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Playing God in The Sims 2
pgptag writes "From Daily News Tribune: 'If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless? The answer can reveal itself by the way you play "The Sims 2," the highly anticipated follow-up to the "real life" personal computer game "The Sims," which placed omnipotent players in control of the fates of digital people... What's funny is that we have a genetics feature now (which allows characters who mate to have children who share their looks and aspirations). So you can download some of the celebrities that the players have made, put them in the game and have them have kids.'"
If you always trap your Sim-ling in a pool w/o a ladder out, what does that make you?
If you're a god (or God) who allows people to play god/God on a computer, what does that say?
If you're a Sim-ling and you resent your Slashdotting overlord, do you have the right, nay responsibility, to destory his Quicken files?
this is the sort of artical that you read like 10 years later and sorta feel pity for how quaint it is. go find old videogame magazines, there are occationaly storys like this. find some from the apple IIGS era, you'll laugh and kinda feel sad reading stoies about how realistic and how close to simulateing reality and this and that, and you look at the game and its like three boxes with 2 numbers governing everything.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
TS2 is more addictive then crack. Yes, I play it. Lovely game, can do wonderful things and build wonderful stuff. You can recreate your family and make you brother a flamboyant gay or set your annoying little sister on fire. You can recreate your house with a 5 acre swimming pool behind it and a hot tub at 10m intervals. Did I mention it's addictive yet?
The only bad thing is the game's installer, which demands you hand over your balls to EA/Maxis and be known for all eternity as a faux-femme pansy for playing this game. I suck... :(
Hate me!
I honestly hope that Will Wright makes good on his statement that there will be more free time in Sims 2. That's the reason most of us quit playing the first game...after a while, it just got too depressing. It was like watching yourself go through life: wake up, eat, shower, job, eat, sleep. No ones want to play a video game to remind them of how monotonous and repetitive their own life is.
This game has been out for a few weeks... and this is just a summary of the game... since when has slashdot done free advertising?
I've noticed something. I live in Oklahoma, land of "christians" and serious godly folk everywhere.
Oklahoma experiences quite a few natural events that can kill, like F5 tornadoes, baseball-sized hail, 100mph straight line winds from thunderstorm outflows, and heat and humidity.
Well anyway, I've noticed that actually when bad things happen (like the aformentioned natural weather events listed above), it seems to increase the attraction towards god here in the red land state.
So honestly, be a mean god in the game. Smite people. This doesn't matter, they will still flock back to you anyway.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
> But seriously, has anyone said that the
> Sims is blasphemous?
In a country where some mothers 'tongue spank' their children by slapping a bottle of hot sauce down their necks, I think you can safely assume that *somebody* will have said that it's blasphemous.
Whether anyone gives a flying fuck is another matter completely.
..what someone describes as 'blasphemous' reveals more about their own insecurities or psychology, than it says about the $Deity potentially offended.
I found Black & White had a crude good/evil setup myself. As an introspective window into the player's own morality, it was suck. Being good basically amounted to spending hours micromanaging your villages, even feeding the little guys because they were too stupid to go get themselves food. You could finally start looking outside your own starting cluster of villages after about a good three hours of gameplay. So, The Sims 2 will probably be less frustrating, er, because you signed on to do that micromanagement in the first place. I don't get you Sims people. The only way to get the game to move along at any speed was to get on with the tasks of godliness and let the poor idiots back in your village starve to death. This naturally made you evil. That said, I liked the creature AI and innovative control setup, especially using gestures for miracles. I hope BW2 will give players who want to be good some options other than painful hours of micromanagement.
-sig removed for tax purposes-
First, this is my first-ever post on Slashdot. i have been reading it for years, now, and enjoy it very much. Finally, a topic came along that inspired me enough to create a user account and join. Here are my thoughts. I hope they make sense.
:(
I went to that link, "nematoddy" something- and read through all of the posts in that forum.
Very sad, indeed. My heart broke as I read comment after comment delighting in their depictions of "torturing" the "Sims".
