As an avid Sims video game player, I found this article to be a real eye-opener. I would think, whenever I'd play, about what my characters do in their life in comparison to my own life. The game is so addicting that I would mindlessly control this "person's" life for hours but never really accomplish anything by doing so, save buying pieces of furniture, entertainment, and other expensive, useless things.
Yet, I still would wonder... Why are we, the consumers, so captivated by this game? The game of life. (I think it's kind of humourous that while we are playing someone else's life, we are wasting our own.)
I realized, while playing the game a few months ago, it is so interesting because we can see what this person wants. We can see their mood and their dreams and who they have connections with, etc. In my life, I am constantly bombarded with thoughts that contradict themselves and I am also confused by my needs as apposed to my desires. What mood am I am? What will make me happy? What do I want my career to be? What are my interests? Who do I actually like and who am I just "class partners" with?
While I am struggling with these thoughts that are constantly changing, my Sim is a source of consistency. You can read them and understand them by the charts on the side. There is no guessing as to what they want when their bars clearly state hunger, full bladder, comfort, etc. This is our chance, also, to break away from our lives and create someone either better or worse than ourselves. Feeling bad about yourself? Just make a Sim who burns down the house. He's worse off than you are! Want to imagine being rich and powerful? Just use the cheat codes and watch your Sim float in thousands of Simoleans instantly.
Are we a bad society for playing Life with someone other than ourselves? I don't think so. This is our chance to entertain ourselves in a safe, relatively cheap, and fun (sometimes) way. As much as I would like to think deep into this game about life and how it shows my ethos as a person or the facts of living, etc, I'd just like to think of it, also, as just a game. Just a way of losing our identity and taking in someone else's for a few minutes/hours while we play. Sometimes a game is just a game...
>>I think it's kind of humourous that while we are playing someone else's life, we are wasting our own<<
ReplyDeleteHa - yes, that's one (slightly depressing) way of looking at it.
The questions you pose plague the best of us, Jen. It's incredbily difficult just to figure out what the hell we're thinking. Sometimes, as you point out, escapism is more important than figuring it all out TODAY.