Life-Simulation Game: The Sims

The video games of today take many forms, ranging from immersive fantasy worlds, to simple point and click programs with little, to no plot. Some games aim only to demonstrate an educational concept in a fun and interactive way, while others allow the player to step out of reality and enjoy a world of their own making. It is this wide variety of game types that makes it impossible to judge "video games" as a whole. For this purpose of this essay, I will acknowledge video games as belonging to one of two camps - violent, nonviolent, or educational.

Using persuasive writing, Wright begins to influence his audience that game play is a beneficial source of entertainment not a wasteful one. Playing video games increases creatively, self esteem and improve problem solving skills of the players. Video games are becoming test runs that appear or feel close to the real thing. Where you can control everything with added effects like magic or future technology. Games have the potential to exceed almost all other forms of entertainment media. They tell stories, play music, challenge us, allow us to instantly communicate and interact with others. Encourage us to create things, connect us to new communities, and let us play with people across the world. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently tangible. According to Wright young children spend their days in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make believe into the real world that they are just beginning to explore and understand. Wright states that games are the result of imagination and that they consist of rules and goals. Generation of teenagers has grown up with different set of games. Teenagers use the scientific method rather than reading the manual first. Games today maybe a person’s only place to express a high-level of creativity and growth. Older generations have a lot of criticisms for games, the games can help a person learn to think on his or her own.

“You create. You control. You rule in The Sims 4” (The Sims). The Sims 4 is a real-life simulation game, sandbox, and RPG. In this video game, one can create “sims”, build houses, and decide the outcome of their life. Sims are the avatars of the game, or graphical personification of a human image in which you can characterize and control while playing. This game gives users the ability to live vicariously through avatars of their own creation in a game with endless possibilities. With those endless possibilities comes a Teen ESRB rating for crude humor, sexual themes, and violence. In the game, music choice and language selection has influenced the appearance to the users. Since released, on the other hand, the users have influenced updates

Tom Bissell presents an article in 2010, to college students of which is “Why Video Games Matter.” Bissell isn’t intending for the argument to be about video game criticism, the history of the gaming, or an assessment of anything. On the contrary, he wants to articulate his own opinions and thoughts on what playing games feels like, why he plays them, and the questions they make him think about. Being a gamer myself, I have also endured the struggles of what being obsessed with a video game feels like. It is understood that when first purchasing a video game, all one thinks about is getting home and popping it in the console, disregarding everything else that is happening in the vicinity.

Our engaging simulation allows students to both compete and cooperate with each other in a multiplayer game that is partially physical. Students experiment with different government set-ups and solutions to social and physical issues without real life consequences. Students are incentivised by their own small businesses and own their creations in the game. Shared objectives (Pandemic style) to keep the virtual people healthy and happy are hard to achieve but require teamwork to meet common objectives. Students have an emotional investment in the outcome of their cities and companies, similar to role playing, but the role you are playing is as yourself. Although not on-par with commercial graphics and action we exceed in social engagement, strategy, complexity, and time on task (school time) unlike many games on the market today.

The game seeks to trick us for a time into abandoning what is real (home) and focus on what is inside our monitors and T.V.s. Baudrillard spoke on the process of a simulated reality in a multi-step process. “In the first case, the image is a good appearance – representation is of the sacramental order.” This can be related to the early days of video games when they used cathode ray tubes to project pixelated images onto a curved glass scene. Video games where very new, and exciting. “In the second, it is an evil appearance – it is of the order of maleficence. This can be related to games starting about 15 years ago till today. Video games were and still are thought to be a source of violence in people. Many view them as a waste of time and that they detriment a person. Though this mentality is starting to fade as we shift towards the third order “In the third, it plays at being an appearance – it is of the order of sorcery”. Technology is starting to advance to the point that anyone without training in the field cannot understand what is going on. As myths about video games negative appearance are being debunked or confirmed their negative aspects are getting swallowed up by the more exciting advancements in the fields. “In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances but of simulation.” At this level the video game stops being a game, and starts to become a part of everyday life (home). For as much as some may dedicate their whole lives to games, in the

life after a game is finished. When a child plays video games, the game can totally

Due to this “possibility space,” people can not only imagine different scenarios, but they can be involved in and create them. Gamers expand their people skills learning “creativity, community, self-esteem, and problem-solving” because they are able to “create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines.” Thus, video games have become a vehicle for self-expression. Moreover, in the near future, these games will adjust themselves in accord with who the players are and what they like. “And more than ever, games will be visible, external amplification of the human imagination” (279-283).