Sure, they are nothing more than pixels on a screen, I KNOW that... but what bothers me is seeing how many of America's young people are actually ENJOYING those simulations of something so twisted and evil.
Do you know how Hitler was able to accomplish what he did? He got children and put them into special "programs" where they were given things (insects, small animals, etc.) to torture. They grew up in an environment where they were taught to take delight in the suffering of another.
Those children grew up, and became his infamous "SS" troops... the ones who would round up dozens of Jewish people into a house, surround it with guns trained on every window or door, then set it on fire with all of those families inside. If anyone tried to escape, they shot them. Woman or child, they didn't care. They did MANY other unmentionably evil things. VERY evil, very cruel, very inhuman. And they laughed.
How do I know? My mother is a survivor of the Russian occupation of (then) East Germany. She and her family were forced to run for their lives. They heard about (and even witnessed) a number of horrific things as they sought (and thank God found) freedom in the West.
Why am I saying this? Well, I really want everyone to THINK about what is being discussed! Just because these "Sims" are nothing more than computer-generated cartoons, doesn't make the THOUGHT PROCESS inside those young people's heads any different than what went through those Nazi SS children, as they tortured small animals, and eventually, grew up to torture fellow human beings with no remorse or mercy.
How did those terrorists deliberately fly those airplanes into buildings? How do these suicide bombers strap explosives to themselves, then explode in the middle of crowds of women and children? Because they undergo training as kids... they are taught that their own life is meaningless, and that they must kill as many others as possible in order to have any meaning in the "next life".
Believe me, if Hitler had technology like "The Sims" in his day, he would have certainly used it with his SS Youth training... only they would have made the graphics and "gameplay" a whole lot more bloody. (Games like "Grand Theft Auto" come to mind, but with much more "reward" for especially cruel methods of torture.)
Simulation or not, it is WRONG to delight in the torture and maiming of innocents.
So, there are my thoughts, and my first-ever post on Slashdot. (Flame suit on!)
Willie...
I'd be just like the real God. I'd create a couple of people and make them happy. Then I'd curse them for eating an apple, and shun all their descendents from heaven for thousands of years. Many generations later, I'd make a bet with Satan as to whether or not we can make a good man named "Job" turn bad by royally fucking up his life, just like the Dukes did to Dan Ackroyd in "Trading Places". And then when I got fed up with mankind, I'd pull a handful of them aside, along with a pair of each kind of animal, and put them on a big boat while I drowned the rest. And then I'd find another one of my faithful servants and I'd play games with his head too. I'd tell him that if he wants my love, he has to slit his son's throat to prove his love to me. And just before he does it, I'd stop him. And instead of bitch-slapping him for believing I could be so cruel, I'd praise him for his devotion. After a while, I'd decide it was lonely up here all one in heaven, so I'd have to start letting people in. But I won't make it easy. They're all sinners, and vengeance is mine. So, I'd send someone to "save" them all by allowing himself to pay for everyone's sins by being nailed to a cross and die a slow asphyxiating death. And I'd play more head games with all mankind, by ambiguously "revealing" myself in differet ways to different groups of people, so that they can kill each other over who knows me best. And because I'm such a nut for irony, I'd let a bunch of them colonize a New World (except that it's only new to them and not to the indiginous people they drove onto "reservations") and start a country based on the belief that all men are created equal, and that I endowed them with the inalienable right of liberty, and then I'd sit back and laugh at their hypocrisy as they hauled a bunch of people out of their homes in Africa to come and work for them for free. And I'd keep them guessing with "miracles" in places like Lourdes and Fatima that might or might not have a natural explanation, just to stir up more controversy. And I'd sit by and let six million of my people get slaughtered by a fucking nut. and then I'd let the survivors get all cocky and kick followers of one of my other Prophets out of their homes on the grounds that it's My will that the land is really theirs and that they should form a state there. And just to bring the religious hatred full circle, I'll sit back while followers of this other prophet fly planes into buildings on one side of the world and kill 150 hostage school-children on the other side of the world.
Then I'd look at my little creation and call it good.