Each edition of the video game The Sims embodies a simulation of the real world allowing for the player to go through quotidian experiences, yet particular realities are denied since the game is rooted in American suburban experiences. The creator’s of The Sims refrained from mimicking every corner of real life such as the intolerance of individuals based on their positionalities, including racial identities. Regardless of their intention to forgo the marginality faced by people of colour, race intrinsically still presents itself in The Sims.
The Sims 4 will be the main focus of inquiry in this essay since it is the most recent edition available to players. There are facets of The Sims 4 that convey that the history of racism can not be absolved in the game, especially when the United States (a country not only built on colonization and enslaved labour but still profiting from it) is at the basis of inspiration. One of the default ‘worlds’ (or towns), Willow Creek, takes its design after New Orleans (Jovanna, 2022).
Some of the architectural outputs are even intended to be traces of where aristocrats formerly lived amid plantages (Jovanna, 2022), which is indexed for plantations (hence slavery). Another facet where race is manifested into the game is through a black t-shirt with the “fight the power” fist in the center with the colours of the Republic of Congo flag, which can be fashioned onto your sim during the ‘create a sim’ (CAS) mode.
Regardless of these indicators of anti-Black racism (the shirt representing a response to anti-Black racism, and the plantations being an index of it), the conspicuous erasure of Black identity still ranges through different details. Whether that be from the icons for facial features (which all are all eurocentric) to the geographical landscape.
Even if racism can not exist from one sim to another based on the game’s design, ‘invisible’ racism from the game designers has bled into the skeleton of the game. The Sims 4 has inadvertently set whiteness as the default, since, in order to achieve geographical and corporeal diversity, additional labour must be sought. Players may create racial diversity through custom content or expansion packs. If these additional steps are needed to create diversity, is it possible to achieve any semblance of Blackness in The Sims 4 default milieu without custom content and expansion packs? There is one interesting avenue that could potentially add bona fide diversity to the constraints of the default game: the music.
The sims radio has always been an amusing feature of the game, and not just for the sims. The radio often presents real songs from real musicians re-created with “Simlish” (a made-up language the sims speak).While immersed in the video game, a recognizable song may start playing, entertaining both you and your sim. This aspect from the creators of the game helps generate a humorous parallel between our world and theirs. If the interior/exterior of a building is not already decorated with a sound system, the player may purchase one from the “build-mode”.
The radio features fifteen different genres which the player or their sim may choose to play based on their own likes and dislikes. These genres range from “romance” to “winter holiday”, with other less specific genres such as “retro” and “pop”. Black musicians make up virtually none of the songs used amongst the different genres, except for in the hip-hop genre which exclusively features Black artists with the exception of one member of the musical group RDGLDGRN.
The video game otherwise presents a feasible list of songs and artists in the settings of the game. The featured songs in the hip-hop category are Block List by Rico Nasty, BMO by Ari Lennox, Dumbstruck by Ceraadi, Good Life by RDGLDGRN and Daniela, Litest by Supreme Madness and Big Moe by Beau Young Prince.
Even with the constraints of whiteness, not just through the digital corporeality but through the white landscape as well, the Black musicians are able to transform the parameters of the space through their songs on the sims radio. Architecture is a medium that is material and concrete, whereas music is something mutable and fluid, allowing it to not only fill spaces, but flow beyond it. When combining these two disparate forms, they simultaneously have the power to transform one another through the process of symbiosis. Michelle M. Morimoto posits that although the two forms, architecture and music, are distinct they are both expositions of human’s capability to create forms (Morimoto, 2). Additionally, the two disciplines are constantly intersecting with one another combining sound and structure, thus transcending the limits that each contains.
Although Miromoto’s thesis discusses lived-in spaces, how does the conversation change when the confines are moved to a digital arena and the players’ exist there virtually? Although not instantaneously conspicuous in how the music transforms the digital space, there are factors that metamorphose the interior, which is something the genre of hip-hop has a fervent history in.
A local bar in Willow Creek called “The Blue Velvet”, is conspicuous in its relation to Blackness, which is more coded rather than a literal presentation of it.
This feature of a “jazz bar” is logical, given the essence of New Orleans in Willow Creek, a place with a significant present day standing and history with jazz (Kaslow, 33). At the entrance of The Blue Velvet, the view for the sim and player are approximately five tables with chairs. The blue walls seem to be indicative of the name, which are adorned with various artworks that the player becomes familiarized with as they navigate along the interior. Objectively, they are all paintings of musical scenes. Left of the entry point is a gold-framed closeup of piano keys situated right above the bar’s fireplace. Moving 90 degrees left from this point, the player will see another painting with two basses and a drum foregrounding piano keys. Left from this point reveals a painting of a saxophone foregrounded on an expressionist purple background. Once the player moves 90 degrees more to the left, they may approach the left hall where the two final paintings of the first story sit. The third is a vertical painting of a Black silhouette playing the bass with two sets of two-eighth notes positioned above. A purple colour follows the musical notes foregrounding a pink background. The final artwork has a nighttime city scene seen through the skyscrapers with three cats that play instruments. The black cat on the fence in the background plays the bass, the blue cat in front of it plays the saxophone, and the orange cat in the foreground plays the drums. When the player moves upstairs to the second story, the rest of the jazz paintings follow the theme of black silhouettes playing instruments such as pianos, saxophones and basses.
