The Sims

04/15/2002

I've recently had the occasion to play The Sims. I had the pre-generated bachellor guy move in and tried to... er... give him a life so to speak: buy furniture and appliances, get a job, make friends (maybe steal the neighbor's wife?), eat, shit, shower, sleep, shit, shower, eat, sleep, wash hands, pee, clean the floor, pee, watch tv, pee, workout, pee, learn to cook, pee, etc.

You soon learn to buy more appliances and hire people to help you deal with the household chores (there's no one to pee for you though). As you do this, your expenses go up, you need to work on your career more, make more friends, buy more stuff and so the cycle goes on and on. If this is not the rat race, tell me what it is! Under such pressure to perform, can a Sim get into a nervous breakdown and start shitting on the stove, showering in the toilet bowl and cooking in the shower?

Looking at the workings of the game, we can find the following principle at work:

• the value and quantity of things you own is a measure of success and happiness.

As a matter of fact, this is a common belief in our society. It's the American Dream. How many people go through their lives without stepping back a little bit and looking at how this belief rules their lives? With the Sims, how many people play the game and don't realize that the principle driving the game is the same that drives their lives? Why spend so much effort to make a Sim happy by socializing, washing the floor, preparing supper while our own lives are neglected? It is true that in one real time hour, your Sim may have gone through many days worth of living. Washing the floor takes you one hour in real time but it will take 10 seconds in The Sims. But can't one hour of gaming with The Sims be better spent? It is not to say that leisure is a bad idea. But even staying within the realm of gaming, there are games out there that provide a greater escape into fantasy than The Sims. Leisure can also take other forms like reading, writing, drawing, etc. Then, leaving the realm of leisure, there are chores to do around the house and so on.