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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Playing God in The Sims 2 173

Posted by michael from the you-can-just-screw-up-their-childhood dept.
pgptag writes "From Daily News Tribune: 'If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless? The answer can reveal itself by the way you play "The Sims 2," the highly anticipated follow-up to the "real life" personal computer game "The Sims," which placed omnipotent players in control of the fates of digital people... What's funny is that we have a genetics feature now (which allows characters who mate to have children who share their looks and aspirations). So you can download some of the celebrities that the players have made, put them in the game and have them have kids.'"
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Playing God in The Sims 2 More

Playing God in The Sims 2

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  • this guy would be evil (Score:5, Funny)

    by ncurses ( 764489 ) * on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:22AM (#10355168)
    http://www.livejournal.com/users/nematoddity/13371 1.html How long can a neighborhood of sims go without urinating?

  • Missing option (Score:4, Funny)

    by Throtex ( 708974 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:22AM (#10355169)
    kind, cruel, or just careless

    You forgot 'horny'.

  • Strange (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:23AM (#10355174)
    My Brad Pitt/Jennifer Anniston family slowly evolved into higher primates.

  • the bush family (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this is a family i'd like to create and play god with. how funny would it be to see an army helicopter pick up bush and have him wear a suit, just like he did last year. "the war in iraq was a success!" ....

    let me try and get the reaper to knock on his door. at least itll be real in the sims2.

  • God (Score:5, Funny)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:23AM (#10355180) Homepage Journal
    If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless?

    Let me think about this...

    Kind: Here you go my Sim children. Play and enjoy life. Be fruitful and multiply. Please don't eat the fruit from that tree of knowledge because I'm saving it for a pie.

    Cruel: How dare you eat my apples! {Godly voice} Locust Storm!!!! Aieeeeeeee!!!! (billions of puppy-dog sized locusts ravage village)

    Careless: *sigh* I'm a n00b. What does this button with a pointy letter S do? Only one way to find out! {click} (lightning bolts fly from Heaven destroying entire village)

    • Re:God (Score:2, Funny)

      by Idarubicin ( 579475 )
      What does this button with a pointy letter S do?

      It allows you to place the always-popular Harry Potter Sim.

    • Re:God (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      *sigh* I'm a n00b. What does this button with a pointy letter S do? Only one way to find out! {click} (lightning bolts fly from Heaven destroying entire village)

      This explains all the hurricanes down in Florida...

  • As much as... (Score:4, Funny)

    by neiffer ( 698776 ) * on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:23AM (#10355182) Homepage
    ...I want to play The Sims 2 I am still missing the year and a half I lost to the the Sims and the Sims Online. I can't get that time back. :)

  • Pool time! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by apsio ( 112734 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:23AM (#10355183)
    If you always trap your Sim-ling in a pool w/o a ladder out, what does that make you?

    If you're a god (or God) who allows people to play god/God on a computer, what does that say?

    If you're a Sim-ling and you resent your Slashdotting overlord, do you have the right, nay responsibility, to destory his Quicken files?

    • Re:Pool time! (Score:3, Funny)

      by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) *
      If you're a Sim-ling and you resent your Slashdotting overlord, do you have the right, nay responsibility, to destory his Quicken files?

      Ooo... feature for Sims 3? I THINK SO!

  • 10 years from now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OwlofCreamCheese ( 645015 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:24AM (#10355187)
    this is the sort of artical that you read like 10 years later and sorta feel pity for how quaint it is. go find old videogame magazines, there are occationaly storys like this. find some from the apple IIGS era, you'll laugh and kinda feel sad reading stoies about how realistic and how close to simulateing reality and this and that, and you look at the game and its like three boxes with 2 numbers governing everything.

    • Re:10 years from now (Score:5, Funny)

      by ggvaidya ( 747058 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:38AM (#10355288) Homepage Journal
      My favourite was the news story which would turn up in the 1990s in SimCity 2K, where the "Sims" in your city were getting nervous breakdowns after playing a new computer game released recently, wondering whether like the game, they too were only simulated cretins inside a computer game.

