Hi, friends! This semester, I’m switching things up with my blog. Instead of focusing on music, I will be discussing what’s on my mind regarding the video games I’m playing! I have quite a few ideas, so stay tuned! This week, we’ll be exploring how the popular Electronic Arts (EA) game The Sims 4 represents disability.
Some Context
Let’s lay down some groundwork first. What is The Sims 4, and how am I defining disability? Let’s start with the first question.
The Sims 4 is a life simulation game. Players can create people– referred to as Sims–, build houses, and control their Sims to live out many kinds of lives. Sims can get married, have children, go on vacation, learn an instrument, climb the corporate ladder, become a vampire, or any other activity we do in the real world.
As for the second question, the way we will understand disability in this post aligns with the views of Disability Studies, which argues that disability is simply another way of being human. Disability isn’t something bad that needs to be cured, but our society makes it bad by not accommodating various types of disabilities. For example, a disability that causes someone to use a wheelchair becomes a negative when no wheelchair ramp is available.
Physical Disability in The Sims 4
When The Sims 4 first released, there was no way for a Sim to have or experience disability. Sims were all nondisabled: they had full mobility, they could see perfectly, and they had no challenges with hearing. Sims fit the standard of what society deems as the “normal” or “perfect” human.
In early 2023– nearly a decade after the game released–, EA provided a free update that included medical wearables. This update now allows Sims to wear accessories that add impairments. Sims can wear hearing aids and glucose monitors in a variety of colors; sims can be deaf or have diabetes.
But are they actually deaf or diabetic?
A Sim that wears a hearing aid can’t take the hearing aid off. They can’t learn sign language or braille. They are not allowed to be deaf because that deafness is “cured” with the hearing aid.
A Sim that uses a glucose monitor doesn’t need to closely monitor their diet. They never need to check their blood-sugar levels or eat a snack to stabilize these levels, nor do they need to replace their glucose monitor on a regular basis.
In short, physical disability in The Sims 4 is nonexistent. Deaf or diabetic Sims never have to manage their disability. They never face challenges from their differences. Medical wearables in The Sims 4 are just that– wearables. A Sim wearing a hearing aid is not deaf; they are just a Sim wearing a hearing aid.
Let’s not forget that there are many, many more physical disabilities other than deafness and diabetes. What if I want to make a Sims who is blind or missing a leg or any other physical disability. I can’t, and that is a massive shame.
Cognitive Disability in The Sims 4
Although The Sims 4 doesn’t have an option to give Sims cognitive disabilities– such as bipolar disorder or down-syndrome– there are a handful of traits Sims can have that suggest they have a cognitive difference.
But what exactly is a trait? Traits can be added to Sims to modify the way they experience emotions or to give them specific hobbies. For example, a Sim with the Gloomy trait will be sad more often, and a Sim with the Geek trait will enjoy playing video games. Traits are meant to give Sims personality and make them unique in comparison to other Sims.
One trait that I want to discuss is the Erratic trait.
According to The Sims 4, an Erratic sim “can talk to themselves and have unpredictable emotions.” As traits do, the Erratic trait influences the way a Sim acts. The Sims Wiki shares a list of these influences. The ones I want to discuss are: “Erratic Sims will randomly hiss and do random movements when idle,” and “Erratic Sims may autonomously use mean socials regardless of mood or relationship.”
The reason I share these two points specifically is because they lead me to believe that the Erratic trait is, to a certain extent, trying to represent autism, even if not consciously done by the game developers. When visiting the National Institute of Mental Health’s page on Autism Spectrum Disorder, I equated a Sim hissing and performing random movements to the “[repetition of] certain behaviors or having unusual behaviors” and a Sim being mean in social situations is somewhat like “difficulty with communication and interaction with other people.”
What I find troubling about the Erratic trait is the label it is given. Though a neurotypical person may interpret someone with autism as behaving erratically, they are simply responding to situations based on how they are feeling just as anyone does. They experience an emotion and act accordingly. That is not erratic.
