If you have ever played the Sims, or watched someone else play, you know that it is almost impossible to resist the temptation to torment them on occasion.-Create a pool with a diving board but no ladder to get out and watch them swim for days until they fall asleep or starve.
-Create a house with no doors and no bathrooms and watch them create piles of trash in the kitchen and become very disgusted with their own body odor.
-Create a house with no beds and watch them tumble to the floor in exhaustion.
-Don't put in a refrigerator or kitchen appliances and make them live on delivered pizzas (until they're broke and always hungry since even in a computer game a steady diet of pizza isn't good for you)
-Ignore the babies until the social worker takes them away; or the children until they get sent to military school.
-Deprive them of sleep by keeping them busy every moment that they're not at their jobs.
etc.
Anyway, it's amusing.
I've never played Sims3 but it has cool neighborhood and interaction features that give the game a little more depth and dimension. You can go to different locations besides just your own house.
So the other day I randomly ran across this website. A game designer in the UK has created a family in Sims 3 and is doing an experiment with an odd twist to the "torment your family" idea.
The family is a homeless father and daughter. In S3 you can add personality traits and behaviors - so the father is an inappropriate, rude, mean, lazy man who hates children (he tells his daughter to leave every time she's nearby). And the daughter has poor self-esteem, bad luck, is clumsy, and has a generous spirit.
With a minimal amount of interaction on the creators part, this family is being allowed to progress through the game operating primarily on their own (game option free-will). It is fascinating to read/watch. The game's only been in play a few weeks, so there are not too many posts to get caught up on reading the blog and learn their story.
As a nice addition, the blog author has a list of suggested charities that work with the homeless populations around the world and suggests that you donate if the story of Alice and Kev has affected you or caused you to consider the plight of those who really do live on benches in abandoned parks...
Very nicely done.
Entertaining blog.
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Welcome to the tale of Alice and Kev.
This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.
I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.
If this is your first time visiting, click below to read the story from the start.
