Sexuality And The Sims

Jim Rossignol writes "An article on a new blog I'm contributing to discusses how The Sims (mostly the original, but also the sequel) gets used for sexual purposes, and also examines how this kind of response is essential to the appeal of the game. Here's an extract: 'On sites like Simulated, Eight Deadly Sims, Pandora's Sims and Strange Sims we see increasingly bizarre uses of the modding tools. While mainstream sites are for all ages, these have reached such a level of risqué or alternative content that the majority hide behind pay-for-access barriers to ensure that the users at least have a credit card (i.e. aren't minors), and to earn a little cash. Of all the mod cultures online — and virtually every PC game has users making their own additional content either in publisher-supported or unofficial ways — it's only The Sims which has such an obvious number of sites which demand money for access. This is particularly unusual: there's a clause in EA's tool license that they can only be used 'on your personal non-commercial website'. That Electronic Arts hasn't gone after such a sizeable community is interesting in and of itself.'" Jim Rossignol is a well-respected games journalist in the industry, and his new blog (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) is well worth checking out.

Riiight...

[morari]

I remember when those pay sights went up. I had not yet become bored with the original game (anything after Hot Date is lost on me). They're not there to protect the children, they exist solely to make money. The Sims community is pathetic. What you usually get is a simple recolor and a terrible read-me; "hi, i made this. i hope u like it!". The fact that people are trying to sell this shit, and are succeeding, is merely a side effect of how Maxis and EA already run the game. You buy an expansion pack every six months, and the three month periods in-between see the release of a cheaper, completely mediocre "Stuff Pack". Capitalism and pretending to have friends isn't just the goal of the game, it's the goal of the surrounding community. Compare this to a Quake mod, which is made up of a team of motivated hobbyists who sometimes create an entirely different game within the confines of the system and then release it for free!

Re:This is just silly

[Bios_Hakr]

If the game is a life sim, then the only way *to* score is *by* scoring.

The point of life is to get your genes into another generation. Everything else is just fluff.

yes really

[crossmr]

pandering isn't the same as knowing how to build a community. Much like knowing how to grab your ankles doesn't make your prison stay that much more pleasant.

Suing people would go a long way towards giving the sims fans a long needed kick in the teeth.
They're the whiniest bunch of crybabies I've ever seen assembled in a single place. You might say "Well that's because there are so many kids there", while true the adults aren't any better. They are the only community I know of where there is such rampant commercialism among the fans. Which has led every 12 year old and stay at home mom who joins the community to think they can retire next week off the crap they just whipped up in paint. And then behave like the RIAA the moment someone else uses it, or thinks about using it, or makes something that remotely looks like if you apply half a dozen photoshop filters and squint.

Places like the sims resource require artists to sign exclusivity contracts and make various legal threats. in fact they really are the *AA of the sims world.

But hey if that's what you're looking for in a community, yeah, EA does a fantastic job.

Re:This is just silly

[The One and Only]

Speak for yourself. Do you see reasons for the sun and the stars, the mountains and oceans? The question isn't "why are we here"--we're here because of an eons-long chain of chemical and physical phenomena in the universe that lies behind us, not for anything that lies before us. The question is, "okay, we're here--now what are we going to do about it?". And don't you presume to answer that question for me.

To some extent they do, actually

[Moraelin]

Other "Sim" games seemed to evolve in the challenges that would develop as your city/anthill/whatever progressed, but with The Sims, gameplay and the challenges contained within basically stayed the same. Empty your bladder, keep up your energy, do something social. The game never changed, yet people just ate it up.

To some extent they do.

As you progress up any career path, for example, you start needing more friends, and more time keeping them friends, while at the same time needing more time to improve your skills for a promotion. Higher job levels also routinely involve longer hours, or more bizarre hours, and usually tax your needs more. While the entry job got your sim back home at 3 PM and as fresh as when they left, the highest job level would often get your sim back in the evening and almost ready to cry.

Worse yet, all that army of friends has wildly different personalities and interests, and often just getting them all in one room for a all-in-one socializing evening is a recipe for disaster. (Unless you created/edited a small army of identical sims.) Some will get to be enemies by just boring each other to death, some insecure guy will go ballistic because his wife danced with someone else (for bonus points: with another woman), etc.

You start needing more time, and having less time, basically. You start upgrading your objects just to get more out of them in less time (e.g., a more confortable sofa instead of a park bench in front of your TV, so you get some comfort points faster) or to combine effects (e.g., lying in a bathtub gets you some comfort too, while a shower doesn't.)

It may seem like "yeah, but you take care of the same needs in the end", but then the same thing can be said about SimCity too. There too, essentially you need water, electricity, employment, education, and a couple of other things. They stay the same throughout the game. There is no entirely new challenge that springs up as your city grows, it's just a matter of quantities and interdependencies: raising one factor (e.g., employment) causes another to lower (e.g., air quality.) So now you build something else to raise this one (e.g., parks) but that just impacts you in another way (e.g., longer drive times and more congestions from home to work, through all that forest you planted to keep pollution away.) And so on. All while managing a budget.

By and large, The Sims isn't any different. It's just managing some variables and interdependencies, and it does subtly change over time.

Re:Are we surprised?

[benzapp]

being women, are more interested in actual pleasurable sex.

Women and men have different opinions and needs regarding sex, but it is ridiculous to assume that men aren't interested in "pleasurable" sex. Of course men are interested in pleasurable sex. The issue is men and women somewhat differ on what the definition of "pleasure" is. This is wholly subjective value judgment, and neither is better or worse than the the other.