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"The Sims 3" makes full-on gay marriage a virtual reality
I remember that when The Sims debuted, the idea of a video game being inclusive of gays and lesbians was still pretty surprising, even in a game that promised to capture the little details of life. I recall how a friend and I scrutinized the magazine ad, noting the two guys in the corner of the picture (they wore pink speedos and hugged affectionately) and wondering if the actual game could turn out to be as gay as it looked. When the virtual dollhouse made its debut, it was a breath of fresh air that The Sims' idea of love included same-sex romances. It was a welcoming touch of the real world. However, the realism of The Sims also reflected the inequality same-sex couples faced in reality: while opposite-sex couples could get married, gay couples could only move in together. In game terms, this meant that same-sex couples couldn't have the wedding parties that opposite-sex couples could have. When The Sims 2 came out in 2004, things were better for gay Sims couples, as they were allowed to be "joined" and they essentially had access to the functions of marriage, aside from the name. While it would have been nice to be able to escape to a virtual world where gay couples had full equality, it was a step forward and better than the reality of most gay couples.
Married male couples are now called "husbands" by The Sims 3 So when I bought my copy of the latest Sims game yesterday, I wanted to find out if gay couples had taken another step forward and now had the ability to get married like any other couple ... and after a week of game time, I was able to get a male couple to plan a wedding party and tie the knot. It may seem like a small step for a game series that has always been LGB-inclusive, but games that treat gay people equally are still pretty rare. Homophobia is still sadly common among video game communities and, worse, some companies' attempts to deal with anti-gay harassment have ended up being even more repressive to queer players. On the other hand, Sims fandom has long been incredibly welcoming to gay players (including, notably, the modding community). That welcoming atmosphere started with the example (Sims' publisher) Electronic Arts set in the first Sims game, and it's great to see that it has evolved with the series. Submitted by on Thu, 2009-06-04 08:58. |
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Yay! that's awesome :) I
Yay! that's awesome :)
I am thinking of buying it
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"there's always time for a burrow..."
"We're getting fired, fired, fired, firedddd"
*** meep meep! ***
YAY!!
that's great to hear
Is that?
ur right
totally looks like him :D
that's what i assumed
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"there's always time for a burrow..."
"We're getting fired, fired, fired, firedddd"
*** meep meep! ***
That's awesome! I love the
That's awesome! I love the Sims, but I still haven't decided if I wanna buy The Sims 3 yet. I'm quite attached to my families and expansion packs for The Sims 2.
...however I said the same thing about my original Sims when the second one came out so who knows... I'll prolly end up giving in and buying the third eventually, lol.
Yesssss
I am so freaking excited! Got this yesterday, haven't quite had the time to play it yet, but I can't wait!
I'm especially happy because the disk will work on a pc or a mac, so I can switch back and forth or whatever.
You know, I just thought I'd share my enthusiasm. :0D
I landed me a
For real
Have been playing for a few days
And my gay family is going pretty well.My third generation son is a very successful rock star right now. :)
I also tried to start a straight family,but the girl got knocked up and turned out it was triplets!!I was sooo not ready for that and tried my best to raise them properly.But it was too hard to handle.The only fun part of it was I named the baby girls Kylie,Janet & Mariah,lol.
Triplets?
Yikes, that sounds tough. The guy my sim married turned out to have "raise 5 children" as his lifetime want. I was able to spread out the adoptions over time so that I never had more than one newborn to take care of, but that was a tiring challenge. I don't want to imagine three newborns at once.
Yes it was very hard
Actually when the "name the baby"window poped up three times after the childbirth, I almost thought it was a bug. When it turned out to be triplets.....(Faint)
I guess in real life it happens to straight couples sometimes, but what are the odds! Even with a nanny the couple couldn`t have a rest properly.
