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Vol.
2, Issue 15
March 13, 2000
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I'm playing
this game and I'm thinking about stuff that has names like biology,
sociology, and psychology. About what elements of similarity
in two personalities make people compatible, and what differences
make them interesting. And race relations. And what, exactly,
is my stand on same-sex marriage? Y'know, I don't think
about these things when I play other games.
Polygamy,
Death by Fire, and Why the Swedes are so Ornery
The
von Prangs of the Prussian nobility immigrated to Sweden after
the war, where they established a banking and legal empire in
SimCity. Unfortunately the family fortune was squandered
on bad laetrile investments in the 1960s, and now young Otto von
Prang must make his own way in the world as a security guard on
the graveyard shift.
Ultimately,
The Sims is about ego. Not those of the little doll-people
on the monitor - they don't have any - but about the self-perception
of the player. If you're a power freak, it's a god-game, and your
sims will rarely exercise their "free will" mode. If
you're a builder person, you'll see the lives of the sims as a
revenue producing process that lets you build bigger and buy better.
So it's an economic/building game. If you're a tyrant sicko you'll
build a house with no doors, and move the 'fridge out into the
front yard every other day. While sims have a handful of "personality
traits" that define their behavior, The Sims has more
to say about your personality by placing these fragile
virtual lives in your care. How you deal with it says a lot.
At first
I identified with the game's animated denizens. They do the same
things I do. They go to work, they pay bills, they make dinner,
they clean up, they sleep and use the bathroom. And they make
and lose friends, fall in love, have fun and get depressed. Tough
not to see a bit of ourselves in all this. Okay, I don't go to
the bathroom eighteen times a day, nor do I have "accidents"
on the living room carpet. And I work a bit more than six hours
a day, and if I took every other day off I would definitely get
fired. And polygamy is illegal. And I have a car. And I have political
and spiritual opinions. And then there's sex - sims don't get
any. They hug and kiss and give each other back-rubs a lot. Like
the nice part of an EST seminar before they lock you in the little
room for two days. It's as if life has been reduced to physical
existence, where interaction with objects takes precedence over
interaction with people. Sims live their lives in a sort-of valium
haze always partially disconnected from their environment. Like
the other night Otto had a little problem in the kitchen when
the stove caught fire. At one point Otto caught fire. Not only
were several visitors completely unaware of Otto's predicament,
Otto himself seemed fairly disinterested in the fact that he was
consumed in roaring flames. I like to think that if I were doing
an impromptu impersonation of the Human Torch, my pals might snag
a rug to roll me in.
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