Meet the Brutal Serial Killers of The Sims (wired.co.uk) 59
It's a game that encourages people to 'get a life' -- build a house, make a Sim and fulfil their dreams. So why are so many players intent on murder? From a report: The Sims has far evolved from its humble beginnings in 2000, where you created characters and tended to their needs, like a slightly more demanding Tamagotchi. As the games became more advanced, The Sims provided opportunities for the lives of your characters to more closely mirror reality: they now have lifetime goals and desires, can feel disappointment and joy, and now even do their own laundry. But whether they live a rich and fulfilling life, or an existence defined by endless suffering, the Sims' destiny is entirely in your hands. Of course many players choose not to be benevolent Gods in the Sims world -- and instead aim to kill and torture as many Sims as possible. Death has hugely evolved over 21 years of gameplay; we're no longer just sticking Sims in a swimming pool and selling a ladder to watch them drown. Instead, we're watching them explode in rocket ships, choke on pufferfish or even be eaten by the 'Cowplant' -- a mutant Venus flytrap with a cow head for a face.
"The Sims see you controlling a little society, but that doesn't mean you're making it better. It reminds me of Bruce Almighty, where the role of God is handed over but that doesn't necessarily mean that's strictly a good thing. It's rather therapeutic just killing Sims, and being quite an irresponsible God," 26-year-old Dubliner RTGame (real name Daniel), who has 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube says. "I feel like a kid with a magnifying glass on the small ants. It sounds quite twisted but it's quite fun to do things like that in games like The Sims to see what happens. But yes, I do have a lot of Sims blood on my hands." He's far from alone. While many in the Sims streaming community focus their content on cutesy legacy-style playthroughs or intricate design challenges, there's an increasing interest in more boundary-pushing content. RTGame credits the popularity of his bizarre Sims series for helping him jump into streaming as a full-time career, while other YouTubers such as CallMeKevin and Plumbella count speed runs where they kill entire neighbourhoods among some of their most viewed content.
"The Sims see you controlling a little society, but that doesn't mean you're making it better. It reminds me of Bruce Almighty, where the role of God is handed over but that doesn't necessarily mean that's strictly a good thing. It's rather therapeutic just killing Sims, and being quite an irresponsible God," 26-year-old Dubliner RTGame (real name Daniel), who has 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube says. "I feel like a kid with a magnifying glass on the small ants. It sounds quite twisted but it's quite fun to do things like that in games like The Sims to see what happens. But yes, I do have a lot of Sims blood on my hands." He's far from alone. While many in the Sims streaming community focus their content on cutesy legacy-style playthroughs or intricate design challenges, there's an increasing interest in more boundary-pushing content. RTGame credits the popularity of his bizarre Sims series for helping him jump into streaming as a full-time career, while other YouTubers such as CallMeKevin and Plumbella count speed runs where they kill entire neighbourhoods among some of their most viewed content.
roller coaster tycoon all crashes = boom (Score:3)
roller coaster tycoon all crashes = boom
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I want to get off Mr. Bones Wild Ride [imgur.com]
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It was more fun being a god in Populous.
I really loved that game! That ended when I sold my Amiga. I did buy the "sequel" for the PS2, but it just was not as good. If I could buy the original version that would run in KDE, I would buy it.
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Damnit! I meant the PS1. I would still pay money for the ORIGINAL version that I could play on a modern OS.
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runs great in dosemu. or play the amiga version in winuae
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I guess Gomez Addams was ahead of his time. [youtube.com]
Errr what? (Score:3)
RTGame's Youtube career skyrocketed through Team Fortress 2. His girlfriend Plumbella made her career out of murdering Sims.
RTGame was in the news last year through for playing Hitman, knocking out every innocent NPC on the map, shoving them in a freezer in Sapienza and throwing an exploding duck into the room though so he is therefore a murderous joy to watch as well.
Those two will make a great couple XD
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Youtube/Twitch streamers who kill sims for pleasure and entertainment. Pay attention!
Though they come from parts of the world with pretty questionable accents, so if you can't stand Irish / North Yorkshire accents then keep your distance.
Because humans are cruel apes (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrary to postmodern brainwashing, humans are INHERENTLY violent creatures.
