The Sims

Alright, this is yet another one of those "guilty pleasures" of mine, as this series of games can be so fun. Alright, I've had 3 versions of this game for the PS2 and one for the PC, and invariably I end up spending a lot of time playing these games. Of course there is always the normal way of playing these games, and that's fine, but it's so much more fun to mess with your Sims.

Sims are little simulated humans that are there for you to screw with. They eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, go to work, have fun, have relationships and a ton of other things that regular people do. But unlike us, every move they make is controlled by whoever is playing the game. Also, most of their actions are dependent on some item that you need to buy. Can't eat without food, or have fun without something that is fun. But the best application is to conduct social experiments on your Sims.

First of all, you can do the heinous things that you could never do in real life. For example, I have a serial killer in one of my neighborhoods. All he does is invite his friends to move in with him, and then he starves them by locking them in a room with no doors. You'd think the Sims would be smart enough not to move in with someone who has a well stocked cemetery in their back yard, but they're not.

James Bond lives in my neighborhood too, but all he ever does is swim, drink, and make sweet sweet love to all the ladies in the neighborhood. Neo lives in the hood as well in a trailer, and has terrible wallpaper, and lots of computers. Other than that, he goes to work, and pays his bills, but is just a normal guy, or is he? Then there's the sorority house, with the sorority sisters living there. That one is one I kinda leave running on auto pilot, so it's always a mess and they have great parties. I've got a northern camp resort where people live in a series of buildings: The bunkhouse, the mess hall, the shower house, the clubhouse and a couple outhouses. It's always a hive of scurrying back and forth. Then there's the Minimalists, who have everything they need, but nothing more. They have a very small house, they never get promoted because they don't learn skills, and they only have the items that cover their basic needs. Finally I've got the Outdoorser's, who only have 1 wall and that's just because I can't attach a toilet without one. They live outside and primarily have outdoor items, but they like it that way; it's a very green way to live.

I don't just starve my sims, actually only one of my sims does that, but occasionally I do remove all the toilets, or something sinister like that. It's actually fun to see how they react. Once, in the original game, I built an indoor pool in a room that had a fireplace, and when the fireplace was lit, it caught the surrounding area on fire, including the pool. There were two sims in the pool who caught fire and burnt to death while swimming. That was weird.

One other kinda funny thing to do with your game is if you're married, create yourself and your spouse and try to recreate your house. I did this once, and tried to make the Sims look as much like me and the wife as I could thinking I could get them to have a kid and see if it looked anything like any of my kids. Alas, no such luck. The kid looked really strange, so I made it do all the chores around the house, which I guess that's a little like reality.