Sims YouTuber LilSimsie regularly renovates and makes houses for what she calls her Simsie Save, a Sims 4 save file she provides to fans so that they can play with her houses and Sims. This time, she made a notable revision to the bathrooms in the game: they’re now all all gender neutral.
People who participate in The Sims fandom often make “starter” save files to share with other players, who can then make changes to houses and add new Sims. In a video about the updated save file that she has built for her fans, Simsie said that usually she just adds new houses and makes changes to the community lots, which are businesses frequented by all the Sims in a given game.
For this update, she also renovated the houses in Del Sol Valley, because she really disliked them all. Making new houses and new Sims en masse is a big enough project, so going through every lot and implementing even more changes made the project even more arduous. Throughout her video announcing her updated Simsie Save, she jokingly referred to it as her “life’s work.”
After Simsie gushed about all the changes to Del Sol Valley and the hundreds of Sims she has made, she made note of a small but important difference that she added. Some of the community lots use gendered bathroom doors. Simsie replaced all of them with gender-neutral doors.
In such a huge project, this may seem like a small change. But, as Simsie said in her video, those bathroom doors had super annoying effects on gameplay. “When you have the walls cut away, you can’t see which one’s which,” she said. “Then you go, ‘Oh, I’m gonna use this toilet,’ and your Sim’s like, “Oh no, I can’t use it!’”
Technically, every bathroom in The Sims 4 is gender neutral by default. There aren’t even any urinals in the game. But the game also provides doors that indicate what gender of Sim is supposed to go into each bathroom, and the Sims are programmed to obey those markings.
If you make a room and put a door on it that has a little figure of a man on it, a female Sim won’t go in it, and vice versa.
Simsie had another reason for making the change, she said: “It’s also a really easy way to make something more accessible and to make something more inclusive.” There aren’t a lot of gendered bathrooms in The Sims 4, but after the game has changed some options in Create-A-Sim to allow players to individually select which Sims can get pregnant or pee standing up, as well as allowing all Sims to wear all clothing, it’s a worthy change to make.
In the process of making the change to her save file, Simsie also noticed something else annoying about those gendered bathroom doors. There’s only one bathroom door design that’s gender neutral, and unfortunately, as Simsie says, it “is ugly.”
There are two other gendered bathroom doors that have more colour options, but those other colour options aren’t available for the gender neutral door. “I just don’t understand why they’re not all the same door,” Simsie says.
Sure, every door can be a bathroom door if you believe, but if the game is going to provide specifically gendered doors, why only have one design for a bathroom door that can be used by all Sims?
In New York, where I live, I very rarely encounter gendered bathrooms in public places anymore. It’s not like that across the world, but LilSimsie’s starter save has made the world of The Sims 4 a bit closer to the world as I actually experience it. I’m excited to play her starter file, partially because I love her builds and I want to study them, but also because she made the game just a tiny bit more inclusive, and also way less annoying to play.
Comments
26 responses to “Sims YouTuber Makes All The Game’s Bathrooms Gender Neutral”
Sigh… I am suprised someone hasn’t just removed the gender function completely to be honest, since apparently it’s such a problem.
And this is “news worthy” because?
because it is interesting, the way some people choose to mod and change things as if the challenge of doing it, and the act of doing it alone entertains them.
Or can you only respect when the thing they are doingm because it benefits or interests you? seriously, it is not hard to respect the work someone does even if you dont see the point.
Imagine the post “Modder makes all bathrooms male only in SIMS 4”.
Discuss.
I feel like this exact comment shows up on every post Gita makes about The Sims… here are some reasons these articles get posted:
It’s a popular game. People like reading about it (you even clicked on this article!) and Kotaku posts plenty of things that aren’t strictly “news.”
in short – Its game related, and people might not have had this thought to break away from the arbitrary rules. this article is about a person that is improving the game, so not only newsworthy.. appropriate too
I can kind of understand it for a game mod (something fun and interesting to do) but in real life it’s a nonstarter, way too many creeps out there and if all toilets were like disabled ones (single occupant) it would take up too much space.
I have heard people sugest that someone who can’t use a gendered toilet for any reason use the disabled one, but that lead to a whole can of worms about them not being disabled and shit got real.
I’m also not sure why it was so annoying to play with gendered toilets in the first place it’s a bit nitpicky, I mean there are probably a lot of people in wheelchairs that would like to be included and would like to see disabled toilets represented in the game.