I`ve been a huge fan of the series for a few years. Back when I was playing Sims 2 I always played gay male couples(occasionally lesbians) and adopted older children when the right time comes. (I`m not really a fan of infants anyway.) This was the first time I was curious enough to try for a straight couple and made biological kids. Naturally,everything went wrong.
playstyles
In The Sims 2, I tried to be a legacy player, intending to play out families for generations. Usually, they'd start with a same-sex couple (I'd use the create-a-sim bug/cheat so that they'd have genetic children) and at least one of the kids would grow up straight, mostly because I liked playing out pregnancies in the game, and the other(s) would grow up gay. I never got far playing that way because I can't stand it when only the active family ages (thus, The Sims 3 sounded very promising) so trying to keep each family aging similarly was exhausting and I didn't like it when my first generation started dying from old age... too bad, I was looking forward to the romance I was planning between Mel and Susan Profit's son Jim and Harkness boy from across the street.
Oh I heard of those before
I personally never tried it.It just seems...wrong to get a guy knocked up with his male lover`s child.But I knew a lot of chinese "rotten girls" were very obsessed with it,made pictures and videos of it and shared with each other.I even know a few refuse to play sims 3 until the same bug developed.shrug.
It is really hard to lose old family members.In sims 2 when I guessed the time might come,I would move the rest of families away to some place else.This way they would at least be alive although they were not in your life any more.sob.For sims 3 we can`t do that anymore though I think.
Hmm...
Maybe it's a different bug? In The Sims 2, you could give a gay couple genetic children in the "create a sim" section by turning one partner female, which open up the ability to create an offspring and then reverting the sex back before you finish the family. You can do that in The Sims 3, too, but a few changes to the character when you switch genders that you have to edit back in.
There was a male pregnancy in The Sims 2, but that involved using the telescope and getting kidnapped by aliens. (Writing that, I was just reminded why I love that game.) Thanfully, in The Sims, babies come from the pumbbob.
That said, too bad The Sims 3 didn't have a way for same-sex couples to have surrogate children. That might have had use outside of gay sims, considering the mysterious single parents who are driving players crazy in the game.
Oops
I also
I'm really surprized that
I'm really surprized that people are still playing THE SIMS. As I remember, same-sex relationship has been allowed in the game from the start, but it is called "married" just in Sims 3, My sincere congrats to the virtual couples out there in cyberspace! I hope in the 4-th part there will be available some adult function- like "treat with sex toy"
Give me 5 reasons
Give me 5 reasons why we should allow Gay marriage in California?
Thanks,
strippers sydney
Here you go...
1. The United States Constitution. Primarily with respect to:
First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
Fourteenth Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
2. There is no TANGIBLE evidence to support the opposition's claims that: same-sex marriage will harm children, American society, the family unit in general, or erode the ritual of heterosexual marriage. If you have that evidence, please send it my way; cogntivediss0nance@gmail.com
3. It is not the government's place, especially in a nation that touts freedom, to tell people whom they can marry.
4. Banning same-sex marriage is solely based on bigotry; as evidenced by Reason #2 above. Bigotry - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot.
It's exactly the same as banning interracial marriage. Although the issues, themselves, may be different, the nature of the issues is the same: bigotry and prejudice.
http://vfm.typepad.com/vermont_freedom_to_marry/files/Arguments_Against_Interracial_Marriage_and_Equal_Marriage.pdf
5. Fostering equality and tolerance is just plain the right thing to do, from the aspects of morality as well as the American social construct. Anyone who claims to be proud of the Freedom and Liberty for which America stands AND actively pursues an agenda against marriage equality is an archetypal HYPOCRITE. Allowing straight marriage but not gay marriage while touting freedom is art imitating life as characterized by George Orwell's Animal Farm: All pigs are creatd equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.
I am truly interested in any rebuttal, as I have reached out to organizations State and Nation-wide that call for a ban on same-sex marriage with these rational arguments and NONE have bothered to reply. That tells me that they know their Agenda is one of bigotry, intolerance, and hate. Everyone in this nation is welcome to loathe homosexuals and think the idea of gay marriage is abhorrent. However, institutionalizing that prejudicial agenda cuts against the very grain of why America was founded.
Regards,