paywall wars have been going strong for almost as long as the game has existed.

This story is nowhere on that scale. This drama is about a minor change to a gameplay trait so universally despised and thoughtless, EA walked it back immediately. This is the story about the few short weeks when rape was part of the Sims’ official gameplay.

I realize Sims exist only for the entertainment of the player/God. Consent doesn't exist in the Sims world. In the real world, however, it is both very real and very important. It’s not surprising that players would apply this concept to a life simulation. I’ll be talking about Sims consenting to mean performing actions in an impaired state that they, due to their in-game traits, would not agree to if in any other emotional state. In doing so, I don’t mean to at any point trivialize or make light of sexual assault in real life and if I’m insensitive or tone-deaf, please let me know.

To explain why I even had to write that disclaimer, I need to explain two game mechanics that influence a Sim’s behavior before moving on to the controversy.

Get To Know

Sims’ personalities comprise three traits. These are supposed to give your Sims distinct personalities but due to poor tuning and the Emotion System most Sims still feel pretty samey. The traits have always been criticized because they were more fleshed out in previous games. Over the years, EA has made attempts to improve some of these traits to varying levels of success.

In terms of traits, the Hates Children trait is pretty self-explanatory. These Sims hate children and get Tense or Angry in their presence. They get Bored reading children’s books, get Tense when pregnant, and are Happy when they take a negative pregnancy test.

That’s the idea at least. In reality, the negative moodlets aren’t very strong and Sims who Hate Children interact with children autonomously and get positive moodlets from doing so like Sims without the trait do. The hate also doesn’t extend to babies or toddlers, really nerfing what could be a fun trait for those looking to bring some dysfunction into their family gameplay. I think we all agree that a Sim who Hates Children shouldn’t always be cooing over the damned baby, yet that’s where you’d often find them.

Try to Calm Down

Sims’ lives are often ruled far more by their Emotions than their traits. The only time Sims aren’t feeling things is when they’re asleep. They can be Fine, Happy, Flirty, Confident, Energized, Inspired, Playful (and Hysterical), Angry (and Enraged), Bored. Tense, Sad, Embarrassed (and Mortified), Scared, or Dazed. Some whims (wishes the player can fulfill for reward points) and interactions only appear when a Sim is feeling a certain emotion. Flirting while Angry or Sad is bound to go wrong and being Flirty in the wrong company can get awkward fast. Some emotions can also be deadly. We don’t have time to talk about all the Sims I’ve lost because they laughed themselves to death.

Try for Baby

In late March 2021, as part of a large Spring update that introduced bunk beds, EA decided to overhaul some of the traits. Initially, they didn’t list what had been changed but it was obvious in the game. Suddenly, Clumsy Sims couldn’t go anywhere without tripping. Bookworms read books. Cheerful Sims were extra cheerful.

And Sims who Hate Children?

Most of the changes were positive. They would now get Tense, then Angry when around kids “and also move away when they get to the Angry stage,” which sounds about right.

Another bullet point stood out though. Let me quote the changelog (since deleted):

“Asking a Hates Children Sim to ‘Try for Baby’ has no chance of success unless the Sim is Dazed.”

You know, Dazed, that emotion Sims get when they’re sick, do a keg stand, get beat up, take medicine while not sick, are hypnotized, poisoned, electrocuted, or eaten by a Cowplant. (A popular mod that introduces alcohol and a variety of drugs into the game also makes copious use of it.) “Dazed” inhibits skill gain, gives Sims a slower, bedraggled walking style, and sometimes they see stars. The only Whims a Dazed Sim will have are “Go to Sleep,” “Sleep it Off,” and “Take a Nap” (and they’re all the same interaction). In addition to that, they are far more susceptible to death by electrocution.

And that’s the state a Hates Children Sim needs to be in to agree to Try for Baby.

(The WooHoo interaction, the Sims’ equivalent to sex with perfect birth control, remains unaltered.)

So, to have a Sim who Hates Children Try for Baby—an interaction that doesn’t happen autonomously—you have to get them Dazed, the equivalent of tricking someone into having sex without protection against their will. And you, the player, are the one doing it.

You tell me if that sounds off somehow, because to me, it sounds a lot like rape, specifically stealthing, as a gameplay feature.

