In my Cultural Diversity class I have do a research paper based on race and ethnicity. I decided to see how race and ethnicity comes into play with the Sims (which is a bit risky to start playing during finals week!) To be clear, I am not here to judge anyone on their views and frown upon how they play. Just wanted to do some research! I'll be honest to say that I know my towns have never been that diverse, and I believe it only has to do with human nature. But it's something I'm going to keep in mind with how I play in the future.

If I could get as many Sim players to answer this survey it would be greatly appreciated
(All answers are anonymous!)

Click here to do the survey

Feel free to share your views on this topic and how it is that you play. I'm curious. Just please avoid getting too heated!

errr...I can't help but notice the absence of your views on the subject. Seeing as how it's your topic, why not start off by giving your opinions.

Could be interesting academic discourse if it permeates the political correctness social barrier...

I'm impressed. What a great way to have an excuse to play the Sims during finals week.

The questionnaire didn't really fit my playing style. Since I play legacy, I may start with a sim of my own race, but the family ends up whoever random people generated by my game. They are usually very diverse. I use Twallan's mod to create my townies from seed populations I create from sims on this very site. I switch them out every few months, but I try to keep a general mix that will result in an ethnically diverse population. Then my sims I make as a main family go out and marry those sims.

My sims are half the time not really any race medium skin tone non specific features my current main sim looks a bit middle eastern but not from intent I never think I'm gonna make white sim or an asian sim or anything else. I just make them look they way that fits there character some times that mean specific race usually not though.

I usually start my sims off with my race and just play. But to be honest, the only time I get into the whole racial aspect of it, is when I'm playing a story. Then I try to create an environment that goes with that particular sim. As for my game, it's very diverse, but not because I intentionally made it like that. Its through twallan's sp and genetics. Which is great, because it creates sims that I don't have the creative skills to make on my own. I also add sims from here and other independent creator sites to add even more different bone structures to the gene pool.

I use Twallen's suite to set immigration to random EA generation and let the puddings propagate as the RNG decides.

Done! I feel kind of racist now, as I often play as a white Sim. I'm not racist at all, can I just say. I think why I do this is because we enjoy projecting ourselves into the game, and so create the character that relates mostly to us; it's hard feel like a blond half-asian that works as a military sergeant because, well, I don't really relate to it, and I guess that destroys the escapism I look for. But let me say, I am not racist; I will play as other races, and I do create other races... Sometimes...

OH GOD I'M A RACIST

But seriously, I'm not racist, and will play as other races and don't feel against playing a Sim that is non-white at all; my town has different races, of multiple cultures. Also, I don't think my thing applies to everyone else playing the Sims (using the selected character as escapism), so maybe I'm alone on that one. Please don't tell me I'm alone on that one, I want to be perceived as non-racist.

Sims don't really have races

Anyway, I usually have light-skinned sims, and medium tan. It's just a preference.

People are naturally drawn towards people who look like them. It's not just limited to race -- for instance, I have brown hair and blue eyes, and therefore tend to picture people I know but don't know the appearance of as brunette with blue eyes. It's just a matter of what your mind has set as the "default" appearance it pictures people as.

I have always problems with the word "race", I don't like it. Because we are all one race. Human race. The rest is irrelevant for me.

I'm using Twallans Mods too for populating my worlds and let the random sims be what they are.

What does the skin color I used for my Sims have anything to do with race?

Wel, I'll be honest, most of my sims are white, have quite light hair, and blue, green, or hazel eyes. Maybe it is because i'm blonde with hazel eyes, and I, too "projuct myself on my sims". Having most of my sims white just adds realism to me. However, to add even more realism, and diversity, I add sims of other races. However, in this case, I invent some dramatic background stories for them, like my mid-eastern female sim, the last character I made in game. Her bio states that she was treated like a slave by her own father, and was prepared to getting married to a men she was afraid of, and then, she decided to take a risk and escape, and moved into my town to start here from scratch, and now she's learning skills, meets new people, works on her career, and learns to be a free, independednt person she never was before. Or my black sim who started as a criminal, but wants to suceed in sports, and then he abandoned his criminal career and started living a honest life, will he even find his place in this city? If I make a non-white sim, I always make also a reason why s/he migrated to my city, and the stories are usually sad, or even tragic ones, but I always make my poor non-white sims live their dreams and get very successful, otherwise I'd feel a bad, bad racisitc person, who discriminates non-white sims
Ah, and I sometimes create smoking hot mixed girls (because some mixed girls ARE hot IRL, I somewhy like them, though I don't find mixed guys that attractive)

Well, my Sims tend to be green, blue, red and sometimes scaly. They have usually big eyes that are either black or another solid color or sometimes they have cat eyes. They vary in height and width and most have pointy ears...

They don't discriminate against the townies that look more like the people we see here on Earth.

I thought about why I like playing the alien races and came to the conclusion that it is fun to be able to mix and match elements of different cultures without having to worry about it being 'correct'. My daughter hates them and calls then creepy, mainly because of the eyes.

Make what you will of it.

Edit: Here is a snaphot of students going to school in my Strangetown game.

