, a simulation management game produced and developed by Maxis Software and released by , the American Electric Art Company (EA) in 2000, has successively launched the second, third and fourth generations, as well as more than 70 expansion packs in 20 years, making it the world's highest-selling series of electronic games.
From the beginning, this game is very similar to reality. When you pinch a villain and let it enter the community of the simulated world, you will find that if you do not use any cheat codes (motherlode), the villain's basic property can only buy a simple one-bedroom apartment, and then there will be no money for decoration and buying electrical appliances. It requires finding an introductory job to survive. Although the initial salary of different industries varies, it is almost the same, which is only enough for daily expenses. After a day of hard work, all the status bars of the villain turn red, and it will feel tired, hungry, lonely and even angry. When you are alone, social values are the most difficult to recover, so no matter how poor you are, you need to install a phone at home to contact your neighbors (the villain in the Sims generation does not have a mobile phone or tablet, and you need to use a landline). When a villain indulges in social life or wants to start a relationship with pink bubbles, he will have no time to adjust his status to work, and his working status will be damaged and he will not get a promotion or salary increase, and he will fall into poverty and anger.
It is really difficult to simulate the world with bare hands and fight hard. If a villain unfortunately becomes pregnant or chooses to adopt a child on the computer and becomes a single mother, it will be a nightmare mode. The Sims did not make it easy to raise a baby. It took a long time to grow from a baby who couldn't talk to a child who could carry a schoolbag to go to school. Children could at least get potato chips from the refrigerator. The baby was completely dependent on his parents for breastfeeding and changing diapers, and he also needed to tease it and coax it. What's worse is that whenever a villain hears the baby crying, he will wake up and spin around the stroller. In the fourth generation game, villains can also develop bad emotions when they get close to smelly babies. And if the baby's needs are ignored for a long time - the problem is that the baby does not speak and cannot see its status bar, and other than trying what it wants again and again, they cannot know its needs - community workers will come and take the child away. I have encountered such a sad situation. In conjunction with the tragic moment music of The Sims, a staff member in a uniform walked into your house to take the child straight away. I don’t know when the next time I see this child.
The death of a villain is also cruel. The villain will be burned to death due to cooking fires, repairing electrical appliances will be electrocuted, and being a cashier in the snow will be frozen to death... Such incidents are caught off guard. Later, the game designed the "return to the soul after death". The dead villain will appear in the form of ghosts at night, which is also a kind of comfort to the players.
"What should I do if my child was taken away by a community worker?" "How did my villain burn to death?" Such life troubles often appear in the game discussion group. But just playing games, why do you have to experience such a real and cruel life? After playing, you will find some tricks of the game, such as, you can just hook up with Mr. Gauss who lives in a big house without having to work hard, convince him to divorce his wife Bella, marry your villain, and then take over the property for yourself. Becoming rich from marriage, the rules that The Sims follow are indeed somewhat ironically similar to reality.
Since it is so similar to reality, what are fans playing when playing The Sims? This article believes that the excitement of The Sims is that people can perform "fan creation" of popular culture and witness the possibility of the diversification and prosperity of romantic love.
Pop culture and fan creation
The Sims allow for free creation: freely pinch people and build houses. Many people will add pop culture themes when playing games, such as the popular Modern Family or Big Bang Theory, which is now popular. Game fans will try to restore the characters and scenes in the Sims, and then use these characters to perform their own plots.
Building a house requires some basic architecture and design. In contrast, pinching people has lower requirements for player skills. The Sims's technology is more refined than the next generation. In " Sims 4", you can choose the character's teeth shape and skin details, plus different makeup styles (eye liner, blush, lipstick) and accessories (Dior bags, iPhones, earrings and nose rings, etc.), which can almost imitate the Sims into anyone you want to imitate. The Sims were once popular in the forum of "The Sims", Fan Bingbing, Jolin Tsai and Song Hye Kyo. Recently, some netizens also shared their own sims of "HTM1 Deadly Women ". Some players will also put themselves into the scene drama of "Modern Family" and use the selfie function to take photos with Gloria.
