It's clear in talking to her how much she loves these games. Virgil has been playing games in the The Sims franchise for two decades, starting with console games like The Urbz and The Sims: Bustin' Out, before playing The Sims 3. Sims fall in love, meet their nemeses, get promotions and get fired, go to university and become astronauts, all under the control and watchful eye of a player that guides their experiences. This is a game where you can make any kind of person that exists in the world, and then run the course of their entire life, including raising the next generation. The Sims is often referred to as a digital dollhouse, but it's more than that. 'Despite how much influence we have on the world.' 'It just seems like in gaming and in everything else, we Black women are always the foundation, but we're always forgotten where we're always left out of everything,' Virgil told Motherboard over a Discord call.
In the case of The Sims, Black women often can't even see themselves in the communities that they have devoted large portions of their lives to. Despite the value that Black women have as voters, or in the case of The Sims franchise, consumers, Black women don't always see their worth reflected back on them.
