Sims having real Human Characteristics

In the virtual world of the Sims, there are a number of neighbors your Sim(s) encounter throughout the game. Most of the time when you start up the game and load your property, neighbors come and welcome you. The dominant group of the people who show up at your door would be the heterosexual families with a husband, wife, and kids. Another dominant masculine role would be the single male who tries to flirt instantly with your female Sim. Although, the Sim world is not judgmental when it comes to sexuality; Sims accept all in their community as long as they are respected. Homosexual couples are rare in the game, which makes them less dominant compared to a heterosexual couple.

            To begin with, developers of the Sims included real human traits that make each Sim have human feeling and characteristics. One characteristic a male Sim has and uses in the game is the male gaze. Hodkinson states “cinema reflects ‘the unconscious of patriarchal society’ and reinforces the subjugation of women to heterosexual male control and desire.” We all know in society today that heterosexual males seem to be confident in what they want and how they portray it.

         Another aspect of the Sims everyday life is their style. Unlike in the real world where people make fun of each other for a guy looking too girly or a girl looking like a boy; Sims accept everyone just as long as their personality is good, take care of their bodies, and stay clean. Hodkinson states, “Gay men have probably been more frequently represented in mass media than lesbians and other sexual minorities, […] they show to express clear expressions of their sexuality in lyrics, imagery, interviews or public appearance.” With this being said, homosexual Sims aren’t afraid to show who they really are to the public. For instance, a male Sim would feel comfortable and be accepted by other Sims for wearing bright colors, tight clothes, colored hair, and make up on their face. If a person in real life dressed like this, they would probably be labeled unlike in the Sims.

To conclude, the Sims is very much like what we experience in real life. Males do gaze at beautiful women for how they dress and act on the Tv and in public. The Sims also shows it’s ok to show off who you really are through style and dress such as a person being girly or boyish.  However, the Sims does seem to dominate the world with heterosexual families as when you visit the neighborhood you see many families spending time with their kids and spouces.

Sims Gamers Enter the Public Sphere

            The Sims, a PC Game advanced over the years with the content of the game and carried over to social networking through the EA Games website and The Sims Official Facebook Page. Social networking allow its gamers into the digitalization era to the communication through the public sphere.

            Havermas’ a theorist of the public sphere illustrates his vision of the sphere as an area where people can go to engage in a situation where people can vote on ideas, share ideas, and exchange in different information that can be commented on. It is also believed that through the connection and engagement through the public sphere; can lead to a stronger and well diverse public culture.  

            Facebook is an example of how the public sphere is being connected through culture and the engagement of wide variety of different information provided by users. Not only can people share information and post information about themselves or a topic but can share comments about other people’s posts. This feature is also being seen through many website provided by organizations, groups, and companies. This is a way the fans and the public can engage with others about how they feel on situations.

As the world grows to a more digitalized culture; many ways we do actions and performances change. We are at a time where digitalization allows our society to communicate instantly and could be shared publicly.  Digitization provides people to enter the public sphere at ease to their own individual interests where that can be shared.

            EA Games and through The Sims took the advantage of facebook and their website to engage with their fans and the outside community. By The Sims entering the public sphere through these sources allow people to share their thoughts, ideas, and comments about their experiences through out the game. From what I have seen from The Sims Facebook page is, many users share screenshots of their houses they built in the game and how they fashioned up their Sims wardrobe. Also, usually about every day there is a poll-taking place on different topics of what The Sims gamers like most about the game and different questionable polls.

            To conclude, The Sims took advantage of social networking and the global web to allow its fans to enter into the public sphere. This is a positive feature provided for the fans of the game to communicate with other gamers and provide input and receive feedback.

             

Expansion Packs Influencing Everyone

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As I explained in past posts, The Sims is a game that is continuously growing through what it offers. Many expansion packs have been designed to interest consumers to purchase the games; because of what the expansion pack offers. 

When EA games come out with a new expansion pack for the The Sims, I believe they are looking to attract more consumers to buy their game. The main game “The Sims” may look attractive to a particular group of gamers but when you add for example “Showtime Katy Perry” it attracts another group of people to playing the game. The picture below is the cover of The Sims 3 Showtime Katy Perry; it definitely is an eye attractor for girls and fans of Katy Perry Music. This strategy EA Games is playing is Ideological Myth where they are influencing consumers to be drawn to their game through the use of including ideas and other sources in the game. To finalize the Katy Perry example, this game and cover attracts many females and in particular little girls who like fashion, music, and ultimately a Katy Perry fan.