      Man, love that recursion ... :)

    • Re:10 years from now (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )
      Yeah, I remember how ALter Ego and Little Computer people were supposed to blow our minds. Hell, Id go as far as saying the Sims are less fun than those original games because they seemed so focused on the "suburbia" life and are obsessively micro-managed.

      Its not just an issue of AI, its more like an issue of scope. I doubt any of the characters have to deal with stuff like discrimination, getting arrested for victimless laws, crazy family members, teenage ennui, cancer, financial woes, relationship woes
      • My proposal is to have a USB "attach to your privates or somesuch" device that gives you nasty shocks when you foul up or when someone wrongs you. Or instantly deducts 5 dollars from your bank account if you're not into being zapped.

        A player like that is just going to attach the shock device to the dog anyhow.

        Mal-2

  • Well, let's see... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tyrdium ( 670229 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:24AM (#10355188) Homepage
    What I'd do when I played the original was to make a family of nothing but kids. I'd make a small room, get them all to go in, delete the door, and sit there laughing maniacally as they pissed themselves and started beating each other up. If I ever become a god, Earth is probably screwed... :P

  • The Sims 2 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:24AM (#10355190) Journal

    TS2 is more addictive then crack. Yes, I play it. Lovely game, can do wonderful things and build wonderful stuff. You can recreate your family and make you brother a flamboyant gay or set your annoying little sister on fire. You can recreate your house with a 5 acre swimming pool behind it and a hot tub at 10m intervals. Did I mention it's addictive yet?

    The only bad thing is the game's installer, which demands you hand over your balls to EA/Maxis and be known for all eternity as a faux-femme pansy for playing this game. I suck... :(

    • I didn't like the original Sims...I was too busy playing Counterstrike or RTCW or RTCW:Enemy Territory.

      But I got this game for my wife and I'm kinda absorbed into it now. It's kinda neat. Certainly better than the original...but it's still basically a computerized dollhouse...but there's nothing wrong with that.

      • Re:The Sims 2 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gaijin99 ( 143693 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:44PM (#10355663) Journal
        but it's still basically a computerized dollhouse...but there's nothing wrong with that.
        I like my computerized dollhouse. And yes, I'll admit freely that The Sims is basically a new way to play with dolls. I'm secure enough in my manhood to admit to liking the Sims.

      • Well with the original sims launching new addons for $19.99 every day, I was just waiting for The Sims: RTCW edition. Where I can send my character to The Beach or Fuel Dump.

    • Re:The Sims 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by realdpk ( 116490 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:52AM (#10355357) Homepage Journal
      Do you still have to micromanage your sim's bathroom habits? That was so rediculous I couldn't play Sims 1 longer than a day or so.
      • Not really, and hell, I was surprised the other day when my Sims paid the bills while I wasn't paying attention.

      • Re:The Sims 2 (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ah, making your Sims happy is for pansies. The real goal of The Sims, at least for those of us that have an evil gaming personality, is to make your Sims as miserable as possible or just plain knock 'em off. }:) OOO, look they're flammable.... Muhahaha!

      • Re:The Sims 2 (Score:5, Interesting)

        by n3k5 ( 606163 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:38PM (#10355621) Journal
        Do you still have to micromanage your sim's bathroom habits?
        You didn't have to in Sims 1. When I play Sims, I play the first part exclusively, without any extentions and without any additional objects imported. It does get boring quickly that way, but that is good, I don't want to become addicted and waste lots of time playing it. And once in a while it's still fun, I set goals like trying to fit a house worth 100,000 credits in as few tiles as possible. So, I've got the most primitive version of the game, and when they have to go, they just go. They also shower and take a bath when appropriate. (Not necessarily at the optimal time, but the intervals are quite OK). If yours don't, maybe the layout of your houses isn't good or they have rather weird personalities.
      • Do you still have to micromanage your sim's bathroom habits?

        I wish I had to! Just started playing Sims 1 again, and my current little guy is freaking addicted to taking baths, to the point where he spends more time in the tub than watching TV or eating :P

    • You can recreate your family and make you[r] brother a flamboyant gay or set your annoying little sister on fire.

      I did set my sister on fire, you insensitive clod!

