The Sims, I Love You

The Sims have allowed me to fulfill many a fantasy: smashing plates on the ground, recreating the Simpsons, having sex in public…

But if I’m grateful to them, it is mainly for this: they don’t make a big deal out of homosexuality.

Yep, they couldn’t care less. Actually, even better: the game’s landscape doesn’t shift depending on sexual orientation. Straight, gay, bi; it’s all the same.

In retrospect, this normalization was like a balm on my young, queer heart.

When I was a kid, The Sims was an oasis of respite for me; a distraction as soft as the carpet in my dad’s office, whose PC I monopolized for hours.

A “normal” life

Of course, this iconic 2000s game doesn’t cover all the nuances of human sexuality, and I’m glossing over some rather strange and naughty behaviours our Sims can do (like touch a perfect stranger’s butt).

But that said, The Sims will always have the merit of allowing gay couples to live a life as normal as that of their straight counterparts (i.e. a life punctuated with burning houses and vanishing pool ladders).

Now, imagine the opposite. Imagine if the game’s developers had decided to ban homosexuality, or worse, to put a spoke in the wheel for same-gender couples.

Imagine if “straight” Sims were presented with these different actions when interacting with a “gay” Sim:

I have chills just thinking about it.

Nuances and details

Now, to be fair, I “did my research” and discovered that there are some small distinctions between gay and straight Sims.

(Back then, I had completely missed these distinctions, too busy creating a romance between a Sim in my effigy and another supposed to represent Benjamin from MixMania.)

In the first game, same-gender couples cannot marry. The move in option was available, but you couldn’t walk down the aisle if you were gay.

In The Sims 2, a union is possible for same-gender couples (the option is called joined union), but marriage remains out of reach until The Sims 3.

This third game advances things even more for our happy gay couples: the “into the future” extension allows same-gender couples to conceive a baby thanks to science (!)

Too bad this option wasn’t available in earlier versions of the game. I wonder what my child would have looked like with Benjamin from MixMania…

Sigh! Dear baby that I have never known: I hope you would have inherited Benjamin’s charisma and my cleaning skills.

In the offices of Maxis

What I’m most curious about is what was behind all this open-minded decision-making during the game’s creation.

In the early games, Sims can have romantic interactions with anyone, regardless of gender. How do we explain Sims’ intrinsic bisexuality? What exactly went down in the meeting that led to this decision?

Picture the offices at Maxis in 1999, a few months before the release of The Sims. Here’s what I imagine happened between a team leader and a young developer:

• So! Have you started to conceptualize romantic relationships yet?

• Yeah, about that. We have a quick question…

• Shoot.

• We were wondering if… How do I say this…

• Spit it out, already! I have a meeting soon with the guy who’s composing the soothing jazz music with edgy new age accents! So hip!

• Right, yeah. Um so… We wanted to know if Sims could romantically pair up with people of the same gender…

• ……..

• ……..

• Uhhhh heck yes! We want the game to be realistic, right?

• Cool cool cool. Ok, so… how does their sexual orientation, uh, work, exactly? Are we programming a hetero-homo binary system? Or do we develop a more nuanced scale to determine their preferences?

• Right. Uhhhh… Just make it realistic?

• Realistic… yes. Right. So you’d like the game to show all the nuances of homosexuality, including the still too frequent marginalization of this community?

• Oh dear…

• Yeah…

• Soooo uhhh…Have you finished programming the Grim Reaper?

• No.

• Right. Focus on that.

• Right. Yes.

Annnnnndddd on the seventh day, it was decided that all Sims were going to be inherently bisexual. Amen.

Thank you, Sims, thank you, dad

Thank you, young developer, and thank you, team leader, and thank you, everyone else who programmed the Sims’ sexuality. You are like guardian angels.

Oh, and I also want to thank my dad, who was kind enough to buy me a copy of the game at Costco.

That day, my father did a huge favor for his closeted son.

Though I suspect he always knew I was 💫 gay 💫.

He never missed an opportunity to “subtly” educate me about homosexuality. It was well intentioned, of course; he wanted to show me that it was normal, that it was part of life. He was preparing a good foundation for me in case I was gay.

My benevolent father also constantly reached out in the hopes that I would open up to him… but he was so clumsy about it.

This one time, he brought me to see C.R.A.Z.Y. at the theater, probably thinking that the movie would open my eyes to my identity.

I don’t know if he expected me to come out at the end of the movie, but it wasn’t the torments of Zachary Beaulieu and his pilgrimage to Jerusalem that were going to convince me to show my true colors. On the contrary, that movie made being gay seem a bit scary.

Let’s just say that I was longing for the kind of blissful indifference that reigned over the Sims universe.

So really, the greatest favor my father did for me on his crusade to let me know I was accepted and loved just exactly as I am, was installing the game on our computer – completely unaware that it was actually the game that made me know I found my world.

With The Sims, I was able to witness same-gender couples blossom without retaliation or stigma – quite the opposite of the fate reserved for gay men in the movies and TV series that were then available to me!

In short, the Sims have all my admiration. How do you say “thank you” in Simlish?

Oh, yeah: sosoon!