Additionally, the other behaviors that Erratic Sims exhibit are downright offensive to autistic people, namely that “Sims from non-active households will commonly appear in parks dressed in predefined clothings (paint-splattered white tank top, gray pants and black sneakers) and usually sleep on benches.” There are definitely a lot of ways to interpret this, but I interpret this as EA trying to create a moment of “humor.” Someone playing The Sims 4 might encounter an Erratic Sim in this situation and laugh. This can also be a way of dehumanizing autistic people.
Interestingly, the Erratic trait wasn’t always called “Erratic;” it used to be called the Insane trait and was depicted with an icon of a straight jacket. Sims with the Insane trait “have unpredictable emotions, can talk to themselves and with objects, but they’re basically harmless.” The Insane trait was renamed and assigned a new icon in an update in 2018. Nothing but the name or icon changed.
If we are to understand the Erratic trait as autism, the Insane trait is wildly inappropriate. The statement that “they’re basically harmless,” specifically the word “basically,” suggests that there is something to fear. It suggests that autistic people can be dangerous, but most of the time they’re safe. The straight-jacket icon is even more problematic. It seems to support the idea that neurodivergent people need to be separated from society and locked away.
The Sims Wiki also shares that the Erratic trait conflicts with the Wise trait. This means that a Sim can’t have both the Erratic and Wise traits and further suggests that someone with autism cannot be wise or even intelligent.
So although The Sims 4 doesn’t purposefully include autism or any other cognitive disability, the Erratic trait has in-game changes that can represent autism. This neurodivergence does not exist in the game to create more complex gameplay and allow a diverse population of players to feel included; instead, it exists as something funny for players to laugh at. Were the trait specifically labeled as “Autism” and some of the more problematic gameplay changes were removed, this trait could be more representative of actual people with autism, some of whom likely play the game.
In Conclusion…
The Sims 4 has been making strides towards greater inclusion– such as adding a vast number of skin tones and hair types– but it still has much to do to welcome disability. The medical accessories are a great start in incorporating physical disability, but it’s still just a tiny start.
Players have taken it upon themselves to incorporate disability into the game as much as they can with the resources they have. In this picture, one player created wheelchairs for Sims to use to move around. But it’s time for the game developers to add elements like this to the game for all players to use.
This is not something that is easy to do. The developers will need to create dozens of new models (wheelchairs, leg braces, Sims with missing limbs, wheelchair ramps, canes, etc.) and hundreds of new animations (a Sim moving in a wheelchair, a blind person using a cane, a diabetic Sim injecting insulin, etc.), and these are only physical disabilities. Gameplay itself would need to be changed from accommodating one type of body and mind (much like our world) to accommodating many different types of bodies and minds.
I’ve heard the argument in the past that EA doesn’t incorporate disability because The Sims 4 is supposed to be a pleasant escape from the real world. I once read a post where someone claimed that someone in a wheelchair wouldn’t want to play as a Sim in a wheelchair. However, I would argue that a wheelchair user would love to play as their Sim counterpart in a world that accepts and accommodates their differences. Though I’m not a wheelchair user myself and may be incorrect in this claim, I can say that I, myself, would love to play within a fictional world that accommodates my own differences.
I really appreciate you for reading this! I have a lot of ideas for this blog series, such as exploring how CDProjekt Red portrays The Witcher and analyzing Days Gone characters Tucker and Copeland. Later this year, Life is Strange: Double Exposure and inZoi are set to release, so I hope to write about them as well!
I hope the rest of your day goes well!
Lauren is a Lewis University Senior studying English with a concentration in General Writing. She also mentors her peers at the university’s Writing Center. In addition to her academic pursuits, Lauren has played the violin since 2011 and currently serves as Concertmaster for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also recently began learning bass guitar and plays in her university’s jazz band. When not writing or practicing, she enjoys reading thrillers and fantasy novels, crocheting, and playing video games.