  • My Favorite Sims2 Character... (Score:5, Funny)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:25AM (#10355191)
    ... avoids all personal contact. Doesn't have a phone, whenever someone comes to the door he gets pissed at them and makes them leave. He spends all day sleeping and reading books in his basement. All night, every night, he looks through his telescope. One night he actually got abducted by aliens! How cool is that?

    I should find a girl and have a child. I wonder if the alien abduction messed with his DNA.

    • Re:My Favorite Sims2 Character... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Indras ( 515472 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:37AM (#10355283)
      One night he actually got abducted by aliens! How cool is that?

      It gets scarier than that. As anyone who's purchased the guide book knows, any male adult in the Sims 2 who is abducted by aliens will become pregnant (yes, I did say male, apparently the aliens aren't interested in impregnating women). Here's a quote from the Prima Guide:

      Alien Abduction
      If Sims use the Stargaze interaction with the expensive telescope (Farstar e3 Telescome) at night, there is a chance they'll be abducted by aliens. Abducted sims are returned to the lot three hours later.
      If the abductee is a male adult, he always returns from the ordeal impregnated with an alien baby.
      Other than the "mother" being male, alien pregnancies are identical to normal ones.

      Apparently the alien children inherit none of their father's genetics except for eye color.
    • Just curious, but um....what's his Slashdot user ID?

  • "A Week in the Life of The Sims 2" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vicsun ( 812730 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:26AM (#10355205)
    Somethingawful recently featured an article [somethingawful.com] which makes a pretty interesting read =)

  • Real Life (Score:5, Insightful)

    by modest apricot ( 785620 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:27AM (#10355211)
    I honestly hope that Will Wright makes good on his statement that there will be more free time in Sims 2. That's the reason most of us quit playing the first game...after a while, it just got too depressing. It was like watching yourself go through life: wake up, eat, shower, job, eat, sleep. No ones want to play a video game to remind them of how monotonous and repetitive their own life is.

    • Re:Real Life (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now there are actual 7 day weeks, and every job (afaik) has 2 days off per week. Though exactly which days differ for each job/rank. Also you can get "vacation days" which are the number of days you can skip work without getting fired.
    • The funny thing is, the Sims in Sim2 can play Sim1. Who says no one wants a game to remind them of their monotonous life ; ) Link. [wired.com]

  • ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by comwiz56 ( 447651 ) <<comwiz> <at> <gmail.com>> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:29AM (#10355222) Homepage
    This game has been out for a few weeks... and this is just a summary of the game... since when has slashdot done free advertising?

  • Gods wrath and peoples love for him (still) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedogcow ( 694111 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:30AM (#10355234)
    I've noticed something. I live in Oklahoma, land of "christians" and serious godly folk everywhere.

    Oklahoma experiences quite a few natural events that can kill, like F5 tornadoes, baseball-sized hail, 100mph straight line winds from thunderstorm outflows, and heat and humidity.

    Well anyway, I've noticed that actually when bad things happen (like the aformentioned natural weather events listed above), it seems to increase the attraction towards god here in the red land state.

    So honestly, be a mean god in the game. Smite people. This doesn't matter, they will still flock back to you anyway.

  • Melrose Place 2010 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:35AM (#10355265)
    Move women from noninteractive soaps into self-modifying storylines like this and you can put a fork in most tv viewing by 2010.

    To really accelrate this, The Sims should allow people to enter virtual reality show contests, take Survivor and the Apprentice out with the same shot that kills Days of Our Lives.

    • Heh, have you tried the computer version of Survivor [gamefaqs.com]? (Links to the reviews page on GameFAQs. Yeah, that may not be the best but the opinions there are numerous and representative.)

      My mother-in-law got it for my wife. It is one of only two games to enter my residence and never be installed; the other is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which I purchased on the cheap last week (before it disappeared) and is awaiting a computer that can actually run it. Crap-tastic. Survivor, that is, not KOTOR.
    • You know, I was thinking a bit about this myself. Games as they are now are not realistic enough, and AI isn't far along enough to make believeable stories like you would get on reality tv.

      But once that picks up, you can bet there will be games out there that are basically a Real World: The Sims.

