Psychology Stuff: The Sims

And now reader, we will begin our journey through the psychological stuff relating to video games. Why Tabs? I hear you ask, as you are already reaching for the mouse to click off the page and go watch a cute video of a kitten instead. So let's get that out the way first - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8 - all out your system now? Good, let's get down to this shizzle. 

The Sims has been voted one of the most popular video games of all time, which is surprising as it's not a conventionally exciting game, never the less, there are a lot more Sims addicts inhabiting this socially reclusive world than there are extreme fans of GTA, or SSX. In the game, gun fights and car chases are replaced with washing up and baby spawning, yet it has become one of the most widely played games of the 21st century. Since its release in 2000, the true psychological possibilities of the game have been brought to a metaphorical light. 


The game was actually created with human psychology closely in mind. To create the actual sims, ideas such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs were used and personality was created with Myers-Briggs. So, basically The Sims 2 uses the psychology that certain theorists have discovered to be present in humans. This is why many seem to project themselves into the game. Studies which have been completed in this area are mostly exploratory, as the nature of the research is relatively new. In a particular study looking into how a player projects themselves into the game and pass on personal values to their sims, participants were told to play the game for 30 sim days (or about 10 human hours). They also answered a few questionnaires about personality and values (something the 12 year olds in Tonbridge obviously haven't grasped yet) etc. etc. The whole gist of the finding was that people recreate characters in the sims which are closely linked to themselves - we all know this already - it's what we all do when we first get our hands on the game. You make yourself (taller and thinner, with nicer hair and muuuuch more attractive) and then get abducted by aliens, have a litter of alien bubbas, buy a mansion and live with your 12 little aliens and a robot butler, obviously. 


Another little thing that was quite interesting about this research was the fact that participants with parents who were divorced, often made their sims divorce each other. When you think about it though, it's pretty obvious that if you were recreating your life in a virtual world, you'd recreate everything. However, it's when people play for different reasons that these shared values and personalities become significant. For example, people play to feed a God complex, wanting to control everything through the 3rd person view of the birds eye camera. People play to have their virtual self go through experiences that they themselves are too scared to complete, they use the sim as a test subject for their life, even creating a potential partner to see how a real life relationship would turn out. 


So, this post has the capacity to be very boring if you're not a simmer. However, if you have, like myself, been addicted to the series since The Sims 1 came out on playstation and it broke and then your Dad bought you The Sims 2 on PC, hopefully you can identify some of the aspects of different sim use in your play. We can even go as far as to predict The Sims becoming an unconventional tool for use in future psychological research or treatments, as it has the capacity to become more realistic than the usual Rorschach tests and dolls. 


I play The Sims for a break. I suppose in some ways I do project myself into some of my households, but I don't consciously create a sim that represents myself and see myself in different situations. A lot of my families are actually quite different to my own life, I have sporty sims for example, whereas my exercise for the day is walking from the living room to the fridge. I think that's because The Sims can become an tool for escapism, creating a life that's totally different to your own that you can control and dictate is a lot more fun than research for English Lit, or essays for English Language. 


So, if you are a simmer, or have ever played The Sims, why do you play? Are you a psychopath who has run out of live victims and need to torture the virtual? Are you bored of your life and would prefer an alien brood? 

BYE