The Sims Voice Actor Explains Why Game Has Its Own Language

A voice actor on The Sims has explained why the characters speak in their own language. Watch here:

The gaming series was born shortly after the turn of the millennium and became a huge international hit.

In it, players take control of fictional characters in a fictional world - invariably enjoying the novelty of ruining someone else's life for a change.

But we don't hear their cries of anguish in English - or French, Spanish or Mandarin for that matter. They speak Simlish - a made-up gibberish language. But why?

A voice actor on the game, Krizia Bajos, spilt the beans in a video on her TikTok account.

Electronic Arts

She explained: "So here's why Sims and The Sims games have Simlish - because everybody from around the world loves to play it. So we make it accessible to everybody's language.

"Nobody feels excluded, everybody can feel included because it's not a particular language. That's what makes it beautiful.

"Like, The Sims can be played by everybody. Everybody understands what's going on, without having to understand exactly what the words mean.

"But just by inflection, in motion, the way us actors act it out will help you understand what's happening in the scene and what's going on with the interaction with all the Sims.

Electronic Arts

"So that's why we don't have a particular language, we have our language, which is Simlish."

This explanation is corroborated by Robi Kauker, who has been The Sims' audio director since the game's inception. He said creator Will Wright was adamant the game be detached from any actual language so gamers could instead imagine the conversations between characters.

Speaking to The Verge last year, Kauker said: "From the very beginning, it was about serving gameplay.

"He wanted the idea of emotions to resonate with people, but he didn't want the Sims to say anything that was meaningful, so not to mess with the characters' storytelling."

The Sims fan and game designer Mitu Khandaker added: "The more abstract something is, the more you can insert yourself into it.

"A face with two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth can be you, but the more detail you add, the more it begins to resemble somebody else."

It has also been reported that Wright thought using an actual language would make the dialogue repetitive, while translating it for markets across the globe would be costly.

LADbible has contacted Electronic Arts for comment.

Topics: GAMING, Interesting

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey