Passing this out for the readers as The Sims Community’s VRevis wrote a lengthy article on Examiner about the psychology behind The Sims. Love it, she pretty much nails the point about why the game – and community – is as great as it is (yeah, I may of reworded that wrong, but you catch my drift):
“There is an incredible community that has developed from this game”
Although the game itself is a one-person-game, one point most can agree on is the benefit of the community surrounding the game. The Sims community is huge, with forums on the official sites, and many smaller forums and websites across the world. People develop true friendships that go beyond game-discussion.
When asked on Simbology, a site dedicating to modding the Sims 2 game, “what keeps you coming back to the Sims game?”, many were quick to bring up the community aspect. “If you’re a Sims player, there are so many sites to join, participate in and have fun with. The spirit of the ‘community’ is something really special, and I don’t think it has been duplicated with any other game quite as much. We’re like our own little neighborhood, and everyone knows each other pretty well.”. Another states, ” You can be a part of a real community; friends that help with your problems – be it gameplay, pc (or mac, etc) and any part of your offline life you want to share.”
Thanks, Jud!
Overall, a nice article, and I think the discussion of the multiple appeals of the game is right on.
However, I had a few issues with it. For instance, the Sims is by no stretch of the imagination an RPG, as the term is understood in gamer culture. Yes, it’s a much-contested term, but, as a minimum, an RPG is story-driven… as in, a story written by the game developers, not the players. (Even “sandbox” or “open-world” RPGs invariably provide a “main quest” that the game is organized around.) Sure, a player can tell stories in the Sims, but the stories are provided by the player, not the devs. And an RPG is centered around the actions of a single character or a small party… whereas, in the Sims, you can switch at will among any of the Sims in your town. No Sim or household is inherently primary.
I’d also have to disagree with some of the characterizations of the community. To start with, I’d have to disagree with this statement: “The spirit of the ‘community’ is something really special, and I don’t think it has been duplicated with any other game quite as much.” Lots of game franchises have communities every bit as dedicated as the Sims… in some cases, just as idiosyncratic (though in different ways)… and, of course, every one of those communities think they’re “special” 😉 Check out the Cyan Worlds community sometime if you think Sims players are uniquely cliquey and obsessive 😉
However, the Sims community DOES have some characteristics that set it apart from every other video game community I’ve ever participated in… which makes me also doubt the assertion that “.there is no “typical” simmer in the Sims community”. There is plenty of demographic variation, yes. But there is still a shared ethos. In contrast with other game communities, the Sims community tends to require its members to act “nice”… in sharp contrast to the aggressiveness and competitiveness commonly found on message boards for other games. Which is not to say that Simmers in aggregate are actually, GENUINELY “nicer”… there’s as much backbiting and territoriality and infighting and drama as you find anywhere online… but amidst all of that, you see plenty of evidence of people orienting to a “niceness norm”. (Which, I have to say, sometimes grates on me… as it can lead to censorship of dissenting views, including self-censorship, and general insincerity.)
Simmers also tend to be much less well-informed and more naive about gaming and the videogame industry, computers and computing, and general Internet culture than folks who play other games. Which is just to say that Simmer culture, unlike the cultures around other games, does NOT widely overlap with “geek culture”. Yes, plenty of geeks play the sims. But they are so far outnumbered by non-geek simmers that they can’t count on being understood if they use “geekspeak” in a Simming context. For instance, I’ve seen threads on several Sims boards where folks have had to have the name (of a Sims 3 townie) “Cycl0n3 Sw0rd” explained to them (any geek recognizes that mixture of letters and numbers instantly as “leet”).
… and to conclude that very long rebuttal, heh, let me reiterate that I have no issue to take with the bulk of the article 😉 I simply think it lacks a bit of perspective about the relation of the Sims community to online communities, and specifically gaming communities, in general.
And poor leet at that! Imagine their confusion if he’d been called ©’/©|_()|\|3 5\/\/()|2|). 😛
Srikandi: point taken about the misclassification of the Sims as an RPG, and I will correct that in the article; however, regarding your other points I will say this: the quotes I used were from many different members of the community. Sure, there is a darker part of the community, but I am not about to open the can of worms on the “less nice” segment of the community. For one thing, there seems to be this idea that if members are not insulting or bickering with each other, then they are branded as a “care bear forum”. Those are two extremes, found in any online community, whether it be gaming or something else. They are not the people I am interested in talking to. There does tend to be clique-ishness (pardon me inventing a word) with the darker segments of the population. But their issues tend to be more personal, long-standing grudges, and not about the Sims game, at all, therefore, irrelevant to what I was writing about. Same goes for the “nice” communities. I was looking at the more neutral population, who could talk about the game and their experience with enjoying the community, without going into the “drama” found in other areas.
I also am not going to give any more credence to this implication that simmers are not serious gamers, and are, therefore, naive, and less-informed about computers, or the gaming industry. I gave no statistical data on who does what with the game, what machines they use, what their knowledge of the game a/o the “industry” is, because that was not what I was focusing on; I have, however, posted on forums to get feedback of longtime simmers, and what keeps them coming back to the Sims. The overwhelming response was “community” and “creativity”, and THE SIMS is what this article focuses on, not other online gaming communities.
VRevis — yeah, I realize that some of the statements I took issue with were quotes from players, and not your position 🙂 Should probably have made that clearer.
And I agree with your objection to the (common) use of the term “casual gamers” to refer to Simmers. Sims players are not, by any stretch of the imagination, casual about the Sims, any more than a Halo or WoW player is casual abut Halo, or WoW.
My comment about the level of technical sophistication in the Sims community was not a critique, merely one of several points of difference between Simmers (taken as a group, and as reflected on Sims forums) and other gamers (taken as a group, and as reflected on THEIR forums). And yeah, I realize that this was not a point you took up in your article. To me, as a reader who is a gamer and interested in gamer culture, it’s very interesting though 😉 The Sims is not unique in that it provides a community… lots of games (and other activities) do that. The characteristics of the community it provides, however, are different in some, but not all respects, from the communities provided by most other games.
Not the point of your article, I know 🙂