The Sims Community grows constantly with the fact that EA games is always looking for a way to grow their game and their consumers. The game currently has a wide variety of games where it draws many gamers to The Sims because of what features and ideas the game has to offer. Katy Perry may attract the female community but probably not the male community too much. An expansion pack that I find most appealing to males is The Sims World Adventures. It is an expansion pack where you as a gamer can travel the world to areas such as Paris, China and Egypt. Don’t get me wrong, it does attract females to playing it; what girl wouldn’t want to find a boyfriend in Paris for their Sim. But, mostly this is attracting to males because it’s a game with missions and adventure. On the cover below it shows many different situations in the game, romance, fighting and treasure hunting. The fighting and treasure hunting is the focus to guys being interested in this expansion pack of the game.

To conclude, the expansion packs for the Sims is just “an add” on to the regular Sims. The expansion packs just offer more to the virtual world. Ultimately, when different expansion packs influence different social groups and types of people, it is influencing the gamer to play The Sims.

Game Cover with Explanation

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The Sims is a game where the gamer creates and rules the life of their virtual person and family. The cover of the first version of the Sims explains quite a bit of what Sims can be and what they can do. The top left image of the cover (image above) shows that a gamer can make the Sim live its life as sneaky burglar. If the gamer wants to be more just and more respectful the gamer can choose to make its Sim live a life in the military such as the solder in the bottom right corner.  The Sims is all about creating and living out the Sims lives in any realistic way we can do in life. The cover shows a great example of what the game has to offer for the virtual Sims and I believe was a good illustration for the first game.

The reason why I believe the first cover of The Sims was so great is because it signifies and shows gaming consumers what The Sims is about. The signifier of the game cover would be all the different images of The Sims. Every Sim is different by occupation and age. Another signifier of this cover would be the title text “The Sims” with a roof of a house above the letter “M”. This signifies that the game has to be about building a house or living in a house. To look at these signifiers in a syntagmatic way; we would see that both signifiers come together and show the viewer that this game is about creating virtual people and houses.

Covers for virtually every video game on the market requires an attractive and narrative cover to draw in gamers to try out the game. As I stated above, The Sims was right on target with their design of their first cover in explaining what their game was about. EA Games created many new versions of the game; which allowed gamers to have more objects and locations to play with in their virtual worlds. The Sims was once again on target with advertising those new versions with covers that modeled and explained in an illustrative way what those games would feature. Below you can see a select few of the newer versions of the Sims that illustrate beautifully of what the game is about. 

Social with the Sims

The computer game The Sims was a big hit when it first released its first version back in the year 2000. This game allowed gamers to create a virtual person, build its house, and ultimately control what their Sim does in the virtual world.  Many years have passed since the originally game… well actually 13 years have passed where many new versions of the Sims game were created. And much more technology was researched and developed. Also, with so many years passing by, The Sims fan bases were created online and kept growing to where it led Sim gamers to share and talk about their love and passion for the game.

The online fan bases that were created online are a perfect example of McLuhan’s explanation of a cool medium. The reasoning behind this is that articles and posts are created constantly through the Internet where readers can easily comment back and forth by sharing their opinion and idea to the articles.

            EA Games the creator and developer of the Sims created a social page through Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TheSims3) where gamers can collaborate ideas and be informed of new updates and new downloads that were released. This form of media is pretty fast and easy to be informed compared to a hot medium such as a newsletter being sent out to households about other gamer’s input/sharing’s and new updates for the game. This example of social media goes along with Paul Du Gay and colleagues (1997) especially when it is explained about when with this statement “users can engage with the technologies and identity concerns the way in which such consumption practices are intricately connected with the development of individual and collective subjectivities.” Technology is ultimately a way to share media in a user-friendly way where each reader has an ability to interact with it.

            In-conclusion, The Sims may have started off with just the game and no social media but has grown to a online medium of social interaction. In present day, the Sims and the advancement in technology allowed the Sims fans to an ease of interaction of sharing their Sims online and receiving most up to date releases instantly. This is a great advancement and ultimately a cool medium.