From the upstairs view the player can still see the radio and other downstairs paintings. None of these paintings on the walls explicitly depicts a Black body. Even though the silhouettes are illustrated in black, the only jazz painting with an illuminated body is white. The artworks present Black coded aesthetics in the interior without actually representing the Black body.
Although Black aesthetics are codified into The Sims 4 milieu, they appear to be appropriated into the game to fit the ‘moody’ aesthetic of Jazz bars without acknowledging Black people’s salience in the creation of New Orleans. The Black coded visuals are not porous in creating actual Blackness since the concern does not seem to be providing a diverse or authenticized environment for the players, rather, it continues a tradition of Black aesthetics being used when convenient. Transitioning into the non-visual makeup of the space, the default radio station in The Blue Velvet is blues, a Black musical genre that has been foundational for many artists and genres. Unfortunately the genre is made up of non-Black artists, showing how blue-eyed blues further whitewashes the already lackluster space. Since blues is the only music genre that plays from the default speaker in The Blue Velvet, there is an option to change the station by entering build mode, destroying the speaker, and purchasing a new one. The singular option to play blue-eyed blues in the Black coded space, demonstrates the appropriation of Black culture into the game for aesthetics without creating a real Black space. The newly purchased radio provides full autonomy for the player to choose which genre they would desire to hear, such as hip-hop. As mentioned before, the transformation of environment by music is not conspicuous in its altering of space, it transforms it by allowing Black voices to fill within the confines as an index of Black bodies. This allows for the reclamation of space, even if the goal from the hip-hop musicians was not intended for this. The Black music does not solely index bodies, but establishes formation into space. This ‘Black’ form is conjured into the space through hip-hop’s formulative ingredients in synchronicity with the musician’s voices. By no means does this rectify the situation in the slightest, but instead offers a reading into how visual and audial intersections can inadvertently produce meaning.
It was noted during the 1980s the geographical proximity of hip-hop’s audience had extended to white suburbia (Johnson II, 1), representing the pre-established relationship of altering space through hip-hop. This has only expanded since, hence rap becoming one of the most mainstream genres among youth culture. The hip-hop genre has already been foundational in its transformative abilities of spatial confines, one of these examples being through the lyricism. Murray Forman in his journal article “‘Represent’: race, space and place in rap music”, details how the lyrics in hip-hop not only use space as a basis in their construction but also play a substantial role in how they confront the confines (Murray, 67). It is important to note that this feature is not present in the hip-hop of The Sims 4, since the covers are performed in Simlish (therefore the lyricism is gone). The transformation of space by music does not happen through lyricism, but rather through its threshold between a fictional simulation and reality.
The Sims 4 arena remains as its own disparate space, already distanced from our tangible world, which is why the music’s transformative ability becomes additionaly important. Through this transformation, the music becomes the most salient trace of humanity, and more importantly traces of Black people within the video game. Meaning that the white-American experience as defaulted into the game presents Black voices (literally) into the digital space. The nuance of Black identity is not provided for through any form, except for when Black creators create custom content to help diversify the game. Black voices and identity is burgeoned by the labour of players, yet the hip-hop genre also provides a small loop-hole into having Black voices active in the game. Their artistry through their voices and orchestration fills the room, presenting Blackness and Black voices to construct itself in the space. Although not evident to the eye, Blackness becomes palpable in the whitened environment since Black bodies are incorporeally present in the space. Not only does music and architecture both have the ability to develop spatial limits further (Morimoto, 2), they also have the capacity to be the driving force in extending each other, such as in this case where Black voices flow in. Blackness is provided for by the way the music is mobilized in space, such as noted by William Newman in his book Understanding Music (1961). Morimoto quotes Newman who says that music is an auditory architecture (Morimoto, 5), demonstrating how the two disparate forms not only become mirrors of formation such as with Blackness, but also show the possibility to thread into one another through contact zones.
Although there are limits to the ways Blackness can be presented, the songs and musicians featured in the hip-hop genre formalize an entry of authentic Blackness into the game. Many of the artists are real musicians singing their original songs in Simlish. They are all-Black artists that are able to have their voices and expression translated into the digital milieu of The Sims 4. As stated previously, whiteness is embedded into every palpable feature of the video game such as the landscape and architecture, but I believe the music is able to alter the atmosphere of the space by transcending the white-confines that restrict Blackness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Forman, Murray. “‘Represent’: Race, Space and Place in Rap Music.” Popular Music, vo. 19, no. 1, January 2000, pp. 65-90.
Jovanna, “Willow Creek Sims 4 – Everything About Your Favorite World.” SnootySims, May 19 2022, https://snootysims.com/wiki/sims-4/willow-creek-sims-4-everything-about-your-favorite-world/
Kaslow, Andrew J. “New Orleans: Cultural Revitalization in an Urban Black Community.” Folk Festival. New Orleans, Louisiana, 1985, pp. 33-37.
Morimoto, Michelle M. “Music and Architecture: Notes on Experiencing the Convergence of Music and the Built Environment.” Doctor of Architecture, May 2017, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Short Ends 