Watch little, pre-socialized kids: if A takes a toy from B (or even one B "was gonna play with next"!) B will ATTACK A. And, often, it's only their own feebleness as infants that prevent it being more dangerous...they're very possible trying to KILL that opponent.
This is hominid us.
The process of parenting is teaching them how to (in sloppy terms) have their superego overcome their id.
That's why when you see a kid acting up, generally the reaction is "what's wrong with their parents?"...we recognize that socialization is a force for civilization.
So when people get little people that they can do dastardly things to with NO REPERCUSSIONS, I daresay a little repressed id comes ou.
Re:Because humans are cruel apes (Score:4, Interesting)
as proven in real life during Abramovic's famous performance art event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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as proven in real life during Abramovic's famous performance art event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Well, she could have saved herself the bother and just read Lord of the Flies.
Re:Because humans are cruel apes (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, she could have saved herself the bother and just read Lord of the Flies.
Except that the Lord of the Flies is a work of fiction so using it to learn about reality is silly.
There are real life examples of adolescents being stranded. In nearly every case they cooperated, worked together, and helped the weak. Six boys shipwrecked for 15 months [theguardian.com].
If there was a real event that happened the way that Lord of the Flies describes, then that event would be used as the go-to example, rather than the work of fiction.
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In nearly every case they cooperated, worked together, and helped the weak. Six boys shipwrecked for 15 months.
Six isn't enough. Lord of the Flies was a fair portrayal of daily life at my (all boys) school; luckily it wasn't a boarding school. If you read the book you'll see the differences that numbers make.
With dozens, or scores, of boys there's enough to form gangs, which is what you need for real cruelty and violence - once you have an "Other" you can abstract that other and, especially for the immature (like Donald Trump, for example) they become non-human. Once you see the other group as basically inanimate ob
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There was a real life event similar to lord of the flies, the children behaved much better:
https://www.theguardian.com/bo... [theguardian.com]
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Doesn't really prove anything. Performance arts like that seem to attract the worst type of people. How did she even advertise such performance art event? "I will let you do anything you like to me?" You think that wouldn't attract seriously screwed up sadistic people? There's obviously some people who are "good" and some who are just "bad".
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Contrary to postmodern brainwashing, humans are INHERENTLY violent creatures. Watch little, pre-socialized kids: if A takes a toy from B (or even one B "was gonna play with next"!) B will ATTACK A.
I agree with your assertion, that humans have inherent violent tendencies. But your anecdote seems way off the mark -- I've never observed the behavior you describe, in my own kids or others'. Instead what I observed in young kids is (1) at a young age they don't interact with each other and if A takes a toy from B then B's focus is on the toy and grabbing it back, rather than anything related to A; (2) a baby's urgent survival instinct demands that it cry to get its mother's attention if it's in trouble, a
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A famous example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The smaller kid starts hitting the table rather than his elder brother!
Re: Because humans are cruel apes (Score:2)
I was going to post something very similar before I saw your reply. Wish I could mod you up
Violence is easy, it's not like you can ignore the concept, but from my experience it's usually a parents influence that causes violent kids - not the other way round as the op suggests (although that is obviously a generalisation). Socialisation is not created by civilisation - socialisation created civilisation.
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It's hard to undo millennia of evolution The whole reason our brains evolved is we realized cooperation get
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Back when Microsoft Flight Simulator still fit on a single floppy disk one of the default airports was O'Hare. Once I got good enough at takeoff and landing (keyboard only) I looked around for something else to do. Flew the included jet (Gulfstream? Can't remember) into the Sears Tower. It didn't collapse into itself though, maybe I should have paid to download the La Guardia airport.
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Contrary to postmodern brainwashing, humans are INHERENTLY violent creatures.
Humans!? Ha - as opposed to what?
See Gombe Chimpanzee War [wikipedia.org]
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That's social, and very modern. Only five generations ago most homes would have had one, if any, bedrooms and parents screwed in front of the kids because there was nowhere else. Victorian society was very sexually libertine in the upper classes, you were thought a bit odd if you didn't have at least one lover (of either sex) besides your spouse.
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I keep hearing this theory, but there is never an explanation from where social non-violent behavior came. What happened did alien civilize us? There has to be something else, which I personally believe is internal to people, not external to them.
