Trigger Happy
or sulk all by themselves as the player watches. Your job is to change their environment to their advantage and help them succeed in the careers you choose for them; but you can also set up deliberately fraught love triangles and chuckle over fights in the chintzy living room.
The Sims, by genre a God game, computerizes exactly the kind of voyeuristic fascination that led to the television programs Big Brother and Temptation Island becoming such a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic, with the added attraction that you can meddle directly with the environment. As an openended process toy that attempts to simulate complex social interactions and affords the player great freedom in her actions, it also became very popular among women: numerous testimonials on the internet and in newspapers described how women who had always previously been bored by videogames found themselves thoroughly addicted to the management of their Sims household.
The Sims also, however, exemplifies the rule that any attempted “recreation” of the social world inside a videogame is predicated upon a set of moral and political assumptions. In this game, consumerism is the preferred religion: much of the gameplay centers on
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