While playing The Sims 4 — the latest iteration of the wildly successful video game — I decide that my Sim should aspire to become a Bestselling Author. To help out, I direct her to sit before her laptop. I cancel her urge to Check Social Media or Video Game, and choose to Practice Writing. One hour passes, then another. She develops Hunger, and her Bladder strains. But she will Practice Writing for another hour — and have Fun! I eventually allow her a break to Cook Spaghetti. Tomorrow she will Write a Book. If it is a Bestseller, she will make many Simoleons (the currency of SimNation); if it is Normal, she will make fewer Simoleons. She experiences no doubt about the profession I have chosen for her, and what little angst she harbors about her solitude I soothe by having her Talk to Plant. She sleeps peacefully and wakes with her Energy bar full and green, ready to begin all over again.
When The Sims debuted in 2000 as an offshoot of SimCity, the metropolis management game, it introduced a kind of play that many gamers hadn’t encountered: Rather than taking place on a battlefield, it unfolded in everyday suburban life. Instead of tallying ammunition or kills, it tracked water consumed against bathroom breaks, assets and job advancement. The Sims rendered magic from the mundane, becoming an instant best seller. In total, four base versions have been released, along with dozens of supplementary expansion packs that add new environments to explore, skills to learn and hobbies to try.
This year, to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Electronic Arts re-released The Sims and The Sims 2 to be compatible with modern devices. I remember begging my parents for The Sims 2 after it came out in 2004 — they offered me a pirated copy unearthed from a Malaysian street market — but I’d forgotten the healthy sense of sadism that undergirds these original versions. They celebrate, far more than their successors, how quickly the quotidian can devolve into disorder. “Brace yourself,” instructed the re-releases’ promotional video, in which a Sim house party unfolds like a bad dream: As Sims soak in a hot tub and cook grilled cheeses, the home security system sounds, a kitchen fire blazes, and the Grim Reaper lurks.
Reacquainted with these older Sims games, users have been struck by the way chaos has been scrubbed from more recent versions. In a curated playlist of TikToks, “Reasons Why TS2 Is Peak,” one user recalls how past Sims shook after drinking espresso, fled from falling televisions and left bags of flaming poop on a suitor’s doorstep after a bad date. Another video demonstrates how Cooking Spaghetti — an act that takes many laborious steps in The Sims 2 — has turned into a twitchy blur in the newer releases. Comments overwhelmingly bemoan how The Sims 4 “lacks the soul” of its predecessors.
How, players wondered, did the life simulation game get so lifeless? That the world of The Sims resembled its raw, offline counterpart was important to its creator, Will Wright, who saw in it a tool for real-life education. Owing to his Montessori schooling, he viewed games as “software toys” capable of imparting practical lessons. Wright envisioned a virtual dollhouse where players faced an ever-expanding set of choices, as they navigated life and its random disasters: pranks, burglaries, electrocutions, house fires, social worker assessments — even infectious guinea pig bites. Wright hoped that through these trials, players of The Sims would learn a valuable, imaginative form of problem-solving.
But after Wright left Electronic Arts, the gameplay of The Sims gradually became less detailed and, more intriguingly, less difficult: Players have widely observed that in The Sims 3, released in 2009, and The Sims 4, in 2014, skills seem to build up more quickly while needs slow down. Whereas Sims once needed a vehicle to get to work and shop for basic necessities, they can now leave home and magically appear at their chosen destination; there are no drivable cars. Formerly fatal electrocutions have been downgraded to temporary shocks. There are no more social workers, and for years, there were no burglars; Guinea Pig Disease has been eradicated. (If you want deadly rodents, you need to purchase an expansion pack.)
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