“Miss Martinez I’d like to file a complaint against your creations! Your little Ansel has not only superglued all the computer mouses in the library to the desks but he also superglued the principal’s toupee to the school’s mascot while his sister Erica is going off to nightclubs doing what you hooligans call twerking-on table tops! We eat off those things for goodness sakes! What do you have to say for yourself ?” “…Um Yolo?”
You must be thinking what kind of awesome, sorry, I mean horrible parent would allow their kids to do these things. My parents never let me skip or super glue a toupee to a school’s mascot. No actual sane parent would let their kids get away with these things no matter how much we wished they’d let us. There is, however, a game that gives its player the ability to make such decisions and more. Thanks to the role-playing simulation The Sims, players are able to do anything they want freely and experience zero repercussions.
The Sims gives a player the ability to control virtual characters lives and their day-to-day decisions. Maxis, the owners of The Sims franchise, labels the game as a “people simulator” because it grants the player the ability to create a healthy, well-balanced virtual person (a Sim) who can look like anything a player desires. Ever wonder how someone would look with green skin and purple hair, not so pretty, but want to make a similar version of you? Done! You can even change the things about yourself you don’t like (even though you’re perfect just the way you are). With the Sims players can make him or her be anything they desire. Want to make a five-star celebrity Sim who is even more popular than the *cough very fake cough* Kardashian family? Easy! Want them to be a surgeon? All it takes is sitting at a chess board for four hours and, BIPPITY BOPPITY BOO, you got yourself a certified surgeon. But wait, there’s MORE! Players can control everything their Sims do such as: putting a Sim to bed when they’re exhausted so their energy bar fills up, choosing what they eat, whom they talk to, when they shower so that when they go out nobody has to smell the (literal) little green emissions coming from their bodies.
Often times, Sims are like robot animated children who need guidance from their players, their creator, which can occur in the form of a “lovingly” forceful mouse click. If a player feels especially mischievous, they can simply lock the Sim up in a room and set it on fire via fireplace or fireworks or place them into a pool and take away the ladder and watch them slowly accept their impending doom. Sims are not immortal beings that have rock hard abs for days and sparkle when they step out into the sun (Sorry not sorry Twilight fans) They age up and die too, just like me and you. Something interesting does happen after a Sim dies: the Grim Reaper appears with an iPad, and to take the Sim away. Before they can disappear the Sim can even befriend the Grim Reaper and have little Reaper babies with them. It’s a sick concept but it’s still a cult phenomenon.
Although The Sims is about everyday life, it does cause a certain side effect for players. Players use The Sims to fulfill their own fantasies they may not get to experience in real life, whereas in a virtual world, they may do whatever they please. The only limit is a player’s imagination…and the game’s software capabilities. While playing, users can develop a God complex, experiencing an unshakable need to subjugate other individuals. By giving players the ability to control (simulated) people’s lives satisfies the God complexes many of us may have buried deep deep inside. Don’t deny it.
Being able to control how a person talks, walks, eats, looks, marries, lives, and even dies all with a click of a button can make anyone feel powerful. The game is fun for players, being able to sit back and watch the Sim they created go out to live their life. Seeing how their creations, their Sim, has come so far from that little job and rundown house they had to being a big-shot at the top of their career while living in a luxurious mansion with a family (though the genetic lottery in the game is really unfair). It all happens over the course of a few hours that you could have been using to do your homework (not saying this is why my homework never gets done on time).
Now, playing The Sims doesn’t mean every player has a God complex. I play the game, and I don’t have one (or do I?). Playing The Sims gives me an opportunity to create another life away from the stress of reality and the huge amount of crippling debt that heading my way. Creating houses and people of all shapes, races, sizes, and different personalities without any limitation other than imagination is something everyone should be able to enjoy, God complex or not.
