virtual reality

JAMES COLLEY GETS TO KNOW HIS WIFE VIA A DOWN-TO-EARTH VIDEO GAME.

I’d never understood the appeal of The Sims. When I played video games, my goal was to save the world, defeat the aliens, or at the very least, kill a very large and angry turtle. The idea of a game where my only forward thrusts were the hope I wouldn’t die alone and unaccomplished, and satisfying the needs and desires of a bunch of faceless people didn’t exactly scream escapism. I’d have brief forays into the world as a kid, but it always resulted in horrible ends for my ‘Sims’, worthy of the Saw franchise. That surely wasn’t good for my mental health, so I popped it aside.

My wife, on the other hand, loves The Sims. Perhaps more than she loves me. It’s touch and go. (I know it’s not a competition, but if it were a competition, I’m not 100 per cent confident I’d win.) She took to the game like a duck to water a couple of years back, after a recommendation by our housemate. Armed with a fistful of infinite-money cheats, she quickly fell in love with building a world for her Sims. Honestly, I didn’t pay too much attention. I was happy she was happy, and that was enough.

But slowly, I started to ask questions about the game. How had it managed to enchant her, yet left me empty? Is it because I find the lives of people who aren’t me inherently boring? Yes, but not entirely. There had to be more to it. So, I sat on our couch as she took me through the world she’d created.

It’s an incredibly telling moment when you see your life partner’s Sims game for the first time. What kind of a world would you build if you had all the powers of a god (and no one was looking)? Fortunately, by an improbable twist of fate, I’ve lucked into marrying an angel, and her Sims patterns attest to that. She’d built a diverse, pansexual paradise filled with beautiful, eco-friendly housing, plus the occasional wizard or mermaid.

Even the couple of characters she’d allowed me to make were still wandering about. Granted, they’d been confined to a certain corner of the island, as a blue-bearded pirate and an alien in a scuba suit didn’t really fit with the rest of society, but it touched me for some reason. It was like having your artwork left on the fridge. Objectively shit, but important to them because you made it. That was nice.

I also discovered the seedy underbelly of this beautiful realm. Despite looking sweet from the outside, the Sims world was a hotbed for tawdry gossip. My wife told me about the man who’d been cheating on his partner with their housemate, only to get both of them pregnant, have them find out about each other, leave him, hook up, and go forward as successful and accomplished career women in a loving relationship, while he stayed home attempting to care for two infants alone. A short time later, a wedding was cancelled when a cheating scandal was exposed at the altar, shocking the groom so deeply that he immediately died.

At last, it clicked. This game provided something that other forms of entertainment wouldn’t: diverse and compelling storytelling. Where television and film failed, The Sims had provided a space where she could reflect on the world as it was – the world that was familiar to her (though with a few more melodramatic scandals).

I’ve started on the journey trodden by bored girlfriends of straight men the world over for decades: learning to be interested in a video game out of love. But now, I’m excited to know about the world she’s building and which storylines are coming next. And it’s only partly because I know she’s already made a Sim version of me, and if I mess up, that poor digital dickhead is a goner.