I mostly play pre-mades, so you can blame EA for any discrimination you see. When I do add a Sim, it's usually one with an alien skin as I have downloaded so many nice colorful skins that don't get used much. Besides, I like the Sims game as a whole to be Vibrant as far as colors go.

I have to make all my families since I made my world in CAW, and it's populated very diversely. I've got about.. 2 black families, 2 asian families, 2 white families, and 3 interracial families. I also have a lot of individual sims that are Hispanic, Asian, black, white, etc. I live in a very multicultural city so I try to reflect that in my game.

This is an interesting topic! I like the fact that there are no races, sexual labels, gender stigmas and so on in the sim world... unless your sim happens to flirt with a vampire in their own home, as the whole town will shun them for that.

I can honestly say that I create and play sims of all possible real life (and not-so-real-life) races. I just think people are fascinating, no matter what label their looks may fall in! All the labeling and dividing of people in the real world makes me often very frustrated, so having a sim world where there is none of that is therapeutic.



Yes, people do feel drawn to people who seemingly seem to share same visible things with them (hair color, hair length, shoes, it can be whatever). It seems to give a subconscious feeling that we know that person, as we as humans want to relate and to belong. But that's not really too prominent pattern in life for all people, it varies A LOT. I've noticed that I look more at the body language and gestures than looks... there is a lot of truth to the 'default' appearance mindset, but that can change drastically through lifetime (or for some, not at all).

I'm similar. I start off with three or four families. Usually at least one black and two white. Sometimes mixed families.

I try to vary them up so that there are single parents and at least one household with a grandparent. I do not create Asians or Latino families - mostly because I can't create Asian facial features and am very lazy about creating. I roll the dice until I find a face I like, then minutely alter it. Looks have nothing to do with personalities (clothes do - sometimes). Other sims move in. Then they marry whoever is the right age/has the right traits, regardless of skintone. I do sometimes try to match on skintone or hair color, if I have a lack of redheads or dark skintones in my neighborhood.

Seriously though, my sims have no distinct culture or decoration or clothing style by race. They are not different races/ethnicities - just sims with different skintones and haircolors.

Are you only looking for North American responses to the survey? I notice a distinct lack of Scandinavians, Indians, Middle Eastern races, oriental races, black Africans, white Africans, eastern Europeans, southern Europeans, Australian Aborigines...

I have always wondered if the skin color of new townie sims the game generates is influenced by the skin color of the majority of CAS sims. for example, as a white player, I tend to make lightskinned sims, because I tend to base them on family members when in CAS.( As I play however, I let them pair up with whatever townie happens to strike their fancy as I play with very high free will on) I have noticed that there are not very many dark skinned game generated sims in my towns. Do the games of people who make more darker skinned sims in CAS has more game generated darker skinned townies?.

ksstrek - In a way, yes. Depending on how your townie generation is handled by whatever story progression you use, the townies will reflect what you have in your bins and towns. This is why I am careful with seeding and making sure it's diverse. It's not because I want a politically correct town, but because I had some bad experiences with sims all looking the same in my towns.

What happened is that I didn't realize in TS3 for a while that the sims you made got saved, so whenever I started a new town, I made a new sim. I kept making this same sim over and over and over. And I also hid all the EA sims in my bin, not knowing that that didn't just hide them from my eyes, it also excluded them from the townie generator when it was making townies from the bin. So except for a few randomly generated sims, all of my town looked like the sim I was playing. I thought it was an EA glitch, until I started lurking around on various sites to see how the townies were made.

The reason I separate my families by "race" (actually, my families are just pale/medium/dark skin color and I also have an asian bin because so many people on this site make asian looking sims and I also have a "freak" catagory if I want odd color or very odd feature sims) The reason I separate them is so that if my town starts looking too uniform, I can add a seed family of whatever I think would spice up the town. So if there are too many light skinned townies, I can just add some dark skinned seed families and my town will start having some dark skinned sims show up. I even have families where everyone may have different skin tones, but they have a specific hair color in case I think there are too many people with the same hair color.

I am probably the most anal about this, but I think of my town as a character as much as my sims families. So I do what I can to keep my town interesting and diverse. I could probably play a TS2 style Uglacy, because I have some really wild looking sims that show up now and then.

I'm more like Garambola. I play fairies, aliens, demons, and other non-human sims. Even in Sims 1, my sims were not human. (And that took a bit of work/imagination until MM came out.)

As far as I am concerned, my "race" is human. I just happen to be the sort of beige-ish pink which for some odd reason gets called "white." Two of my best friends are the very dark brown which gets called black. (I can -sort of- understand calling them black, but I have never figured out how I can be called white. )

See that's the thing, no one is truly black or white. I have never seen some one that looks the color of black such as coal or white such as snow for example. But I do see everyone as different shades and tones.

Most of my sims are white or ambiguously brown/mixed race, and I have a small thing for making mixed-race couples in game. Let's face it, I'm white and a good chunk of my sims reflect that. Though there's a lot of fun in creating a Vietnamese family or Pakistani family and trying to get them looking right.

My neighborhoods are very diverse. I can't see myself just playing my race, it would be very boring just to see one race or color roaming around. I'm very opened to all races and cultures.