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The sims medieval part 112/1/2022 The point is that you can’t help but tell a little story internally - you might say that you can’t help but explain what you see. Or that the bird in the tree has a fondness for Nike’s. Or you might imagine that someone goes here to play tennis every now and then. Immediately your brain starts extrapolating a narrative script – you might imagine that some kids bullied two little kids by hanging up their shoes in the tree. Let’s say two small pairs of tennis shoes hanging from a tree. Imagine that you’re taking a walk, when beside the road you see something out of place. Before going into this, it’s worth a little stroll into the psychology of storytelling. Which brings us to…īlank slates are anonymous, filled slates are impersonal, half-filled slates are interesting. You are not so invested in the single Sim that you can’t do cruel things to it, if that happens to be the story you want to tell.Īll of this can be more or less ignored, if you try hard enough… but your brain is not about to let that happen. I even think the number of Sims you control reinforces this – since you control a family, you are not your Sim, you only control it, watch it, nurse it, like a pet, or indeed, a doll. Also, since there are not a lot of serious consequences in the game, it becomes fun and safe to be mean to people, or embarrasing yourself in public. You almost have to tip-toe through the game to avoid nudging a domino, which in turn will hit another, and before you know it, a story is already happening. In other words, you have plenty of opportunity (money) in an equally opportune environment (Vegas). The Sims takes advantage of this by including characters which are somewhat autonomous, somewhat flawed, and have plenty of capacity for actions that can disturb the status quo. It becomes kind of hard to prevent a story from happening. Consider giving two teenagers $10.000 and dropping them off in Vegas. The Sims universe is a space filled with storytelling dominos. It’s still not a story per se, but it’s personal and we’re getting there. As you play the game, the choices you make become part of your story, because you are free to shape it. 10.000 other players might also have a rock star sim, but theirs might not be blue-haired and hyperintelligent with an interest in gardening, a habit of cross dressing and a torture chamber in their basement. With these blocks, you build something cool, like a rock star or whatever you might want. You have characters, traits, activities, wishes, needs, objects, and so on. The Sims uses this to its advantage, by giving the player lots of building blocks, which in themselves are not very exciting, but in conjunction with each other become a compelling setting for an interesting story. How many stories do you know that include a police officer? A car chase? An abandoned hospital in a post-apocalyptic world? What I’m getting at is that all stories are made up of little bits, which are reused between entirely different stories. Telling stories is done by using standard building blocks. Let me explain how that is possible, through a series of statements and explanations. Sims Medieval, the latest installation in the franchise, actually does away with some of the things I describe here, but that’s a story for a different post!įor the purposes of this article specifically, I would characterize the Sims as “ a space within which to create personal stories”. I should also mention that I am not referring to any particular Sims title, but if you want to attribute one, you might make it Sims 3 for PC. Readers are very welcome to point me to some. I’ll file this mentally under “interactive dramaturgy”, a field which I wish I knew more about, but sadly haven’t really found excellent writings on. In the first, I’ll focus on the Sims ability to tell stories, and how you can do that without an explicit narrative, counter-intuitive as that may seem. Since there is a lot of ground to cover, I’ll split my writings into two articles. At first I didn’t get it – where is the fun at? What are the win / lose conditions in this game? Is it even a game? But gradually I’ve started to enjoy playing with dolls, as it were, and this is what I’ve learned on my journey. I’m just going to come right out and say it: I really enjoy the Sims.
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