The Sims is the kind of franchise where you can sim many different elements of your digital life. Over the years EA has added a ton of content with all manner of new features. From romance to vacations, your sims’ lives keep getting richer and crazier. After all, you can even be a mad scientist, among many other fanciful careers.
One thing that’s been pretty lacking is the exploration of gender and sexuality. And as much as some would balk at such an idea being explored in games, there are some who are more comfortable with living out digital lives within other circumstances. And with more acceptability of LGGBTQ+ people becoming commonplace, The Sims 4 is a great way to explore those concepts in a controlled manner. Is it ideal? No, but it’s better than no representation at all.
This kind of thing used to be the domain of modders, but EA has finally decided to open up the game into a new area of simulation. Allowing more people to be represented accurately in their digital creations is a great thing as well, so it’s good news all-around. So with that in mind, how do you actually change Sexual Orientation in the Sims 4? Whatever your reason for letting sims explore themselves and their desires, EA has made it very easy to change this setting. And no, you can’t turn it off, but you can simply leave it at the defaults.
How to Change Your Sexual Orientation in the Sims 4
Create-A-Sim, or CAS, for those in the know, is vital here. When creating a Sim, you get normally put into CAS. You can also trigger the CAS by going into any option to customize your SIm. You can use the “Change Sim” interaction on a mirror or dresser to access CAS and change any of the settings manually.
When you’re in the menu, look for the ellipsis menu in the top-left. This will trigger a drop-down that has various options on it. Click the three dots and more options will appear. In this section, you can completely customize you sim and their special interactions with other Sims.
The menu is broken down into the following categories:
This Sim is romantically attracted to:
- Men
- Women
This Sim is exploring romantically
- Yes
- No
This Sim is interested in WooHoo with:
- Men
- Women
What’s coming in the future?
The added ability to explore your sims in a more varied romantic manner is just the start. Other planned and released features help in this regard, especially with the new pronoun update. As the team said in a recent Q&A, there are more things coming. One thing that some fans have wanted for some time is the ability to have sims that are identified outside of the traditional gender binary.
As the Q&A said, they’re working on it. “Mechanically, non binary Sims don’t yet exist in TS4. While we made great progress in representing non binary Sims with the pronouns update, we acknowledge that pronouns are not the same thing as gender identities.” said the team. They explained that the choice at the moment “is due to technical limitations” and that they are exploring options to remedy this. “Proper mechanical systems to fully support non binary Sims is another step” they said.
