Comments on: Time/Space Compression in The Sims 2

By: Darren Torpey

Darren Torpey — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 20:42:00 +0000

"I've seen so many simmers on the game's online BBS who found themselves wishing that life would pause, fast forward, and occassionally reload without saving. Is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't know."

Well, we certainly might have a lot of fun playing around in ways which aren't normally safe, sane, etc. ;)

Seriously, though, this brings up interesting questions about what games can bring us that we don't have otherwise. Since games provide safe places for exploration, we can do many things we wouldn't do otherwise in games. And when the characters seem (in some ways) to be like us, that can certainly be a thrill.

The question, then, might be this: Games can offer us safe places to "play around" with ideas we couldn't or wouldn't otherwise pursue, but are the paradigms that underly our games ultimately bad for our society and/or personal psychology?

By: Jo Brosius

Jo Brosius — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:03:00 +0000

I was playing with a friend. A big part of her strategy is the cheatcode for money, because she perfers the family life for her sims, unburdaned by the worries of trying to make ends meet. She doesn't even have the patience now to make her sims buy groceries or call the repairman. She just sells the fridge or other item and buys another one.

Now, I know why she does it, because she wants to play the family game and not the money game or the maintenance game. But yes, it is unrealistic.

Many players buy this game for the purpose of playing god. For the level of control they don't have in their own lives. I've seen so many simmers on the game's online BBS who found themselves wishing that life would pause, fast forward, and occassionally reload without saving. Is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't know.

By: Darren Torpey

Darren Torpey — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 13:48:00 +0000

First of all, thank you for writing this. Your IQP should make for a very interesting read.
I'm glad that you and others like you are taking a good, critical look at the ideas that really underlie our games. Further, it's great that you're using other fields of human studies to shine light and suggest paths to discovering more about the meaning of games in our culture.

That said, I will admit that my feelings about this type of thing are rather mixed. Mostly, the feeling is of frustration, since this issue is so LARGE.

It seems that firstly we (game designers/critical thinkers) will need to learn more about what effects games have on people and at what levels they do so.

Second, we'll need to consider, along with all of our intellectual peers, just what effects we might WANT games to have. Also, we might consider how non-traditional aesthetics might make it into gamers minds as a whole.

There are so many ways of looking at this issue, I'm just going to stop for now and leave it with emphasis on how I started it: thank you for getting us started on these issue. I hope, in particular, that your paper will help bring in more intellectuals from other fields of study to help us tackle these issues.

By: Craig Perko

Craig Perko — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:01:00 +0000

I like it, although there's a bit too much padding for me. But you don't say what it MEANS. What effect does it have on the player? What kind of play does it foster?

I know, I know, it's not really a game design thing. I'm just saying what I personally want to know more about.