Grade:

Transfiguring Adoption awarded this game 3 Hoots out of 5 based on how useful it will be for a foster/adoptive family. [Learn more about our Hoot grading system here]

Game Info:

• Rating: T-Teen (Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence), Pegi12
• Genre: Life Simulation
• Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
• Studio: Maxis

From the Cover of The Sims by Maxis:

You create. You control. You Rule. Control the mind, body, and heart of Smarter Sims with unique personalities full of emotions. Create their stories and play with life like never before in The Sims 4.

Transfiguring Adoption’s Overview:

The Sims is a life simulation game where you can create unique Sims by building their appearances, clothing, personalities, skills, and more. Construct a home with innovative features, new design options, and furnishings. Finally, guide, experience, and shape their lives or create havoc for all those around.

The target age range for this game per the ESRB rating is T – Teen. Younger children may be attracted to the game due to the colorful, playful art style and easy game play mechanics, but the game does contain crude humor, sexual themes, and cartoon violence that may not be suitable for younger children.

What I Thought:

I have always enjoyed the Sims franchise. Create a Sim from scratch or use a pre-made Sim and then experience and shape their lives. Buy a lot and build a home for them or buy a pre-made layout and upgrade it or make changes how you see fit. Interact with other Sims around to build relationships or create mischief. The expansion, stuff, and game packs also add additional content, clothing, furnishings, and more though it can be quite expensive to get them all.  

** Spoilers Could Be Ahead **

How Is This Relevant To Adoption & Foster Care?

While the game is not directly related to foster care or adoption, The Sims franchise does allow the player to adopt babies, children, and even pets. Once adopted, they are treated as full family members giving you control to help shape their lives. Caregivers can give special attention to positive interactions between characters, forming good relationships with both family members and those in the community, and connecting feelings to behavior. The game is popular among children and adults and is among one of the best selling video games of all time. There can be many benefits to playing the game like reading skills, math skills, problem solving skills, encouraging creativity, and time management.

Discussion Points:

• Positive Interactions Between Characters/Forming Good Relationships and Behaviors
  In The Sims you can interact with people and pets. One of your Sims needs or motives includes a social need. By talking to other Sims, your Sim can increase their social need bar as well as being able to increase or decrease your relationship with the other Sims. Children who have endured trauma may struggle to have positive interactions and form good relationships with people due to mistrust from past experiences. Caregivers can encourage children to form good relationships between their Sims within their household as well as friends, love interests, and more by talking to them, finding out their interests, and sharing positive experiences.
• Connecting Feelings to Behavior
  Sometimes children who have endured trauma may not understand or be able to connect feelings to behavior. Sometimes if you neglect your Sim or one of their needs, they could become sad or mad just like in real life. They may not listen to your commands and try to do something instead to address one of their needs. Children may feel the need to punish their Sims just because they can or maybe because they are taking their feelings in real life out within the game. Caregivers should watch how children interact with their Sims. If you see them doing something to punish a Sim (like not allowing them access to a bathroom facility causing them to have an accident), you may need to speak with the child as to why they are doing those things and what their feelings are behind it.
• Change/Feelings of Abandonment/Emotional Feelings/Death
  The Sims is a life simulation game and has the potential to reflect events from a player’s life. Things like fighting, marriage, birth, adoption, divorce or death can occur. Sims can get hurt and die if they are neglected. Children can grow up, people can move out of households, and elders can die from old age. Besides old age, Sims can die in many ways – fire, drowning, neglect, and more. However, the developers have tried to keep death on the lighter side – deaths are generally cartoony and sometimes you can bring someone back to life, baby Sims cannot die, and ageing can be turned off so Sims won’t die due to ageing. Sims can turn into ghosts after they die. Some lots have pre-made ghosts and appear transparent with different color variants. Sims can interact with ghosts like normal Sims and even ask them to move into the household with a high enough relationship.
• Life Skills/Time Management
  Your Sims have basic motives or needs like hunger, bladder, energy, social, hygiene, and fun. The goal is to keep each of these needs up by figuring out what your Sim needs. If your Sims hygiene is low for example, they may need to take a shower or bath. If you let it get too low, they could get a green cloud that will emanate from the Sim and other Sims may react negatively to the smell. Over time, your Sim’s needs will lessen and will need to be replenished. You can also equate this to real life. When you’re hungry, you want to eat. The same could be said for your Sim.  Younger children may need help understanding what they need in order to satisfy the needs of their Sim and help keep them happy. Along with the life skills you can learn from this game, The Sims features a game clock where time passes within the world. Children may need help understanding what time it is within the game and what things they can do during that time. For example, certain shops or downtown areas may not be open later in the evening. Your job or school schedule could be at a certain time and if you miss going to work you could be fired.

