Actually people who are wheelchair bound will usually live in house that are friendly for them, so they'll avoid stairs, inside or outside their home. Rabbitholes could be build without stairs or make a ramp using the terrain sculpting tool. Animations for day to day things like cooking or using the bathroom will be tricky but only if they want to make it so the sims can't move at all otherwise.

Killer plants and rapist aliens were played more for laughs than what disabilities and illness could ever be. Same for light food poisoning and the mummy curse, which are no where near as serious as the other diseases. They could also not easily make wheelchair accessible items. I believe the More Awesome Than You modder, J. M. Pescado (whose name I shamefully forgot until I looked up a barbeque that grills infants), explained that it would be an incredibly difficult task, if not impossible as everything would need to be changed. It's the same reason many games don't enable you to change heights in character creations.

As Zokugai also said, it's not wheelchairs that would raise the rating, it's the more "adult" content. Sims slowly wasting a way from a life threatening illness for half their adult lifestage isn't what many would consider "kid friendly".

And it would be difficult to slowly add things with each expansion pack and probably impossible to keep it under the radar. As it's own expansion pack, we return to the primary issue of advertising it - it would just be next to impossible to sell it to the fans.

I actually do want other diseases in. Not incredibly serious ones, but the same we had in Sims 2 that had the chance of killing a sim if untreated. Purely because I want more deaths for ghosts so my cemeteries and haunted houses look like rainbows. But anything actually serious and dramatic like disease or injury? That would just be too depressing for what has always been a more tongue-in-cheek and optimistic game.
The designers also seem to have a more cheerful and happy outlook for their pre-made sims, for example, poverty (though not the same as disabilities I'll still use it as an example). Nobody in the games are really poor. They try and claim to have some discrepancies in wealth in their worlds like Twinbrook but the families that are generally meant to be seen as living on the "wrong side of the tracks" still live in relative comfort, like the swamp family and their modern Eco-friendly house.
Like making friends, finding love, having a family, becoming wealthy, and reaching their dreams, the designers have always made it easy with little problems encountered. I just don't see them going for a more serious route (and if they did, actually doing it justice).

Okay okay HystericalParoxysm! I already agreed and said they won't because it heavily conflicts with their schedule. I don't see them as having ethical reasons against them, but they will not make wheelchairs.

Yes, I'm aware of that - but they would have to remesh the existing rabbit holes, change the lots that are only accessible via stairs, add elevators, etc., to a lot of things that are already there as well as make a ton of objects to make a disabled sim's home useful for them. In order to really integrate them with the rest of the game -and- do them properly would require a whole lot of work. Possible, sure, but not something I see them ever doing; there's not nearly the demand for it that would justify the time, effort, and money they'd spend making it work.

I don't think Ea has ethical reasons against any sort of disability or sickness, unless it conflicts with their schedule of course. Consider the fact that they made a play cane with its walk style named geriatric gait. Geriatric. Everything for EA Sims is done for money and playful curiosity during schedules.

Completely agree with pirate wolf and UltraRobbie. As someone who is disabled and housebound due to longterm illness, I play games to ESCAPE reality, not be faced with yet more disease, disability, etc. I play The Sims games to immerse myself for a while in a cheerful unrealistic world where everything's for laughs, not to depress myself!

Adding disease/disability related stuff to The Sims is not something I would expect/want/demand EA to do. Even if they did, there would surely be a significant portion of players who would complain about the way it was handled - eg, not sensitively enough, not understandingly enough, etc. I mean, can you imagine EA carrying off something like that with any sensitivity? LOL.

I don't think they would use stairs. Stair lifts would be more appropriate.

And, of course, the worse possible thought crossed my mind...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...30R1gsgGk#t=68s

I would take back every argument I previously stated in this thread and change my opinion if it meant we'd get an expansion pack with a new death involving a sim being thrown from a speeding stair-lift. With or without the aide of caroling ghouls.

Where's the fun in (sim) life without wacky things like this? They could add an insta-ouch animation (similar to this) to every wheelchair that crossed a bad spot, to save time after all.

As someone who is wheelchair-bound since basically forever, I agree with HP and Pirate. Even real life isn't wheelchair friendly, let alone a game where elevators only came about on Late Night...

First there'd be the houses that would be either totally ground-level, without porch stairs (otherwise they wouldn't be able to leave home) or with elevators to second/third levels. Then we'd have the activities sims do standing - cooking, gussing up, brushing teeth, cleaning, and basically everything else. Consider sims can't currently sit with babies and toddlers in their sofas or whatever. Putting babies in cribs, teaching them to walk... and the athletic skill would have to be severely changed as cardio exercises with tv/stereos aren't exactly wheelchair-like, and neither is running on treadmills and using the strength equipment. Riding? No way.

Also, even if we did a lot for wheelchair-bound people to live in, what of other lots? Every lot would have to be wheelchair friendly unless we want the disabled sims not to be able to visit their friends, ever. Or party. Or club. Or...

Yeah, you can see where I'm getting here. These are things I do have problem with *IRL* because many, many places aren't wheelchair-compatible. As HP said, with toddlers you can have an adult pick them up, but what would you do with a wheelchair-bound adult?

Fortunately or unfortunately, my selfsim will be able bodied for the foreseen future

(Though, I confess I got warm fuzzies thinking of my selfsim riding. I love horses and can't ride due to my disability, so, yeah.)

I wouldn't mind some light diseases like colds, which are even contagious. Maybe like they did in Sims Medieval and have some sort of imaginary illness that throws you a bad moodlet until you fix it, with some animations/symptoms. I wouldn't mind that, and maybe when they make seasons (hopefully they will) they'll add some seasonal illnesses. I mean, sims already cough and sneeze a little at random, so... but nothing life-threatening that isn't completely imaginary like mummy's curse.