      And frankly, I think it would be more entertaining than tv. But they need the ability to run on autopilot because half the fun of watching tv is vegging out. Nobody would want to play it if they had to micromanag

      • Games as they are now are not realistic enough

        That's part of the reason they are fun; they're an escape from reality. Most people seek games and entertainment as a way to get away from reality; when you seek to simple replace it, many people will shy away from that.

  • Omnipotent? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:42AM (#10355310)
    I can't seem to find the "smite with righteous vengeance" option in my girlfriend's copy...

  • Saddam Uday and Qusay (Score:4, Funny)

    by JeffSh ( 71237 ) <jeffslashdot@nOsPAm.m0m0.org> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:52AM (#10355358)
    My friend made his "family" [m0m0.org] after the iraqi dictator. Sims2 does a remarkable job of letting you create likelesses that really do look like their RL counterparts to some extent.

    As for me, I spent a day playing the game the way it was meant to be played, then got bored and started the mass slaughter of my entire neighborhood, playing some sort of sims2 offshoot game where your success was measured by the number of graves.

    needless to say, it quickly got boring.
  • leting people thinking I actually exist while I would not. Then, looking at them waiting indefinitely for miracles, trying to forgive for not doing anything to save them, looking at them spending 10% of their salairies on pointless preachers, etc.

    I would definitely more real than the real stuff...

  • Kerry and Bush (Score:4, Funny)

    by toetagger1 ( 795806 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:58AM (#10355386)
    Now I have to get this game, download Kerry and Bush, put them into the same house, and see what happens...
  • Or else the FBI just might end up liberating Maxis.

  • Better yet, what would a SIM do if left in charge (Score:5, Funny)

    by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:15PM (#10355471) Homepage
    In Sims 2, you can have your Sims play Sims 1. Pictures here [wired.com]. Now, the true question of what lies hidden in your soul can be answered not by how you treat your creation, but how your creation treats its creations. Have you been able to teach your creature to be a good god, just as you have been a good god, or have you left it secretly vengeful and full of malice. Only through this sort of recursive investigation will you find out how clean your god slate is.
  • "Bring it closer" "You didn't answer my question: what does god need with a starhip?"
  • "If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless? The answer can reveal itself by the way you play "The Sims 2,"

    The answer can also, and more accurately be revealed through playing Black and White.
    • I found Black & White had a crude good/evil setup myself. As an introspective window into the player's own morality, it was suck. Being good basically amounted to spending hours micromanaging your villages, even feeding the little guys because they were too stupid to go get themselves food. You could finally start looking outside your own starting cluster of villages after about a good three hours of gameplay. So, The Sims 2 will probably be less frustrating, er, because you signed on to do that mi
  • There is a great study screaming to be done on morality is video games. Violence in video games (for me) is associated with pushing buttons to achieve an arbitrary objective as opposed to, say, beating up a real random person with a baseball bat. However, morality in entertainment of the type seen in The Sims, or in role playing games such as Star Wars KOTOR, involves making conscious, deliberate decisions about whether or not representations of humanity should suffer.

    Are certain demographics more prone
  • Final Fantasy fans (FFF's!) unite against slashdot in using the spoony bard and the crazy wizard as an icon for something as .... different as The Sims. ;)

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by bairy ( 755347 ) *
    Someone's hot off the mark submitting this. The game was only out... oooh bloody ages ago (well ok a week or two, but in gaming, that's ages - just ask the half life 2 crew).

    I even submitted how there was trouble with copying software and The Sims 2 [slashdot.org] 6 days ago.

    Ok whine over, it's a great game. Love it. Maxis have certainly paid a LOT of attention to getting things much better than S1. It still has some flaws, particularly in the sims AI but it is a lot better, a lot engrossing and draws you in much more.

  • so am i the only one (Score:4, Funny)

    by j1mmy ( 43634 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:53PM (#10356081) Journal
    or did everybody else use the sims bodyshop to make nude skins and outfits before you even started playing the game?
  • First, this is my first-ever post on Slashdot. i have been reading it for years, now, and enjoy it very much. Finally, a topic came along that inspired me enough to create a user account and join. Here are my thoughts. I hope they make sense.

    I went to that link, "nematoddy" something- and read through all of the posts in that forum.

    Very sad, indeed. My heart broke as I read comment after comment delighting in their depictions of "torturing" the "Sims".

