Sexuality And The Sims

Jim Rossignol writes "An article on a new blog I'm contributing to discusses how The Sims (mostly the original, but also the sequel) gets used for sexual purposes, and also examines how this kind of response is essential to the appeal of the game. Here's an extract: 'On sites like Simulated, Eight Deadly Sims, Pandora's Sims and Strange Sims we see increasingly bizarre uses of the modding tools. While mainstream sites are for all ages, these have reached such a level of risqué or alternative content that the majority hide behind pay-for-access barriers to ensure that the users at least have a credit card (i.e. aren't minors), and to earn a little cash. Of all the mod cultures online — and virtually every PC game has users making their own additional content either in publisher-supported or unofficial ways — it's only The Sims which has such an obvious number of sites which demand money for access. This is particularly unusual: there's a clause in EA's tool license that they can only be used 'on your personal non-commercial website'. That Electronic Arts hasn't gone after such a sizeable community is interesting in and of itself.'" Jim Rossignol is a well-respected games journalist in the industry, and his new blog (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) is well worth checking out.

Comments

Sex and the Sim City

[CrazyJim1]

Obligatory? maybe

This is just silly

[TibbonZero]

The Sims is one of the few non-pornographic games that let you have sex and/or relationships of complexity with any other characters. Why? Because it's a life simulation game. If it were missing sex/relationships then it would be missing a huge part of life. That's not to say it's the only 'fun' thing in the game, or that it's even particularly fun in the game.
He takes the fact that you can have sex, to mean, "The purpose of this game is to score by, well scoring". It's not the purpose of the game any more than it is in GTA. At the same time, everyone's got to try it at least once in game right? Who hasn't slept with a hooker in GTA, then ran her over and took the cash? I know several people who have played The Sims just as a home decoration program to make fun looking houses, and forget all about the people.

Riiight...

[morari]

I remember when those pay sights went up. I had not yet become bored with the original game (anything after Hot Date is lost on me). They're not there to protect the children, they exist solely to make money. The Sims community is pathetic. What you usually get is a simple recolor and a terrible read-me; "hi, i made this. i hope u like it!". The fact that people are trying to sell this shit, and are succeeding, is merely a side effect of how Maxis and EA already run the game. You buy an expansion pack every six months, and the three month periods in-between see the release of a cheaper, completely mediocre "Stuff Pack". Capitalism and pretending to have friends isn't just the goal of the game, it's the goal of the surrounding community. Compare this to a Quake mod, which is made up of a team of motivated hobbyists who sometimes create an entirely different game within the confines of the system and then release it for free!

EA probably has no interest in making headlines

[vux984]

Right now the Sims is perceived by the public as a great family friendly game. The last thing they want to do is put the Sims in the headlines next to "adult content" or "bizarre sex acts" or anything that is going to cause an outswell of ill-founded but inevitable comparisons to the 'hot coffee' mod and general backlash against their game.

The original author

[Enderandrew]

Jim is a well-respected games journalist who apparently knows little about the games industry. The Sims is one of the best selling PC games of all time, and I wouldn't be shocked if it was the single best selling PC title of all time. What he is discussing is a small series of modders who added adult content to a title extremely popular with adults.

The original game is extremely family-friendly, features no sex and in that regard is somewhat lacking as a life simulator. The game is mundane enough that I don't think it ever really caught on with the kids, and despite having a predominant adult audience, the game is in no way adult in nature. The game doesn't cater to adult mods, nor were there any official mod tools that I know of.

The reason adult mods exist for the Sims, is that any major PC game often receives adult mods. If he had spent 5 minutes of a Google search he would have found several sites (won't Google for them at work personally) that cater to providing adult mods for any game out there. His supposition is completely flawed, disturbingly so for a journalist who supposedly specializes in the games industry.

Re:The original author

[SimHacker]

Just wanted to address a few points in your post:

The Sims surpassed Myst at the top selling game of all time, quite a few years ago, and has continued to sell very well. The franchise has sold about 85 million games to date.

The success of The Sims is largely due to the fact that players can add their own content to the game. Conversely, The Sims Online was a flop because it didn't allow players to add their own content, even though that feature was initially promised, to the delight of the fans, then later forgotten, do the fan's dismay.

Yes there are official and semi-official mod tools. I wrote the character animation system in The Sims, and several tools for creating custom content. Before we release The Sims in March 2000, instead of releasing a demo, I developed a tool called "SimShow" that displayed the animated characters, and enabled players to create their own Sims. After we release The Sims, Will Wright hired me to use The Sims source code to develop The Sims Transmogrifier, a tool for cloning objects, exporting and importing theie graphics and properties, so players can modify them and create their own objects. I've created other easier to use "drag-and-drop" tools like Show-N-Tell for displaying Sims objects in a web browser, and Rug-O-Matic for creating picture story rugs. (You can enter text that's displayed in the catalog and in an in-game pop-up window, that tells a story about the picture on the rug.)

One important way that The Sims is family friendly, is that it does not discriminate against families with gay people, nor does it perpetuate the hypocritical anti-gay homophobic agenda of the Republican party (like some other games from Texas and Senators from Idaho whose names I won't mention). Any of The Sims characters can participate in gay or straight relationships with each other, without any negative consequences or stereotypes. Anything less would be hostile to many families and gay people. Anyone who would argue that it's family friendly to discriminate against gays is homophobic, and needs to have their head examined, and work through their self-loathing personal issues with a mental health professional, just like Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, or Republican Senator James Foley of Florida, or Republican Evangelical Crystal Meth and Gay Sex Addicted Reverend Ted Haggard. (Oops, sorry -- I just couldn't resist naming some names.)

-Don