HIATUS 🕐 Peach's CC

Hey Everyone, It’s Shelly! I have a few things to get of my chest and I felt like this could be a good place to do so.

As many of you know or you may not, I made a petition last month calling for The Sims™ Team to fix the issue with the darker skin-tones in the game. I am making this post just to share my overall frustration with the franchise and as a creator as a whole. 

The Sims 4™ has been out since 2014. In that time we have had many patches and updates to the base game and yet after 6 (going on 7) years we still have YET to fix the skin-tone issue that we have had from the start. It is so hard to find accurate representation in this game. Sad to say this doesn’t just happen in The Sims™. The gaming community as a whole puts black and brown characters on the back burner and when it comes to character creation they will have a plethora of options for paler characters but then they will throw in one token black hair and call it a day. If these gaming companies truly care about inclusivity then they should be taking the steps to SHOW it. It really upsets me that The Sims™, in particular prides itself of creativity and diversity but have yet to live up to their beliefs fully. 

This next part isn’t a callout or me “coming” for anyone, but I have to make this example to show you all what I mean. 

Xmiramira is a prominent figure in the gaming community, she is a wonderful black gamer who has been playing sims for years. Mira called The Sims™ out for their lack of skin-tones several years ago and even went out of her way to make more skin-tones and colors for us black and brown players called the Melanin Pack. She did this in 2016 and here we are in 2020 and the base game colors have still not improved. Recently another YouTuber (who is great in her own right) made the request to have the ability to nickname cowplants. This feature wasn’t necessarily needed but yet in the latest patch to the game we now have the ability to do so.The only reason I am mentioning this is to point out how the The Sims™ Team doesn’t prioritize the things that players are asking for. It is just really sad to see that a game that so many of us love not have the representation that we need. 

As a black creators we have to work twice as hard to get half as far. Even me as a black custom content creator, I don’t get as much recognition as my peers and to be honest, the black and p.o.c creators are some of the best in this community. This isn’t saying that our white peers aren’t great, but all I am saying is that you can see that there is a clear divide.

I hope that one day we can see a change. We shouldn’t have to rely on CC and Petitions to get the game that we deserve. If you all are looking for more skin-tones I made a list in one of my previous post. Here is a LINK for those interested.