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Social animals evolve cooperative strategies to get ahead, some of them eventually become ingrained in the genome. Because of the vagaries of genetics some people get more or less expression of those genes.
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Contrary to postmodern brainwashing, humans are INHERENTLY violent creatures.
I've also seen the exact opposite on the playground. Kids spontaneously helping, playing and being kind with each other. I think it depends on character and what they have experienced in life.
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Wow, where did you grow up? I'm jealous. My experience growing up was just the exact opposite, the weakest/poorest kids were fair game for the rest to abuse.
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In continental Europe. I go to the playground with my toddlers all the time. Sure, sometimes there are harmless struggles when some of them absolutely need to play with the same toy. That usually ends up with one kid crying as the stronger kid pulled the toy away, but it almost never results in violence.
For the most part they sit together, switch between playing alone or with others, exchange toys, it's peace and harmony.
Claiming that humans are inherently violent is hyperbole. Civilization is based on coop
simcity with disaster turned on (Score:1)
Simcity with disasters turned on and left for 45 minutes ends with a giant firestorm with all of the Sims dead. Ignore the fact that I only had 3 fire stations!
This is not a new thing.
You don't need to torture them (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't judge, maybe she had it coming. Not all marriages are roses and arguing who will take the trash out.
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It's nothing, new, either.
Give or take 1980, I recall:
1) investigating how fast I could cause a meltdown in Atari's nuclear reactor simulator,
2) encountering a flight simulator for a 747 (in BASIC, on an H-89), the first thing I tried after getting it off the ground was a barrel roll--which caused the program it to crash once it tried to put a put the angle of the plane more than 99 into the two character window,
3) realizing that we could mix and match cartridges, screens, and inputs on the Magnavox video g
Re: You don't need to torture them (Score:1)
I remember an old game from, probably, the early 90s called Life And Death where you were a doctor and had to perform proper surgical procedures in the correct way. It started with an apendectomy, if I recall.
I played with a friend, and most of the time our gameplay consisted of trying to carve a pentagram into the victim's.. . erm... I mean, the patient's chest, before we got stopped.
"Doctor, I think I'll take over from here." was the way it ended. Hilariously deadapan.
Because..... it's a boring game? (Score:2)
So why are so many players intent on murder?
Perhaps that's because that's the only fun thing to do in that game.
I tired it soon after it started - I could think of no other un-enjoyable, tedious "game" than this one.
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So why are so many players intent on murder?
Perhaps that's because that's the only fun thing to do in that game.
I tired it soon after it started - I could think of no other un-enjoyable, tedious "game" than this one.
I agree. The only real fun in it is finding ways to break the simulation's assumption, many of which result in deaths.
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So why are so many players intent on murder?
Perhaps that's because that's the only fun thing to do in that game. I tired it soon after it started - I could think of no other un-enjoyable, tedious "game" than this one.
I agree. The only real fun in it is finding ways to break the simulation's assumption, many of which result in deaths.
I've never played any SIM(tm) game but if I could kill sim politicians I'm in. Give em little faces that blather on and on and on but achieve nothing. We might even be able to get them elected, can't hurt.
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The original Sims is fucking stupid right out of the box. Characters are of adult age but can't microwave a burrito without burning down the kitchen. Fuck that stupid game. If I wanted to micromanage people I'd get a job caring for the developmentally disabled, at least then there'd be a purpose and a paycheck. It's amazing you don't have to take your sim to the bathroom, hold their dick and wipe their ass for them.
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Did a cat type this?
Googled for Sims concentration camp (Score:2)
Guess what.
A quote from 400 years ago (Score:2)
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.
-Gloucester, King Lear
Wish they still had a 'humble beginnings' version (Score:2)
People who are still into this (Score:1)
...need a life.
Or a Second Life.
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If I read TFS correctly, everyone being quoted is a YouTuber or YouTuber wannabe. Basically a self-selected cluster of pimples on the butt-cheeks of society.
I guess this is what Slashdot has devolved into - the story is about YouTube videos, so it qualifies as News for Nerds.
Pssh (Score:2)
Go look up the crimes against humanity you can do in Rimworld.
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Letsgameitout [youtube.com] caters to all the wacky and destructive things one can do in a game.
Simple: Envy (Score:2)