The Sims: Life Recuperated (To recuperate is to take something potentially threatening to the status quo and repackaging it as a saleable commodity - e.g. the hippy movement, punk rock etc.) That is kind of the essence of the Sims, isn't it? - the experience of Life put into an addictive game format and sold as a commodity. So, the Sims Hot Date for example is the experience of going on a date with someone crudely converted into game format and sold for profit; the same with the Sims 2 University, with the experience of going to university. The Sims really can be seen as life recuperated! On a related note, why do we find the image of a Sim washing up fascinating (therefore justifying the purchase of a recuperated version of life), when in real life it is seen as a boring chore? What is this difference in mindset? Some branches of Eastern spirituality (most notably Zen Buddhism) teach that it is possible to view all aspects with life with a sense of fascination not only equal to, but more than, that with which we watch Sims' lives. This way of seeing things is called mindfulness. Maybe while playing the Sims, we are thinking mindfully? What do you all think?
Misinterpreting I believe you are misrepresenting the definition of recuperate. recuperate v. recuperated, recuperating, recuperates v. intr. To return to health or strength; recover. To recover from financial loss. v. tr. To restore to health or strength. To regain. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition And recuperate \Re*cu"per*ate\ (-?t), v. i. [imp. &. p. p. Recuperated (-?`t?d); p. pr. & vb. n. Recuperating.] [L. recuperatus, p. p. of recuperare. See Recover to get again.] To recover health; to regain strength; to convalesce. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. As you see the idea of packaging, status quo, or reselling are entirely missing.
Erm ... Zooty might be using recuperate incorrectly but then he isn't that far wrong either. recuperate/recover both come the latin recupare. Many a book gets re-covered before it gets sold. Of course re-cover isn't the same but then it is kinder to assume a complex pun than to haste to assign error.
Ah, sorry, I thought that I was using it in a non-standard/philosophical sense was obvious. The concept of 'recuperation' is part of a philosophical theory, about which you can learn here: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/240 . Sorry to cause confusion. Now we've cleared that up, I'd be really interested to hear people's comments. She.
I'd just really like for us to discuss the Sims, rather than just using thse forums for solving gameplay problems and occasionally conducting a little poll on styles of gameplay. Not to disparage threads which do this, but the Sims is such an interesing phenomenon which raises many questions on a wide variety of topics, and it seems to me that the potential for 'Geneal Discussion' about the Sims is not being fully realised. That it is a worthwhile experience for us to reflect on our gameplay experience is demonstrated by the number and level of use of game discussion boards, and the fact that their populations are not transient and are not just concerned with finding solutions to problems with their games. So let's start to reflect. Let's start to examine our experience and discuss it with others - for me at least this would be interesting and worthwhile. Some of us spend so much of our time playing with this game, surely it merits a level of discussion greater/ deeper /whatever than that which is currently on these boards. I don't mean to artificially mutate discussion away from what people are interested in, this is just a suggestion for what we could start to use these boards for more. If noone wants to, that's fine. It's just a suggestion. Please tell me what you think.
Well my problem is that I understood, more or less, your original premise and after skimming through your reference I see that wasn't very far off. I just don't agree with you. The game is not really a metaphor for any kind of life that I know about. It's just a fun activity that also mimics some of the events of real life, but not in such a realistic way that any serious direct comparisons have any value. Besides which I don't have a great deal of truck with pseudo-Marxist claptrap.
I see it as an escape. It is a world that I created myself. I have created the inhabitants, for the most part (except for the NPC's and the townies), and I can, with some patience and understanding of gameplay, manipulate it to make them do whatever I want. I want this one to have an affair, fine. I want this one to die of electricution, then I'll have him attempt to fix a stereo. Of course, this doesn't always work, which is part of the challenge. And, there is always the added bonus of new discoveries. While you are into Philosophy, Zooty, I am into psychology. I love watching human nature evolve as simulated in the game. I like to experiement with the "Nature vs. Nurture" theory, or create households with sims of differing personalities and watch them interact. I also am fascinated with genetics and like to see how offspring will turn out, what they will inherit. Of course, like Mirelly said, it's just a game and nothing as complicated and exciting as real life. But for me, in this small controlled enviornment on my PC, it's my world and I like to play with it.
I agree that Maxis is innocent of attempting to recuperate life. I just thought it was an interesting, if not entirely serious, idea. Hmm, well, the situationists pretty much reject Marxism outright. They are more anarchist if you're going to brand them with any specific political ideology, yet this is also rejected. They are Marxist in that what they comment on is (broadly speaking) sociological, and Marx was a sociologist; they are also Marxist in that they are radical (in the sense that they reject the current state of affairs), and Marx was also radical in this sense. But the similarities between Marx's theories and the situationists' theories pretty much end there. It is interesting how anything vaguely radical is immediately tied to Marx, who is in turn tied to soviet-style communism, which is tied to faliure, thus leading a lot of people to identify radical social/economic/political ideas as impractical, doomed to faliure, claptrap etc. I am not saying that this was necessarily your thought process! I am just saying it is what often happens. Yes, I love this aspect of the game too. I love creating engineering a neighbourhood, and presiding over the interactions between the inhabitants, creating and sustaining their lives etc. It gives me so much satisfaction to create families and social dynamics for each generation, to look back at a Sim I played a few weeks ago that is now the great-grandmother of this child that has just been born out of a one-night stand between this husband of this absentee knowledge wife and a free, reckless romance Sim (third in a generation of freeloading hussies) who has dumped her offspring on its father for him to look after as well as his three other kids.
LOL Yeah, you play like I do. You know, I'm such a mild-mannered Mom, the kind who drives the mini-van and takes her kids to ballet lessons and never ever goes out with the girls because people might talk. But, I have the most fun playing out love triangles and "kept women" and trailer-moms with several children from diffrent fathers. It's like letting my darker side come out. But, then again, I still haven't sunk so low as to start murdering Sims just for fun. Then again, I do have this one that I keep having him work on the broken dishwasher, just because I don't like him and think he needs to be electricuted. LOL
I haven't had the heart yet to kill a Sim either. The closest I've got is getting this pair of elders to drink the elixir of life a few times with r1 asp level. I wanted them to die because I wanted their house for someone else, and I wasn't interested in them enough to play them till they died of old age, because I created them mainly to be the daughter's mandatory carers. They died happy and fulfilled eventually though, so my conscience is clearer than it would have been otherwise.
