The Long Game
Progress reports on the games we just can’t quit, featuring The Sims 4’ s millennials in microcosm
Maxis’ life simulator has always been a reflection of the times. When the first game released in 2000, it gave us control over a pint-size suburban America in which kids on bikes delivered the newspaper every day, and a cordless wall phone was the height of modern sensibility. These two items were how your sims would find employment. Boot up The Sims 4, however, and there’s nary a landline to be seen: each of your sims has a smartphone with which they can look for jobs, take selfies, post to their Simstagram story, and browse social media while on the toilet. And the daily paper? A print publication, in 2020? Don’t be absurd.
While the series has revelled in the bizarre and unlikely – being able to date the Grim Reaper springs to mind – the real joy of The Sims is in creating, observing and messing with recognisable facsimiles of ourselves. And so, over the past 20 years, the series has had to evolve in tandem. The current state of The Sims 4 gives us a glimpse of how much our world has changed through the lens of Maxis’ simulated one. Frequent base-game updates and a traditionally aggressive release schedule of paid DLC mean where once our sims pursued careers in medicine and law enforcement, now they’re using sketchbook tablets to eke out a living as freelance logo designers. They don’t need a wicked set of pipes to become a superstar – just a computer, as they broadcast their gaming sessions to thousands of followers for thousands of Simoleons. (There’s no option to be bought out by Mixer yet, but our virtual streaming pro Blinja lives in hope.)
The latest ‘stuff pack’, Tiny Living, is emblematic of this new era of The Sims. It introduces a new ‘tiny home’ lot type that grants sims living on it a bill reduction, alongside all manner of wildly optimistic buffs. (These include boosts to mood, relationships and skill-learning, which any flat-dwelling millennial will tell you is drivel.) The latest pack is a long-overdue acknowledgment of the game’s active community, members of whom have been setting themselves challenges to build the smallest, cheapest homes possible for years now. But this trend appeared because of the proliferation of real tiny homes appearing in the media, as young people increasingly construct their own affordable and stylish tiny homes to both escape the exploitative renting market and reduce their impact on our struggling climate.
It’s a fascinating causal chain, developing the series’ previous subtle criticism of consumer society into something actively encouraging. With The Sims’ appeal so tethered to representing humanity in microcosm, we can’t help but wonder what else we might see reflected back at us via our videogames in future – and whether it might possibly have an effect on its players.