I think at some point you just have to accept and play a game as is, or don’t, it’s never going to be ideal for each and every individual.
As stated in the article, the gendered toilets were annoying simply as a function of gameplay. With walls down (which is really the only way you can see what’s going on with your sims) you can’t see the gender sign. If you tell your sim to go to the wrong toilet, they’ll get stuck at the door and you’ll have to tell them to use another one. If you’ve queued up a bunch of actions, you’ll have to cancel them all and queue them all up again.
It really only happens once though I’ve played a lot of Sims and I only made the mistake one time from then on I was fine I remembered which toilet was which and only in a couple of places is it an issue.
I know there are a lot of articles from Gita about the Sims and this is just one more in the mix, but it seems very bottom of the barrel complaint about the gameplay when there is so much more that makes it frustrating.
“accept and play a game as is” is pretty odd statement, considering the game is based around creating a society however you want.
Is it really that big a deal? I’ve stayed at various university accommodation for conferences where there are shared unisex toilets/showers. It’s not that big a deal for men to take a piss in a stall and everyone use the same sinks to wash their hands. Most people are just there to do their business and leave: there’s not much to perve on.
Unfortunately there are people out there that don’t share your view and will take advantage of it, at the moment if I see some dude walk into the female toilets I know he has bad intentions
Given the current climate it would be a lot of trouble all round most people generally do the right thing but the small number that wouldn’t would put a bad name on the rest.
I think these small percentage of people will exist (unfortunately) regardless of whether we have gender neutral toilets or not. They have way before it became a thing. I have worked at bars that have gender neutral toilets and ones that don’t and either way it made no difference. I don’t see what the big deal is for having gender neutral toilets are. Just like at home. Rather those then the gross urinals I’ve seen in most.
Just from my experience I would rather have them gendered just for convince seeing the amount of women lining up or going in pairs when I just want to piss, the urinal might be gross but it’s convenient.
I also think the bigger obstacle would be women feeling uncomfortable themselves because of the small number of creeps who will do there creepy shit one way or another
But I see the same thing with guys going to the toilet together these days. Half the time going in to share some lines or going in to pee together. Also the places I’ve been in that have neutral toilets are just heaps of stalls that don’t really have enough space for pairs to occupy.
Most of the people I see that agree with gender-neutral toilets are women. This video above is one. Your point is somewhat correct with creeps but they are going to creep regardless and not nessicarly in a toilet area. Would love one of our female commenters to weigh in on the personal experiences/opinions?
urine is sterile you know the urinals probably aren’t as dirty as the rest of the toilet area maybe they smell worse but that is because of the apes in this world who don’t flush.
If only it was just urine that usually goes in urinals. I hate it when people don’t flush but have found that at least half of urinals in venues don’t have a flush feature or it is disabled. Some in part changed over to the water saving urinals which I’ve found is a good idea in theory but tend to not work very well in practice.
Yeah, I used to clean the toilets at my first job and the women’s toilets were disgusting and smelled a lot worse, guys toilets mainly smelled like piss but we’re usually clean.
Had to unclog the women’s toilets a few to many times I printed a sign that said “Do not flush sanitary products”, didn’t help.
Not trying to shame women for a biological process out of there control just pointing out it was fucked having to unclog the toilet and fish them out.
Yeah I have been a cleaner for a bar and have found the same thing. Mostly just generally messier with toilet paper everywhere and makeup stuff. As for the sanitary products I have had the same but it was mostly due in part to the Pink bins not being regularly maintained on none installed.
That’s a completely different scenario though. There is a big difference between a man walking into a female-only space unannounced, and having a toilet where all occupants know in advance that people of all genders may walk in.
I know, that’s the point if the toilets were non-gendered than you have no way of recognising the creeps, that’s mainly what I’ve heard people say that oppose it and that I kind of believe to be true.
I know like I already said that creeps are going to creep no matter what but at least it makes it harder for them to do so.
My main objection is not wanting to line up like women do at some places (which is one of the supporting arguments) just to take a piss at a urinal.
Stalls are inefficient. Urinals are quicker. Where do you think the jokes about women quing half a kilometer for the toilet come from.
Weird flex, but OK.
Just laughing at how *this* is by far the most commented on article of the day.
It’s been a good thread, though. Wouldn’t be surprised if most people didn’t know about the bug.