It is not enough to create similar characters and home displays, and the setting of the story clues of the "Sims" is more important. How to make these characters live a life that meets their personalities and wishes after they repeat the basic needs of hunger, cleanliness, sleep, socializing, etc., test the player's screenwriter and imagination. Many years ago when "Gossip Girl" was popular, I also started a story with the role of this American drama. Dan and his family lived in an ordinary little house. I asked Dan and his lover Serena to have a child, and then let Dan work hard to reach the peak of politics and become the mock mayor (the highest level of political experience at that time was the mock mayor). Every day, helicopters came to pick him up and get off work; Dan's son joined the crime career and became the most senior criminal in the city. The father and son have completely different choices, but they live in the same house. The father and son are in an emotional crisis because of their different careers, which makes me excited.
borrows familiar characters and creates new stories with "The Sims", which many people play like this. In an article in The Guardian, the author also recalled that a friend of him moved the characters and plots of "Friends" into the simulation world and designed a plot that was "more exciting than the original". Not only are fans of film and television dramas who love to produce fandoms, some CP fans will create CPs corresponding to reality in "The Sims" and take screenshots of their daily life scenes full of warmth.
is like fan culture and fan comics. Such a story of "The Sims" is also a kind of "fan creation". As American scholar Henry Jenkins said in "Text Poacher", such fan creations are secondary creations made by fans looting popular culture, grabbing resources from them, and conducting them on this basis. Regardless of the inspiration source is the American drama "Modern Family" or the Chinese screen CP, the result is a proven fan's ability to recreate in addition to consuming film and television dramas and idols.
Jenkins pointed out that this type of creation is different from ordinary parody. Its emotional atmosphere is so unique, extending all aspects of the characters' emotional life and revealing what these characters think and think. It explores the subtext that the original work has not fully unfolded, extending the characters and plot beyond the original works. Fans interpret texts follow a kind of "emotional realism", which refers to fans understanding popular TV series and idols from their own life experiences and immersing their own experiences into the realm of fiction - even if they know that the characters are fictional, emotions can be real, and use their own interpretation to strengthen their sense of identity with the characters and their world.
The view that "emotional realism" is confusing with self and fiction can be interpreted by the behavior of fans of The Sims who are keen on discussing the plot of people, instigating villains to fall in love, and filming the love scenes with others. A more interesting phenomenon is that in the Douban "The Sims" group or forum, fans will chatter about the relationships, sexual orientation, fertility, and some bloody marriage and love stories. This kind of discourse active in the fan group is also very similar to what Jenkins calls "fan gossip" (Jenkins believes that "fan literature" is the materialized text of oral gossip).
Jenkins classified "fan gossip" as female discourse, believing that it is very different from the public political discourse reserved for men. Although patriarchal discourse usually considers gossip to be "stupid and boring", gossip is actually an important female discourse resource, allowing women to communicate closely and establish social relations. "The power of gossip as a female discourse is that it can make abstract things concrete and transform topics of public concern into personal personal relevance." In addition, gossip can also give women who are often subordinate to discuss controversial topics. Interpreting from the perspective of Jenkins' "fan gossip", some fans in the group used "perverted crazy" to describe the plot of the characters they set, some shared the story with the title "It's great to be a scumbag", and some called on "Gathering the Beauty (sisters' synonyms) to join the WeChat group", which can be regarded as a manifestation of discourse communication away from authoritative surveillance and releasing private nature. Because the previous one is called "The Sims", you can freely "gossip", which is probably one of the benefits of "simulation".
Romantic Romance and the protagonist of "scum girl"
The above article has talked about the self-interpretation and emotional tendencies of fans when playing "The Sims". Romantic Romance in "The Sims" is one of the key points of the game. According to official statistics from EA, a total of 1.6 billion Sims have been generated in the 20 years of "The Sims", and 1.3 billion "woohoo" occurred. From the first kiss on a date to the engagement and even the "joyfulness" between characters are the most ritual moments in the game. At those moments, roses will fall, fireworks will bloom, and concerts will start. Some fans also made wedding ceremony scenes of different villains from one generation to four generations into videos in churches, arches, beaches, homes and other places, witnessing the 20 years of changes in the world's romantic relationships.
In "The Sims 4", you can choose his/her fertility attributes when pinching a villain, whether you can make others pregnant, or conceive yourself, whether you sit or stand to go to the bathroom, or you can freely match feminine or masculine clothing. In other words, the gender of the Sims cannot be judged entirely based on appearance, so some players will suddenly find that a character who looks very masculine actually has no gender and does not have the ability to get pregnant. In addition, the fourth generation of human creation interface also adds an alien option. You can design an alien yourself, or you can create parents, siblings or children who simulate villains based on genes.