For comparison as part of the same trait overhaul, asking Non-Committal Sims, also not very likely to want children, to Try for Baby had “a very low chance of success,” which adds some gameplay challenge and realism without any consent violations.

Lecture about Responsibilities

The outrage was quick, strong, and universal. Sims players, who at least online skew young and progressive, were Tense and Angry.

Some had noticed that there was something off with Trying for Baby with Sims who Hate Children for several weeks before EA’s patch notes but didn’t figure out that you could work around someone’s family planning choices by getting them Dazed.

When the patch notes came out and they put together what had happened, it was not well-received.

Some were angry it took away from their gameplay options. The popular 100 Baby Challenge was much harder to play if you couldn’t Try for Baby with anyone. Seducing a Sim while multiple children scream around you is hard enough without having to find out your partner’s traits and adjust according to that (by either not Trying for Baby with them or getting them Dazed.).

However, the loudest and most enduring complaints were not about gameplay limitations but sexual consent. This bug report for the new feature summarizes it nicely:

I realize that this is intended behavior, and not a bug. However, this aspect of the Hates Children trait seems to echo serious real-life issues a bit too closely. While I'm certain this was not the intention, it feels as though The Sims 4 has added elements of date [rape] by allowing a Sim to convince a Sim who does not want kids to try for a baby if the Sim is intoxicated (in the Dazed mood). I just don't feel like complicated issues of consent while intoxicated belong in The Sims 4.

It just didn’t feel right that this was now a feature when iconic elements from previous games, like burglars and the Sexy Dancer (later Party Dancer) bursting out of a cake, had been excluded from the Sims 4 for being inappropriate for a children’s game. But explicit sexual assault somehow didn’t cross that line in the Sims developers’ eyes?

This also reawakened discourse about alien abductions—a staple of the franchise present in every game—from which male Sims usually return pregnant. Wasn’t this sexual assault too?

One notable difference between the two features is that alien abductions and the resulting pregnancy are not player-directed or explicitly non-consensual. The player can’t trigger an abduction but can imagine what happened during the abduction off-screen where they can’t as easily handwave dazing a Sim so the Sim will agree to a pregnancy.

Whatever your view on alien abductions in the Sims, I feel Confident in saying that almost no Sims players have real-life traumatic experiences with aliens that might be triggered by the game. The same can unfortunately not be said for sexual assault. Sure, you can simply adjust your gameplay to not have children with Sims who Hate Children but knowing that the presence of the option to violate their consent is upsetting even if you don’t personally make use of it. (And since it’s a gameplay mechanic, I’m also not judging anyone who used it.)

Nobody seems to have thought EA had malicious intentions. It’s the thoughtlessness they took issue with. How had this made it into the game despite its obvious implications?

Smooth Recovery

We would never find out how this happened (and really, why would we?) but the Sims team responded to the viral tweet I linked in the header within a day:

“You are absolutely right! We appreciate you all holding us accountable to our values – especially when we miss the mark! Consent isn’t something to play with, so we’ve updated our language & will correct the trait in an upcoming patch.”

The patch notes were quickly altered to read, “Sims with the ‘Hates Children’ trait will be very unreceptive to any ‘Try For Baby’ actions” with no exception when they’re dazed.”

This satisfied Sims players, and the next patch a few weeks later eliminated the feature. Now it’s harder to Try for Baby with a Sim who Hates Children but when it happens, players can in good conscience say that no Sims were traumatized or harmed in the process.

In terms of controversy, it was a minor blip in Sims discourse, far overshadowed by the ongoing anger about the introduction of kits, small $5 DLC that include cosmetic items. A whopping 19 of them have since been released and they remain controversial.

Additionally, around the same time several huge Sims custom content creators on Patreon were revealed to be putting trackers on their files and “actively shar[ing] information on patrons, mass-blocking them, and coordinating attacks against them,” so it’s surprising the Hates Children controversy gained any attention at all.

But that doesn’t make it any less Embarrassing, nay Mortifying, that this happened because none of the developers realized that this was not a great idea in any game, let alone one rated 12+.

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Thank you for reading. This has been sitting in my drafts unfinished for months but the Sims 4 is adding Infants, a new life stage, to the game next week. I can’t wait to terrorize a Sim who Hates Children with some new offspring. That sounds fun in a way getting a Sim Dazed to baby-trap them does absolutely not.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here