In the fifth grade I want to spend the summer with my cousin's year. She's my dad's twin’s daughter so that makes us more like sisters. During that summer she introduced me to this game called The Sim. The Sims is a life simulation video game series developed by EA Maxis and published by Electronic arts. The purpose of this game is to create humanlike characters called Sims and you as the player get to direct their life. You control whether they get jobs, start families, or cause trouble. For a couple of hours, in my case six hours minimum every time I play, you play God and are in complete control. After that summer I was. I have my parents purchased the latest game and I kissed my life goodbye. Over the course of a nine years I have wasted

Introduction: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I’m Mark Norfolk, a freshman programming major at GPC. Today I have the honor of introducing Dan Houser. Dan is a man who has influenced the lives of many through the questionable art form of video games. Having underlying tones, his stories often address morality. At first his games were simple. However, as he progressed further into storytelling, the games became more complicated, often weaving tales around complex characters. Because of these games, his company is thriving today.

Furthermore, emotions that, previously, could only be gained from face-to-face interaction and work ethic, such as accomplishment, can now be obtained through simulations and virtual connectivity. Turkle expands on why that is through her observations of gamers and a very popular video game, the Sims. One of the factors she writes about connects to the previous point that these worlds are instantaneous. With a couple presses of keys or a click of a button, gratifying environments can be programmed rather than putting in the time or effort to experience natural ones in real life. For example, Turkle interviewed two girls on what the Sims means to them and both used the simulation game as a way of creating an environment in which they held all of the power; by just choosing which traits their Sims can have, they can achieve things within the game with a touch of a button (Turkle 437). Alongside the attractiveness of instant progress, dangers and complexity of real world situations are taken out of the equation when one immerses themselves in the virtual world. Margalit also states this idea by writing, “When playing a computer game, for example, we can experience excitement, frustration, and tension, but we can never be injured” (Margalit 2014). Not only does this apply to physical danger, but emotional risks that

Competing classic games on social media will bring back bliss from childhood. Alexie notices that performing such acts will “exhume, resume, and extend childhood (Line 7). This shows that everyone will still have a child in them, but only in a certain aspect. Sharing equalities, such as scores and rewards that person earned through specific achievement induces competition and thus brings back the fun the group had. By rearticulating the fun activities that people can compete with each other, the childhood will remain constant through virtual

As kids, ‘The Sims’ game seemed like the picture-perfect game for the individuals to create their own characters and make them live the lives the way they wanted them to. Sounds like a perfect game, right? All the identities created by the kids or the teens were either largely different or there were small differences between each life created, reflecting on the idea that all the identities were produced depending on the persons own experiences which were then reflected upon the game and The Sims users. The notion of incorporating ones personal identity into the identity projected and created in ‘The Sims’ can cause one to become addicted to the identity perceived, appreciate the created identities differently depending on their own influences

"Hey guys!" They both said. "We are back again playing Sims 4." Phil said. "Yay!" Dan said. Lots of hours of recording later. "Okay we are going to end it here so see you guys in the next Sims 4 video." Dan said "Bye!" They both said. They left Dil sleeping and turn off the game and did something else. Dil open his and walked around by him self it was like he was alive. He looked straight up were he was see he's dads Dan and Phil. It was Christmas eve and all he wanted to was be with his dads on Christmas day but he knew it was never going to happen so he went back to sleep. A couple hours later Dil was awakened by Santa Claus. He was delivering gifts to the Sims. Dil was his last Sim to give his present too. He said Dil if he wanted to spend

Many young children and teenagers have heard their mother’s incessant plead to get away from the screen and to go outside or pick up a book for once instead. The urge to play “just one more level” before starting that homework or doing those chores can be quite distracting. But are video games really as awful as Mom exclaims or as brutal as those TV ads depict? It turns out that video games can have a strong impact on participants’ lives in both positive as well as negative ways.