By "knocking people", "The Sims" seems to tell players that since the physiological attributes of villains are like they can be selected at will as they are displayed on the shelves, there is no problem of accepting homosexuality or not. In fact, in the previous generations of The Sims, homosexual and same-sex marriages were already present, but at that time, homosexual couples could not have children (sometimes men could get pregnant through accidental incidents such as kidnapping of aliens and then give birth to a small alien. This design is undoubtedly a bit bad), but it can still be adopted via computer or phone.
The romantic love in "The Sims" has steps. The villain usually needs to establish friendship, meet their preferences, and set off a romantic atmosphere, otherwise he will be ruthlessly rejected by the other party and increase his disgust. But what is interesting is that even in the heterosexual relationship mode, the relationship in "The Sims" does not have to follow the differences between the man and the woman. When the time is ripe, the boy can kneel down to the woman with one leg, and the girl can also propose to the man, or even give the man a princess hug or lean over and kiss fiercely. Compared with those love-building games that limit the various routines of "men chasing women" and "snatching girls", this kind of reversal relationship that is not bound by gender is undoubtedly a kind of liberation. In the words of the Guardian's commentary, the world of The Sims is utopian without gender differences.
What’s funny is that such a gender-free utopia liberates more stories of the protagonists of "scum girl".In the "Sims" group, we can see that many players are addicted to designing the heroine as a "scumbag girl". Her romantic journey is to "mount several boats", although they will encounter some embarrassing situations, such as being jealous and "slapped in the face". Many players call the heroine they control "my daughter" and carefully set up romantic plots for her. This tendency reminds people of the behavior of women reading romance novels analyzed by Janice Radway. Radway pointed out that women give romance novels meaning because romance novels can provide a "ideal love story", which will pay more attention to the self-personality independence and self-identity improvement of female characters.
's consumption of romance stories not only satisfies the audience's romantic imagination, but also provides solutions to conflicts. ——This is reflected in Eagleton analysis of "Jane Eyre". Eagleton believes that "Jane Eyre" resolves the heroine's love dilemma, which may be irreconcilable in reality can be resolved. Jane Eyre finally succeeded. She can enjoy power and experience love, maintain dignity and gain wealth. After interviewing many female readers of romance novels, Radway concluded that on the road to personal independence and self-identity improvement, it is very important for readers to properly solve the problems they encounter, because once the heroine can solve her problems, her story can give hope to people in reality.
From this perspective, gamers' obsession with "scum girls" and their recognition of their "daughter" are very similar to readers' imagination of reading romance novels and substituting heroines. Gamers hope to solve the problem of "scum girls", which is also very similar to readers' expectation that the heroines can be solved. The difference is that players can more actively control the direction of romance stories, no longer be readers, but become creators themselves. How will they write romance stories? In fact, the game mentioned above that controls the heroine to marry the rich Mr. Gauss can also be regarded as a genre story originating from "Jane Eyre".
Recently, I also found mods of wicked whims (Chinese translation as "gentleman's bag"). This is a game package for adults, designed and contributed by animation makers from around the world. This package not only includes jaw-dropping sex positions, but also unlimited character relationships, as well as some interesting places such as a strip club with neon lights and built-in steel pipes. This game package expands the Sims' sexual scenes that are always limited to some places and are imaginatively imaginatively to more places. If your main character is a "scumbag girl", she will have a broader display space. This package is not officially produced, it has poor stability and needs regular updates, but these problems cannot stop the enthusiasm of game enthusiasts. Of course, some people complain that the appearance of gentleman bags will make the game distort and will completely deviate from the focus of the game. However, the vigorous development of mods of sexual and romantic diversity also reflects the game's encouragement of intimacy full of imagination and freedom.
There are more things we can say about "The Sims", such as NPCs active in the game, which also makes us wonder whether we are also NPCs active in the world. "Are we sims who are someone to raise the line, or NPCs who make up for the number of people? If it is sims, why don't players use cheat codes to recharge us?" This is also a "Sims"-style philosophy that is active in the fan group.
Related books:
"Text Poacher: TV Fans and Participatory Culture", [US] Henry Jenkins, translated by Zheng Xiqing, Peking University Press, 2016 edition
"Bronte Sisters: The Myth of Power", [English] Terry Eagleton, translated by Gao Xiaoling, 2019 edition
3
