There's an article in this week's New Yorker about the leaders, past and present, of the video gaming industry. It made me dig out my copy of “Sims 2” that I got last year. I "played" it once and filed it with the cd of pictures from my aunt and uncle's trip to New York two winters ago. I'm just not a gamer. But the New Yorker article reminded me I had a virtual dollhouse on my laptop where whacked-out bullshit could be experienced in a consequence free environment. Like it was Studio 54 circa 1976…or college.
I spent two hours building my first Sim family, The Scotts—Kevin, Jeff and Christian (their humpy cowboy roommate). It proved to be impossible managing three shrieking queens in a bilevel Cape Codder with no open bar and too many neighbors stopping by. Though the virtual making-out was kinda fun, I quickly got bored of rotating them in and out of the bathroom. Gay Sims—like their human counterparts with the clap—have to piss all the time. If they're not having to go pee, they have to eat, hug, relax, clean, shower. On and on. All of these desires are jabbered in their unintelligible language, which sounds like backwards Portugese. Their thoughts and dreams are helpfully exposed as little icons in thought bubbles over their heads. Like God or a nurse, you have to DO something about it before they shit themselves or throw a fit.
I eventually tuned out of The Scotts and turned off the game entirely. Later that evening, I rebooted the software to check on the boys. It seems the algorithms that dictate their mock reality just keep on truckin’—even when the software is off—because the new opening scene showed Kevin Scott in his bathroom, huddled over in agony, dying. His partner Jeff and Christian were nowhere to be found...apparently dead. A thought bubble appeared over Kevin's head with Jeff's face in it. It was an oddly myopic moment. Then the Grim Reaper appeared and hacked Kevin down with a sickle as Kevin yearned for his lover Jeff in a thought bubble surrounded by hearts over his head.
Game over!
I just hope their binary imprints are saved in the same folder someplace on my Mac so they can be together in Sim Heaven for eternity...or until I drop or reformat this laptop.
What terrors befell The Scotts while I was watching cartoons on Fox? Sims software made me a post-modern techno Yahweh. I was asleep at the wheel while my careful creations—made in the likenesses of childhood crushes and former tricks—died slow, painful, unsanitary deaths in their own filth, right in front of their glib, jabbering neighbors. The existential lesson is obvious: God IS one of us...and he’s busy eating Doritos in front of “American Dad.” So cry or pray all you want, cuz he’s not checking on you til after “The Flava Of Love Season II Reunion.”
Once the Scotts were dead and gone, I was free to indulge another family scenario. I started a Sim household comprised of me and my teenage crush, a varsity football player named Doug Hudson. I considered using my actual boyfriend, also named Doug, but I decided I couldn’t bear to see him die in our computer-generated household. And anyway, it was becoming clear that the game is an excellent place to work through unrequited love.
Doug Hudson and I moved into a doublewide in a quiet part of Pleasantville. He flipped through the paper and got a job working in a criminal courtroom. Something about the digital Turtle is incapable of holding a job. Or keeping digital Doug Hudson’s attention, for that matter. In the beginning, my character had options like, “Hug Doug,” “Flirt With Doug,” “Joke With Doug.” These actions were meant to lubricate our relationship and keep our household happy and healthy.
But Doug lost interest in Turtle and my options became less hopeful: “Break Up,” “Move Out,” “Argue With Doug.” Trying hard to save this relationship, I’d make him meals and entice him to the couch to watch television and cybersmooch, but it’s hard to actually control Sims. We’d end up on the lawn arguing in our underwear in the middle of the night.
One night, while my couple slept, the game dealt me a complete non sequitur. As I panned my omniscient eye around the room, I noticed there was a person in a bunny suit standing in the corner watching “us” sleep! A little background: I’m terrified of oversized things that are anthropomorphic and inexplicable. Statues, mannequins, monoliths...I have a hard time with all of that stuff. So I went house on this bunny. Digital Turtle jumped out of bed and kicked his ass. But he didn’t go away...and several Sims days later, I grew tired of beating on the bunnyman. I was also kinda lonely, now that my relationship was crumbling.
Eventually, I befriended the bunny. I’d walk into the kitchen after showering for the third time that day and offer the bunny a sandwich or a drink. I later found out that the terrifying furry apparition is known as a “Social Bunny”—a sort of social worker that the Sims architects created to interact with maladjusted Sims characters like digital Turtle. And here I’d been smacking him around.
A few actual (as opposed to simulated) days into playing this game, I got bored out of my mind making sure half-naked people cleaned the toilet and read the newspaper. I needed to clean my real toilet and read the real newspaper. Flesh-and-blood people began to look like Sims to me. When viewed from a cab or through a store window, people interacting in the city jibber-jabbered and gestured to each other just like their computer-generated counterparts. I decided to give the game a rest, putting my characters and their doomed relationship in techno limbo.
