Once upon a time as a wee lad who couldn’t buy his own game systems, and would save up his allowance every month (my parents paid my allowance in monthly installments, it was something to do with making me responsible or something) to buy video games, value was key. We couldn’t really afford the latest consoles, but I had a computer. Not a great computer, but good enough. I probably spent more time in the demo of Midtown Madness 2 than I have in any game of the past couple of years. There was a copy of one of the Might and Magic games, I’m not sure which one. I don’t think I ever got very far in it but I played that first level a hell of a lot.
Sometime after it came out I scammed my parents into paying my subscription of World of Warcraft for me, and my gaming time was swallowed by that endless temporal void. Before that, though, was The Sims. The original, the best. That series has an odd reputation these days. Among the “core”, whatever that means, gamer community opinion is split. The first half would say that it is the original sin of microtransactions and downloadable content, the first game to try to nickel and dime you incessantly after you paid full price for it. The second would say that it was a game “for girls” (or alternatively, “for mums”), apparently unaware that these are the insult of the barbarian. I have more time for the first group, but despite my sympathies I can’t deny that The Sims was one of the most formative, pure gaming experiences of my childhood.
Even today I can’t bring myself to dislike it. I don’t think I played more than a couple of hours each of The Sims 2 and 3, but I bought them nonetheless. What drew me to the series I’m not entirely sure. Partly I think it was engaging in a parody of adult life, a life that every child aspires to. In some part as well it was the narrative. It was emergent, wacky. Little lives living and dying, achieving their dreams, building their house and buying new things. I’ve heard people say that the thing they enjoyed doing in the game was finding ways to kill their Sims - trapping them in swimming pools by deleting the stairs, or in rooms by deleting the doors, or simply setting the house on fire. This was not the way I played The Sims.
Usually my characters would start as some version of me. But, you know, grown up and cool. With facial hair and shit. Then I’d become one of the professions that didn’t make you have to make friends to get promotions. It was all just too much work, you’d have to ring them up and invite them over and have parties and then six months later of never speaking to them they’d stop being your friend. Totally unrealistic. Then I’d get bored of that, buy whatever it was you needed to make gnomes and then just do that and sell them. Turns out, once your Sim gets good at making gnomes, they sell for so much that it is easily the best way to earn money in the game (or at the least the best way I found as a kid).
It was also a really social game. My friends would have characters in my game, and vice versa, and then I’d get to annoy them by marrying their character off to someone when they weren’t there. How we’d laugh. I’m not sure what the argument or point of this article is. Maybe it’s that you shouldn’t be so quick to assume that boys want to play “manly” games like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Maybe it’s about how, as a child, you can learn to love a single thing so great that it rises above cynicism. Maybe I just wanted to write about The Sims, because, fuck yeah The Sims.
