Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

virtual dollhouse

The New York Times ran an interesting story last week about how some children have begun to eschew real dolls (i.e. Barbie and the like) for the more interactive virtual “dolls” offered by games like The Sims.

Francesca and Richard have been playing the game since last fall and within its electronic confines have built a fantasy world that looks surprisingly similar to their own. Comfortable suburban home. Parents named Mark and Francine. Children named Francesca and Richard. Antique French sofa in the entry hall. Lots of leopard-skin patterns scattered about the house…

As the small animated characters move through their daily lives, they evoke living dolls.

As far as we know, children have always played with dolls of one sort or another to act out variations on their own lives, or lives they observe or imagine. Today, a vast and growing number of kids are doing the same thing � but with a very new tool. Instead of dolls, they are using video games. And perhaps most of all, they’re using The Sims.

Some video games let players battle aliens or quarterback a pro football team; The Sims drops the player into an even more fantastic environment: suburban family life. Each Sim, as the characters are known, is different � one might be an old man, one might be a young girl; one is motivated primarily by money, for instance, while another may want popularity � and it’s up to the player to tend to those needs. As in real life, there are no points in The Sims and you can’t “win.” You just try to find happiness as best you can.

And though video game players are often stereotyped as grunged-out, desensitized slackers, it is the nation’s middle-class schoolchildren, particularly girls, who have helped make The Sims one of the world’s premier game franchises, selling more than 60 million copies globally since its introduction in 2000.

(New York Times: “Welcome to the New Dollhouse” - 05/07/06)

Largely because I do the same thing, I find it fascinating that the children mentioned in this article spend much of their Sims play time recreating their “real life” environment in the game’s virtual world.

(Link found via Slashdot.)