Monday, March 08, 2010

At EA I worked with mostly young men who weren't that into the doll house aspects of The Sims. They would use the money cheat to mac out a house and play parties and they killed Sims in every possible way. I'd venture to say that the many ways there are to kill a Sim are well tested. It kind of irritated me but these days my game play is all about killing Sims. I'm not trying to set them on fire or swarm them with flies. I'm just playing the game until they die of old age. I'm doing this with all of the Sims I made to build my community. It's actually a very emotional experience.
This morning I started to play in a house in which the grandfather had died and the grandmother had a day of life left. When I entered the house the grandmother was having breakfast with her grandson just as I had left them. The game zoomed in on the table when the lot loaded and seeing them there made me weepy. I played out the day and put the grandmother's headstone beside her husband's under a lemon tree in the back yard.
They both had long and successful lives. In her last days she wasn't rolling any wants that I could meet. It was like she had given up. For no obvious reason one of the dogs began to sleep on her bed with her. This is my favorite kind of game play. Filled with surprises and sweetness.
In the Sims it is possible to resurrect a Sim but I don't really play the occult stuff. I like seeing my Sims floating around as ghosts. I like the alien abduction/pregnancy scenarios so I let them happen but no zombies, werewolves or plant people. I did test the occults when I was working.
Funny.