The makers of the long-running video game series The Sims do not allow pregnant characters to have abortions. But unofficial add-ons that give players that option are popular, their makers tell Axios.
Why it matters: In the world of video games, major studios often avoid socially sensitive topics, but fans sometimes find ways to induct them.
- Such is the case with abortion and Electronic Arts’ The Sims, a virtual dollhouse game in which players initiate the births, marriages, careers and moments of intimate “woohoo” of digital people.
- It’s a more daring game series than most, with 200 million units sold and a history of some more socially progressive topics, such as same-sex romance. But abortion didn’t get there.
- That addition has been left to unofficial efforts by players turned developers, via fan-made downloadable tweaks or mods.
A popular abortion mode for the Sims 4, LittleMsSam’s “Miscarriage Chance & Abortion”, was released in 2018 and has been downloaded more than 250,000 times since mid-2021, the creator tells Axios.
- The abortion portion of the mod allows players to pay 1,000 Simoleans (the fictional in-game currency) during the first two trimesters of pregnancy for the procedure. It will cause the Sim to feel guilty in most cases.
- The cost and timing parameters, to me, are a “way of letting users be ‘responsible in-game’ rather than using it whenever they want,” said LittleMsSam, who asked for identification with her modder name to protect her privacy.
- She’s a prolific and well-respected modder with projects like better in-game yoga mats, more complex dating options, and the option to hire a babysitter. She created the abortion mod, due to player requests, in about a week.
Between the lines: Unwanted pregnancies are unlikely in the virtual world of the Sims, where players have discrete options to initiate sex with no consequences, or “woohoo” between two Sims or “try for a baby.”
- But some players want the option of abortion, because for many, The Sims is an opportunity to take virtual people and orchestrate dramatic scenarios.
- “The thing about The Sims isn’t that it’s goal-oriented per se,” said Lisa Marie Segarra, editor for the video game news site Kotaku and serial veteran with nearly 1,400 hours logged into The Sims 4. “It’s more about storytelling.”
Making digital abortion: “What I always struggle with is that there’s the whole human experience and there’s a black-and-white yes-and-no code game,” says The Sims 4 modder Lumpinou, whose work stems largely from a desire for nuance. to add to the Sims game. simple life.
- A Sims player since childhood, she started modifying the game in 2020 when she realized her Sim couldn’t tell their partner about their job promotion. So she figured out a way to do that.
- Disappointed with The Sims’ near-uniform glee when she found out they were pregnant, she created a mod that allowed them to get more complex reactions. And in 2021, she released an abortion mod programmed to elicit similar mixed emotions.
- Sims who terminate a pregnancy through her mod may feel guilt, relief, loss, confidence, stress, or other reactions. “We’re trying to put a little bit of reality into it,” she says.
Reactions to the abortion mods of players were largely positive, the modders say.
- It helps that EA’s developers at Sims studio Maxis — and the community in general — have created a tolerant atmosphere for mods of all kinds, according to franchise followers.
The abortion mods have become more recently, more notably, following the US Supreme Court ruling allowing states to ban abortion.
- On the day of the court ruling, the Sims team tweeted: “We understand that it is difficult today”, adding that the game aims to reflect the team’s belief that people “have the right to physical autonomy”.
- Lyndsay Pearson, EA’s vice president of creative for The Sims, confirmed that view in a statement to Axios, saying, “The Sims continues to represent the diversity, complexity and reality of real life through an optimistic lens.”
Yes but: Even some abortion mod supporters don’t think EA should or should add abortion to the game, as the series appeals to younger players (it’s suitable for teens and older).
- However, some have said that its historical absence from the series is another example of popular culture actively or tacitly stigmatizing abortion.
- Segarra says, “What I’m going to come back to is, what are we saying about abortion if we don’t say anything about abortion?”
What’s next: Lumpinou plans to update her abortion mod, working in a wider social rating system that makes other Sims respond to someone ending a pregnancy.
- And it’s part of her hope that people can use her mod to role-play and learn about their neighbors.
- “One of the greatest powers of fiction is that through empathy, through a story, we can gain so much more understanding,” she says.
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