Sims are 25 years old this year. Above, a screenshot of the Sims 4 trailer.
Screenshot by NPR / Electronic Arts
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Screenshot by NPR / Electronic Arts
When I started playing the Sims, which was probably not long after its launch in 2000, I didn’t know what to do with it. I had played the forerunner, Simcity, where you are building your own little kingdom, which at the time involved a lot of complicated and tedious placement of pipes and threads. But the Sims was different. Instead of a city, you were doing a person.
At the time, at least how I played it, you sort of placed your simulation in a virtual house and things started to happen. Including what surprised me the most: your SIM had to use the toilet periodically. As you no doubt know, most television shows and films completely ignore the needs of anyone’s bathrooms, and here is a game where the graphics of my little person would tell me that she became desperate. When it happens to your SIM, both at the time and now she goes to the toilet, she sits down and she is briefly ousted as a person on CopsFor intimacy, even if it is imaginary.
Honestly, that’s what I remember the life of my sim At the time: she went to the toilet, she ate, she left her dishes everywhere (which is obviously because I did not know that I had to do anything with them), and sometimes she played the music. On a memorable occasion, she was stolen, and she unfortunately danced in the Boombox which was the only thing that thieves did not take. Poignant, that.
It is not as easy for me to explain the charm of the Sims As is the case with games where more occurs. The game mechanisms have been consistent over the years. Your sim has a little green diamond (a lead) floating above their heads. The conversation takes the form of two sims conversing with spiritualism in what sound like random syllables, but which are apparently a real language called … Simlish. (If you have time, Read the Wikipedia entrance on Simlish. It’s a lot. I had no idea.)
Sometimes, to give you a suspicion of what the two Sims (or more) talk about, a balloon / discourse will appear above someone’s head while he speaks, which shows a little drawing of some Something that is probably the subject. I am the conversations of my own sims like this: “Oh, I just said something about art. Then this other person said something about food. Then I said something on … Sub clothes?” This can be confusing.
The franchise is 25 years old this year, and surprisingly, they are only Sims 4. There has not been a whole new version since 2014. They have been updated, of course. But really, the franchise works on its downloadable content outlets (DLC) – expansion packs and kits that facilitate your dates or become famous or get a pet. They probably don’t make a new version because they don’t need it; They just add things you can do and buy in the one you already have. You can get a pack that allows you to live in a college, or in a chalet, or in a city of snow. You can buy the (virtual) things you need for a bowling night or for a flourishing knitting hob. This allows them to be sensitive to the trend without spoiling too much with the bases.
It is not an adventure, it is not a battle and it is not a dystopia. Sometimes it seems strangely the duplication of the version of life. You get up, you eat, you take a shower, you use your bathroom (don’t forget to do this, just … no), you go to a job or another, and you go home . You drag, you talk to people – and sometimes you go to an event. You are a little happier, a little more sad, a little more social, a little more introverted.
Although, of course, you can decide to be a chaos agent. My SIM recently attended a party where she played the piano badly while someone else was trying to do stand-up comedy in the same room. No one loved him. Everyone was grumpy. Sometimes you just want to look at a non -threatening collapse of a simulated social event, I suppose.
At 25, Sims is always a game that I find charming but confusing. Sims are like humans, but … not really. They will come to your SIM and stay after that it sets unless you expel them. Someone will want to socialize at 9:00 am when your SIM is about to go to work. A SIM that reads early will wake up at 4:00 am, a bad date is not just embarrassing; Someone will end up looking at the other person and saying something that looks a lot like “EW!” and cring teeth.
Bad dates, wake up too early, people do not respect your personal space and your schedule – maybe East Dystopia.
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