Cautionary Points:

• Cartoon Violence
  Violence is mild and can generally be seen as comedic or slapstick. Two Sims can get into a fight and slap each other before they jump into a large cloud to simulate fighting. Within the cloud you can sometimes see them slapping at each other or someone in a headlock. While not specifically designed to be a violent game, players can do things that can kill a Sim like taking away a ladder from a pool so the Sims can’t leave, eventually killing the Sim. It is possible for a Sim who has died to come back as a ghost and haunt the area.
• Profanity
  Sims can argue, yell, and insult each other although the player can’t tell what exactly they are saying since they speak in Simlish. In one of the expansion packs (Sims 4 Parenthood), there is an action to “shout forbidden words” which is like swearing. Again you are not able to understand what they are saying, but this action will lower the “manners” character value. Sims with the tense or angry emotion are also more likely to use this interaction autonomously. Players will be able to tell emotions based on facial expressions and mannerisms of the Sims during the game.
• Use of Alcohol
  In some of the expansion packs you can go to bars and consume enough bar beverages (bar water, mineral water, creme-cola, etc.) to receive the “juice enthusiast” quirk which can provide negative buffs and have your Sim wanting to continue to drink beverages similar to alcohol addiction. In other expansion packs the Sims may produce beverages using the juice fizzing machine or Sims can purchase a home bar and learn the mixology skill. Sims can get dazed (which is like being drunk) by drinking too many drinks and coffee. In the expansion pack Discover University, the Sims can play “juice pong” which is like beer pong and they have juice kegs in which Sims can do a keg stand.
• Use of Tobacco/Drugs
  In one of the expansion packs Sims can smoke the water pipe which will emit water bubbles. Misusing the item can make the Sim dazed.
• Sexual Themes/ Possible Inappropriate Content
  Sims can wear clothing that could be considered inappropriate or revealing in real life like swimwear, dresses, shorts, and underwear. The show of some cleavage can be seen when wearing swimwear and other certain clothes. When Sims shower, use the toilet, and other habits that would need them to be naked, their parts are pixelated out completely. Sims are able to flirt and kiss other Sims. They can also do an action called “WooHoo”. When Sims “WooHoo” they jump under the covers in a bed, see movement under the covers, heart animations can pop out, and sometimes sounds like giggles or wolf whistles can be heard. Afterwards the Sims are seen in their underwear. Sims can marry and have children regardless of the Sims’ gender. Sims can “try for baby” and get pregnant. Eventually they will go into labor (childbirth is not shown) and a baby will appear. This game also allows specific custom gender settings. This allows players to create gender non-conforming characters and pick traits like “become pregnant”, “get others pregnant”, or “neither” regardless of gender. Sims have the option to adopt by calling an agency. When you call and you choose “adopt a child” a panel will appear with various babies, toddlers, or children your Sim can adopt. Only one child can be adopted at a time and costs 1,000 simoleons. In some expansion packs, aliens, vampires, mermaids, spellcasters, and servos (robots) are introduced. Some content may be inappropriate for younger teens and children.
• Consumerism
  Consumer themes run throughout the franchise. Players are encouraged to earn money and spend it on a variety of items, food, home renovations to make the Sims life better and to feel happier. The expansion and add-on packs can encourage players to spend real-world money to enhance their experience by providing additional gameplay, items, and more.
• Game Addiction
  Like many games and other things, The Sims 4 can become addictive. Players can often play for hours or look up videos when not playing. Children that have endured trauma may use the game as a means of escape to make them feel safe or happy. Oftentimes children don’t understand limitations because why wouldn’t someone want to feel happy or safe all the time? They may start to crave the familiarity of the game and the way it makes them feel. You may need to monitor and limit the amount of time your child plays. Having a discussion with them on why the game makes them happy or what from the game makes them feel safe may help the caregiver understand what they can do in real life to help the child. 
• Online Connectivity 
  The Sims4 can be played on the PC, Xbox One, and PS4. There is little risk for contact with friends or strangers while playing this game. The game is a single player experience and only utilizes online capabilities for activating the game, and to get access to additional content. The platforms in which you use to play the game however do have online features and may have chat options. You may need to monitor your child on these platforms to ensure they are not adding people to their friends list that they don’t know as once they are friends, a stranger could message the child with inappropriate dialogue or try to get information from them. Caregivers should make sure to check their children’s friends list to understand who is on there and if the child knows them in real life.
• Cyber Bullying Risk
  Again, while playing the game there should be little to no risk for your child to be cyber bullied. The platforms in which you use to play the game however do have online features and may have chat options. You may need to monitor your child on these platforms to ensure they are not interacting with people who can possibly cause them harm as someone could message the child with inappropriate dialogue which could include trying to intimidate or threaten or harass the child. Caregivers should speak to their children about cyber bullying and to tell you if they are receiving messages that make them uncomfortable.

About the Author: Keri Barone

Keri lives in Orlando, FL with her husband. She is passionate about children and has been helping/taking care of them since she was a little girl. Keri comes from a family of 5 brothers and sisters including an adopted brother. Her mother has a passion for Genealogy and has done adoptee research helping people find loved ones. Having 10 nieces and nephews, Keri often researches information on TV shows, movies, and games to see if appropriate for their ages. Keri then became interested in writing reviews to help other adults find suitable content for their children, especially those who may have triggers due to trauma they have experienced. When Keri isn’t working, you can find her playing video games, reading, watching movies, and looking for pieces to grow her Harry Potter collection.

**Transfiguring Adoption is a nonprofit organization seeking to nurture growth in foster and adoptive families by giving a HOOT about their families. Transfiguring Adoption does not intend for its reviewers nor its review to be professional, medical or legal advice. These reviews and discussion guides are intended to help parents to better be able to connect and understand their children who come from traumatic backgrounds.