Seconded.

What if a wheel chair was upgraded to a cast? Something like walking around in a cast, or even with crouches, wouldn't be as binding to the game as being with a wheelchair.

Well they have canes already, so that would work.

Thirded, especially WITH the caroling ghouls.

I would definitely like to see sign language. I'm not deaf, but I did have to learn sign language for a play I was in.

Blindness could conceivably happen with guide dogs and the cane, maybe. No debuffs for it's dark XD

For wheelchairs to work you'd essentially have to remake the entire game. Everything. Every animation that was between two sims, every movement animation, every animation that was one sim interacting with his environment (which added together equals basically every animation in the game), you'd have to create the disability-generating system from scratch if you wanted it to be anything but a mildly annoying moodlet, you'd have to pretty much make them a new neighborhood, with new rabbitholes and new non-rabbithole lots, and you'd have to deal with people complaining that Sunset Valley etc isn't wheelchair-compatible. The new neighborhood would have to be perfectly flat because wheelchairs aren't exactly designed for offroading. And you know the routing issues you hate so much in Pets, where horses routefail if you even look at them funny? Congrats, you just worsened that a few dozen times with a wheelchair. Good luck getting your sim into the bathroom without seeing a crossed-out feet thought bubble.

Not to mention the logic issues of it interacting with other expansion packs. How does a sim in a wheelchair shovel hay with a pitchfork to feed his horses? You'd have to basically re-release World Adventures, or listen to players complain their sim can't manage the steps in the Great Pyramid tomb. And how exactly do you handle vampires? Can people in wheelchairs turn into vampires? Do they suddenly gain the ability to walk if they do? What about a mummy, can you wind up with a mummy in a wheelchair -- with as slowly as mummies move, that might actually be an improvement in speed. And if your sim dies and becomes a ghost, do they float or roll?

Really, it's 1) an insane amount of inconvenience 2) that will cost them a ton of sales, for a product that 3) a ton of the players will not want. It'd be poor business sense for them to add wheelchairs, and adding blindness etc without adding wheelchairs will just make people complain that omg why didn't they add wheelchairs. It'd be actively looking for complaints. The only thing they could even remotely do is add diseases, like diabetes or something, as a negative moodlet. And that's something that could be added in a mod, so why should EA bother risking pissing people off?

Having wheelchairs and other disabilities would be too depression. No one would buy it.

If EA tried to turn it into comedy - to lighten it up -- you would have a lot of people complaining how EA is mocking the disabled.

Now, I would like to see a sickness moodlet. You take a hit on your happiness, and maybe throw up every two hours. We already have that with pregnancy and food poisoning. The difference is you would go to the hospital or see a doctor to get rid of it. Having a medical profession when there are no sick people seems rather silly. Why get a vaccination when there are no diseases?

Sim sign language? That's A LOT of animations. New animations. Would deaf Sims have to learn it first? And then other Sims would have to learn it to communicate with them? And would they be able to watch TV or read books? Well, I'd guess they'd need to add closed captioning to all the TV channels and braille books.

It's just too much work to add disabilities to the game for something that doesn't have much of a long-term payoff. Aside from the novelty of having "different-looking" Sims in the game, I don't see any gameplay aspects of this and with all the work that would have to go into it, it would just consume an entire EP. You'd pretty much need a whole new game for someone in a wheelchair since Sim mobility/ability is much more limited than that of real life people.

I would like to see some diseases in the game but original made-up diseases that have crazy symptoms like hallucinations, turning different colors, flatulence, etc. Or eye infections and they have to wear eye patches. I think it would be comical and entertaining but still provide a gameplay challenge in having to help your Sim maybe by finding a cure or balancing being sick with doing everyday things. Broken limbs would be okay but I feel like it would have many of the same problems as a wheelchair.

Because those are super awesome effective vaccines, of course. Look, they've prevented all disease in the entire city!

Way back in the TS1 days we had cc sims in wheelchairs. The ones I'm thinking of were basically an object cloned from the mirror. They were elderly sims, so I had them placed on the verandah and my sim would gain charisma points while talking to her grandparents. So for me a little imagination fulfilled my need for less than perfect sims. As people seem to have strong feelings about this issue it might be wise for EA to avoid it, though as someone else said some minor illnesses like they have in Medieval would be fine.
Also I'd like bloaty head. Anyone else remember Theme Hospital? That was such fun!

We had CC wheelchairs for Sims 2 and there's for sims 3.

But what happened with all of the other animations in the game? My guess is that a lot of them didn't work for wheelchairs.

Yeah, I was just thinking that the wheelchairs were probably just for decoration, or if they were actually made to work, then it must've interfered/clashed with other stuff around the lot like crazy.

Maybe it'd be a nice touch but we don't need it at all. Sims has always tried to give our little people *nice* lives. ...For the most part, anyway >_>

I'd adore if sims could get little temporary sicknesses like in sims 2, where they had to stay in bed with the cold for a few days. I thought it was so cute! I wish we still had that! Also the sims pregnancy morning sickness is pretty cute. I think both add a touch of realism without being too realistic. . I'm not a big fan of wheel chair use in the sims just because I realize like other people have said, they'd have to completely do the whole game and every add on. It would be a crazy amount of work and just not worth it in the end since the majority of the players just don't want it/care for it. It would be cute, if it wasn't so much work, though. Maybe a cast would be a nice, easier way of going about that, though? Especially in pets. Maybe if you tried to ride a horse you didn't have a high enough relationship with for too long/too often, it would freak out, buck you off, and you'd end up with a broken arm or something :P