It Simmed Like a Good Idea at the Time...

Bet you can't guess how many hours I've spent playing video/computer games in the past year.

The answer: 1

If you don't know me well, this might surprise you because you would think a human under the age of 30 in 2011 would spend considerably more time doing so. If you know me well, this will surprise you because you would expect the answer to be 0. (right?! hahah I know -- I got sucked into Angry Birds one night...)

So we've finally made it to Chapter 2 in the Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs* saga, and get ready, because in case you haven't guessed yet, this chapter is about gaming. ("I think that's what the kids are calling it")

But in true geizer-before-my-time fashion, we'll be discussing one of the earlier breeds of computer games: Sims. But hey! Before you write me & Chuck off, take a moment to consider just what role this pioneer of a game has played in our current culture. Or even just consider how literal an ambassador it is for the general realm of online/computer/video games. What other generation of humankind has actually ever daily invested their own time and life-force into imaginary, inconsequential, terminable representations of their "selves?"

(Asking this made me imagine my great great grandfather coming in from a day of, oh say, building the farm he created out of a patch of barren prairie after moving to a new continent alone at age 18, and spending 3 hours re-enacting the things he did that day with a few sticks with faces drawn on them before tossing them in the fire. I think back then, that would've been called "crazy.")(Either that, or I wouldn't exist, because really -- where would a wife enter that picture.)

Before I go on, I have to say that here, I looked Sims up on Wikipedia and a couple of the basic notes just struck me as being so ludicrous that I have to share them here:

"The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game"
"It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons"
"Instead of objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment."

The first two there made me want to punch myself, just for comprising a fraction of a society that has produced the possibility for these sentences to be seriously said. The third one made me gawk in stupefied/bemused horror because, really? We needed to make up a game to do this in? I mean, I'm admittedly a fan of "the scenic route" but...too far, Sims. Tooooo far.

So the other interesting thing about this gaming phenomenon is maybe the (subconscious?) deification of ourselves that is (subconsciously?) assumed when we create and/or act through an avatar. This is the angle Chuck enters his chapter on Sims from:

"I am not a benevolent God. I am watching myself writhe in a puddle of my own urine, and I offer no response. I have not slept or eaten for days. My cries go unrecognized and my loneliness is ignored. I am watching myself endure a torture worse than death, yet I decline every opportunity to end this self-imposed nightmare. Darkness...imprisoning me...all that I see, absolute horror. I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself; my body is my holding cell. I am the master, and I am the puppet," (p.12)

"...some things are just too enchanting (and just too weird) to ignore. Those were my thoughts when I first read about The Sims...a video game where you do all the things you would do in real life if you weren't playing a video game," (p.13)

Seriously. That's what the game is. I've never played it, and I would sooner lose all motor functions than voluntarily do so. Why on earth would I want to spend time I could be doing something in actual life with actual life results/consequences .. doing .. stuff I'm not actually doing .. with utterly no results/consequences ... ? (<-- that's my tie-in for anyone reading this who is (subconsciously?) talking themself out of acknowledging the applicability of this discussion to "games" that are not Sims/"regular-life-based")

(Hey, if I lost all motor functions and you had to take care of me, it would kind of be like Giant Actual Life Sims, huh?) (Wait -- wow -- maybe if we made sick/suffering/struggling people our "avatars"....naaaaah.)

Anyways, speaking of playing God with real humans, Chuck goes on to describe the mundane world of the Sims as the place where you order your Sim to do things like read the newspaper, take a nap, take out the trash, buy oak bookcases, and get a pizza from Domino's (p.13)

"This is the whole game, and there is no way to win, except to keep yourself from becoming depressed. The Sims is an escapist vehicle for people who want to escape to where they already are," (p.13)

My mind wants to take this in 38 directions, but I'll just pick a few for both our sakes.

1. I should shed some light on the dark paragraph I intro'ed Chuck with in this entry (the one about writhing in despairing darkness) -- he was speaking as the person behind the Sim avatar -- in the game there are different settings I guess, for Free Will (eg: if you don't enable some Free Will in your Sim, you literally have to order it to do stuff like "go pee" and "stand up" and "eat")(seriously. punching myself in the face over the fact that fellow human beings have actually done this with their time.) So if you just leave your Sim without giving it any direction...you could find yourself staring at this pathetic being, pointlessly and uselessly "existing." (re-read that sentence, but replace "Sim" with "self") Free Will is an innnnteresting thing, my friends...

2. So the "objective" if you can whittle it down, in this game, is apparently to just keep yourself from becoming depressed. HMMM. Does that sound like a familiar objective? I guess the way in the game to keep your Sim from becoming depressed is to keep engaging it in activities like upgrading its possessions. HMMM. I'm about to use a phrase that, in this context, will probably make a few of us puke or perish, so heads up.

If "art imitates life" ... are we seriously living in a society whose ultimate objective in life is "to just keep ourselves from becoming depressed?"

3. Escaping to where we already are. Again, please apply this beyond Sims, and beyond the realm of gaming. Apply it to any escapist, consumption-based "vehicle" you get in on a regular basis. When it comes down to it, whether it's World of Warcraft or Twilight or sleeping in... we are essentially attempting to some degree to rewrite our reality. And it's not a bad thing necessarily. Imagining and venturing beyond the bland realm of "reality" as we tend to see it through our human eyes is a magical and fantastical part of what we do. But with great power comes great responsibility, right? (<--see, some of the best Truths come in comics)


I don't really have anything wise or clever to say about escapism to cap this entry off, but my old friend JRR Tolkien does:

("the flight of a deserter" vs "the escape of a prisoner")

"Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls?"



...

Use it wisely, grasshopper.