For those few of you who don't know, Sims is a series of games where you take control of 1-6 avatars and control their actions throughout the day. The game is a completely sandbox adventure- there are no rules to follow, no objectives that you have to complete. You simply move your character through his life, building him or her a house, learning skills, having six girlfriends at once. In time your Sim grows older and dies, at which point you can continue playing with your Sim's offspring or simply start a new game.
Now, you must understand that I rarely play Sims, and there's a reason for this. When I do, I find myself addicted for a week or so. After that week is finished I more or less abandon the game for six months, and then the cycle starts all over again.
It has to be said that there is something inherently satisfying about playing the game. You can't help but feel happy when your Sim writes a bestselling book or gets promoted to Criminal Mastermind in the criminal career. You want to tell the world, "look how successful virtual me is!" Soon, you have enough money to buy a mansion, and the best car sim dollars can buy. You feel like you've actually accomplished something.
Then, after a few days of playing the game, you realize something. You realize that your just a lame little guy sitting in front of a screen, watching somebody else be successful while you waste all of your time wishing you were him. That's when you start feeling depressed.
After a couple hours of playing Sims, I start to seriously question what I'm doing with my life. I just watched my Sim literally write six books in one labour-intensive day, and two of those were hits while another was best-selling. On the other hand, I've just spent my twenty-four hours staring at a screen, nowhere closer to having my own projects completed. Do you ever hear people say that this generation is living virtually and not really living their lives in the real world? Sims is truly the epicentre of that belief.
Interestingly enough, thinking these thoughts years ago is what made me want to write the first book that I ever wrote. I thought to myself, "this guy just wrote a best-seller in twelve hours. Writing can't be that hard!"
That very day, I decided to write a book. I needed an idea, and so I walked around for ten minutes until I decided that my book would involve an alien and perhaps the Rosetta Stone (don't ask). My Sim took zero minutes to come up with an idea, so surely ten minutes was enough for me. Thus equipped with the perfect plot, I grabbed my dads computer and started typing away. Nearly a year later I had my masterpiece completed; a forty-odd thousand word epic with no real plot and characters thrown in because I figured that I needed more then one character in my story. If I recall correctly I (honest to god) put these two new supporting characters in a field for my protagonist to stumble upon. I was a fine storyteller from a young age.
So although Sims has wasted several literal days of my short existence on this earth, it did get me more interested in writing. Now I can burn time in a way that most would actually call productive! So thank you, Sims. For making people feel like even there wildest dreams could come true with twenty-four hours work and a high mood meter. Sims: giving people delusions of grandeur since 2000.
Thanks for reading,
-Mark
PS:
Supreme Leader Laura,
I won't let the punishments thing die without a fight! I am however willing to negotiate.
For example, I'll admit that punishments like fasting for 24 hours might be a little extreme and would require perhaps more commitment then we are ready to give. So big punishments should be used sparingly or not at all. Would lesser punishments be acceptable instead?
For example, I could say, "Laura, read insert random book here within one month and tell the Russian Robots about it!" or "Listen to the Green Day album American Idiot sometime this week." These punishments are still things that we wouldn't normally think of doing, but I believe both me and you would be willing to do them. After all, the only thing we're losing is a few hours of time, and we're gaining a topic to post about and possibly a good experience.
Regards,
-Marl
(Mark)
No comments:
Post a Comment