How updates have made it easier to define a Sim’s identity, plus information on how Sims behave by default
Customising your Sims' sexual orientation, gender identity, and pronouns is fairly straightforward, but understanding what all the options actually mean in terms of gameplay can be a little more complicated. On this page, I’ll explain both how to customise your Sims and what impact your choices will have on the way your game works.
Before we proceed, it’s worth noting thatThe Sims 4never uses real-world labels for gender and sexual identities. In this guide I’ll be using familiar terms (like transgender and cisgender, non-binary, gay, straight, bisexual, and asexual/aromantic) because these are the lived experiences that the customisation options aim to allow you to replicate. But in-game terminology is exclusively geared around explaining what effect it actually has in the game.
The Sims 4 gender customisation
Clicking the three dots under the male and female symbols in CAS gives you a number of expanded gender customisation options, allowing you to create a Sim who can be regarded as (for example) transgender, intersex, or otherwise gender non-conforming. It’s also here that you get to play with the fertility options for all Sims regardless of gender identity (most painless vasectomy ever, am I right lads?). These options are as follows:
Unlike the gender customisation options outlined above, these options don’t impact on gameplay in any way, and are purely cosmetic enhancements to your storytelling. On a related note: binders and scars don’t actually change a Sim’s chest shape, so you’ll still need to use sliders to complete the effect.
Fundamentally, gender in The Sims 4 is still locked into a “male or female” binary. The developers have expressed regret that this continues to be the case, but the game’s underpinning architecture was built around that assumption (translation: the whole game engine will fall over if you’re not careful when you mess with it). So while efforts are being made to allow for more flexibility with regards to gender neutrality, for now we are a little bit stuck with the system we have.
If you elect to go no further in customising their gender, then this initial binary choice will inform all areas of your Sim’s presentation and they will be, for all intents and purposes, treated as cisgender by the game.
While you can’t edit a child or toddler Sim’s gender in this level of detail, you can switch between the basic male/female default states by using the cas.fulleditmode cheat. Even without cheats you can change their pronouns and dress them in either fashion choice using the toggles on the outfit picker, allowing you to tell stories where younger Sims are questioning their identities (or just give them a nice haircut because really, who needs to gatekeep kids' hairstyles, come on?).
To customise a Sim’s sexual orientation, you need to click the same three dots under the male and female symbols in CAS that you use to customise their gender. You’ll notice that this has now been split into two further tabs, labelled Gender and Sexual Orientation. Tabbing over to the Sexual Orientation options will give you the following choices:
Romantic attraction is technically a new notion for Sims, in that they haven’t differentiated between romantic and sexual attraction in the past. By separating the two out, the idea is that you can create characters whose sexual and romantic attractions aren’t necessarily aligned. This is primarily intended to allow for the creation of properly asexual Sims for the first time in the franchise, which has been a consistent gap in representation up until this point.
Like gender customisation and pronoun options, you can elect not to engage with the custom sexual orientations feature in The Sims 4. But unlike with the other two, it’s less immediately obvious what the “default” sexual orientation actually is in The Sims series.
Interestingly, under the hood all Sims default to being what we might term aromantic bisexuals willing to experiment: they have no innate romantic attraction but are open to exploring romantically, and are interested in WooHoo/Mess Around with both men and women.
In gameplay terms, this basically means that they’ll happily engage in social interactions from the Romantic category with any Sim of an appropriate age group, as long as their mood and the context of the conversation make it appealing to them. Any gender preference they develop is a reaction to these behaviours over time — for example, a Sim successfully flirting with their male partner will gradually build up a preference for men (without affecting their feelings about women one way or another).
Sims also don’t really differentiate between sex and romance by default, rendering them technically aromantic by the game’s standards. However, the parallels with real-life aromanticism here aren’t direct, since they’ll still accept romantic interactions and even want to initiate them; they just begin with completely blank preferences in this regard.
So, if you don’t customise your Sims' sexual orientations, they’ll continue to behave the same way they always have: as latent pansexuals whose specific attractions are guided by the decisions you make for them in gameplay.
However, it’s a step forward, and the pronoun customisation feature itself is very easy-to-use. You can find it next to a Sim’s name in CAS, and it is available for all editable age groups (i.e. Toddler and up). Simply click “Change Pronouns” and you’ll be given the option to select He/Him, She/Her, or They/Them from a drop-down menu; or to enter your own choice of neopronouns, rolling pronouns, etc. using Custom Pronouns. Choosing the latter option will bring up a pop-up with text boxes where you can freely enter any pronouns you want, and a few examples to help you understand how to fit your chosen pronouns grammatically into a sentence.
If you don’t use this feature, your Sim’s pronouns will default to either He/Him or She/Her, whichever is associated with their underlying gender according to the game engine.
If you’re interested in customising your game as much as possible, be sure to check out our list ofThe Sims 4 cheatsto ensure you have access to all the tools you need for some deep-level tinkering. We also have a comprehensivebest Sims 4 DLCguide to help you decide which of the game’s many, many add ons you want to check out.