    Sure, they are nothing more than pixels on a screen,
    • I don't know if you played either game, but I assumed that when you read the comments about players torturing Sims you envisaged horrific acts of physical abuse.

      However, torture in The Sims is limited to the kind of torture Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr Bean or Lee Evans experiences. You know: the phone rings, the toast sets on fire, the doorbell rings and the waste disposal spews week-old cabbage all over the kitchen, all at the same time. We'll call it Kitchen Sink Torture.

      The Sims is a game a
  • I played the Sims for one week. I tried to play it correctly for a while, but I got bored.

    The last thing I did was build a house with everything necessary for a Sim to enjoy a full and rewarding life. Then I placed a moat around the entire house, and moved the sim outside. I wanted to see if the Sim could learn to swim.

    He couldn't.

    He died in a pool of his own urine.

    I felt I could never get that level of satisfaction again with that game, and never played again.

    The end.

  • Sim Girlfriend (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paddo_Aus ( 700470 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @06:42PM (#10357629)
    Last night I called over my girlfriend who was surfing the web on the laptop next to me to check out how the Simolean versions of ourselves were making out on the couch. Now she's normally critical of me playing games, but she totally got into it as I made them dance, hug and kiss. Ended up, she asked whether I could get them to have sex together. Wonder if that was a request or a hint?

    (It could be worse, she could have asked me to make them marry each other;)

  • Be as realistic as possible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rufus88 ( 748752 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:12AM (#10359986)
    I'd be just like the real God. I'd create a couple of people and make them happy. Then I'd curse them for eating an apple, and shun all their descendents from heaven for thousands of years. Many generations later, I'd make a bet with Satan as to whether or not we can make a good man named "Job" turn bad by royally fucking up his life, just like the Dukes did to Dan Ackroyd in "Trading Places". And then when I got fed up with mankind, I'd pull a handful of them aside, along with a pair of each kind of animal, and put them on a big boat while I drowned the rest. And then I'd find another one of my faithful servants and I'd play games with his head too. I'd tell him that if he wants my love, he has to slit his son's throat to prove his love to me. And just before he does it, I'd stop him. And instead of bitch-slapping him for believing I could be so cruel, I'd praise him for his devotion. After a while, I'd decide it was lonely up here all one in heaven, so I'd have to start letting people in. But I won't make it easy. They're all sinners, and vengeance is mine. So, I'd send someone to "save" them all by allowing himself to pay for everyone's sins by being nailed to a cross and die a slow asphyxiating death. And I'd play more head games with all mankind, by ambiguously "revealing" myself in differet ways to different groups of people, so that they can kill each other over who knows me best. And because I'm such a nut for irony, I'd let a bunch of them colonize a New World (except that it's only new to them and not to the indiginous people they drove onto "reservations") and start a country based on the belief that all men are created equal, and that I endowed them with the inalienable right of liberty, and then I'd sit back and laugh at their hypocrisy as they hauled a bunch of people out of their homes in Africa to come and work for them for free. And I'd keep them guessing with "miracles" in places like Lourdes and Fatima that might or might not have a natural explanation, just to stir up more controversy. And I'd sit by and let six million of my people get slaughtered by a fucking nut. and then I'd let the survivors get all cocky and kick followers of one of my other Prophets out of their homes on the grounds that it's My will that the land is really theirs and that they should form a state there. And just to bring the religious hatred full circle, I'll sit back while followers of this other prophet fly planes into buildings on one side of the world and kill 150 hostage school-children on the other side of the world.

    Then I'd look at my little creation and call it good.

  • Who's playing with us? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kezze ( 644765 )
    According to a screenshot [wired.com], you can have your sims play the old version of The Sims. Doesn't this really mean that someone is playing The Sims 3, with us as sims?
  • I don't much play God in The Sims 2, but more like playing Jesus. Thanks to a bug that somehow crossed over from the first game, as a master carpenter I can make houses that float over the ground. In fact, it's even easier now; for one thing, you have five stories to work with instead of three.

    In the first one, the trick was to place a crapload of support columns on the first level, then build a floor above it on the second level, then remove the columns. Now all you need to do is build walls on the first

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