The Little People In Your Games

1up.com's Crucial Classics series has a feature up discussing the little people inside your games. From the article: "...someone realize[d] that it was a niche to be exploited by computers, which up to that point weren't particularly cuddly. To be fair, neither were Little Computer People, confined as they were behind the fourth wall of a monitor. Which was probably for their own safety, as they were just the sort of creatures that might die a horrible smothery death in the arms of a little girl."

Comments

Great writeup

[ArmorFiend]

Great writeup! After an entire paragraph I have no clue what this story is about, Zonk!

Re:Great writeup

[atomic-penguin]

Yeah, it is a horrible blurb. "Little Computer People" is the name of a game for the C64/Apple II. It is the original life simulation game. Think of it this way...

"NetHack" is to "Diablo" as "Little Computer People" is to "The Sims".

GG Editors

[JFitzsimmons]

Can't RTFA even if you wanted to on this story. After you click through the advertising, there's no article!

Link to the article

[Russellkhan]

The link given just leads to the main page at 1up. The actual article mentioned can be found here.

Why the Apple II version?

[newrisejohn]

I think the Commodore 64 version looked a hell of a lot better. Those were the days, man.

I played this when I was five. The original disk still resides somewhere at my parents, along with a dead C64.

Abuse of Little Computer Lifeforms

[MiceHead]

I think it's interesting that people abuse the systems; and that the systems possess the capacity to be abused. The article points to a now-defunct website created by someone who enjoyed torturing their simulated being in Creatures. An excerpt:

Her name is Slave. After I created her I started by hitting her constantly for about 5 minutes. Then I taught her all the words(using the SST) so it would be easier to make her scared of her surroundings. After she knew all the words, I placed her in a small area, surrounded by the FF Cob, with 5 Grendels. I left her there for about 20 minutes, beating her when she attempted to defend herself from the Grendels. After she was sufficiently traumatized, I put her back in the garden. In the Garden I forced her to Get, Look, Push and Pull everything around her, all the time, constantly beating her. I made her fear running so I wouldn't have to deal with that little problem(you fellow torturers out there know how annoying it is to chase them down once they get away). I also forced her to eat weeds, rewarding her when she did so. At the time I exported her, she's a quivering mass of fear. She might eat, if you're lucky, but she probably won't survive long enough for food to do any good.

Also worth noting is some of the feedback this fellow received, including various death threats. The most well-known cases of abusive behavior towards simulated lifeforms probably occur in The Sims. From a Wired article on same:

To Wright, one of the most memorable albums told the story of a woman's abusive relationship and how she eventually got out of it. But a search on the Sims Exchange of the word "abuse" reveals that Sims albums have become a common therapeutic tool. All told, 63 albums deal with abuse issues.

Many of us have probably stomped anthills in our youth, (or worse?), and bullied/been bullied. Does this power dynamic fall along the same lines? The example from Creatures, above, surprises me. But I will admit to building a Sims household with a swimming pool and no ladder.
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Epidemic Groove - An indie-developed casual RTS/Action hybrid for Windows.