Of The Sims and Existential Crises
Stop it, crises is the plural form of crisis. So, now that we’ve got the potential OH-MY-GOD-SHE-MADE-A-SPELLING-MISTAKE hullabaloo out of the way, I want to talk about The Sims and existential crises.
So, I have been playing The Sims 3 for the past few days. I have a…complicated relationship with all my games, especially The Sims. When I’m playing them, I can be obsessed to the point where I forget to eat my meals and/or get much sleep. But after a while, when I tire of them, I will delete them mercilessly. A few months later, I will feel the itch to replay them and install them again. Rinse and repeat this process ad infinitum.
With The Sims though, the process is a little bit different. I don’t get tired of it as much as I start to question it. Because it is a life simulation game, I start to ask myself after playing with it a while, “Why am I playing this game? It’s so repetitive. I’m just making my characters do the same thing over and over again. Wake up, toilet break, breakfast, work/school, come home, eat, toilet break, do some leisure stuff, work on improving self for promotion/better grades, sleep. Over and over again. It’s so boring. Why’d I ever think it was fun???? Ooh, I should try playing [insert random other game here]”
At this point, I’ll uninstall The Sims, only to reinstall after seeing a lot of simsgonewrong.tumblr.com on my dash (because it is hilarious!) or something. “Why’d I ever uninstall it? I had such a perfect little family! I want to play it again!”
This time around, I actually stopped and asked myself, what is it about The Sims that makes me go through this process repeatedly? And I think I have come up with the answer.
Basically, I think I’m projecting my existential crises onto The Sims. Because I’ve noticed that ever since I started playing The Sims 3 sometime last year, the amount of times I’ve fallen into a rut of existential crises has significantly decreased. I’ve found myself being a lot more “meh, why question life? Just live it!” instead of my previous, “What is the point of all this? I’m not doing anything, not really.”
Do you not see the parallels between the latter sentence and what I just described as my problem with The Sims??
Instead of questioning my own life, I’m questioning The Sims - a life simulation game. Instead of doing something drastic like falling deeper into the hole of depression I’ve found myself digging countless times before, I just uninstall the game and I go on with life, probably while playing another game.
And I thought, wow. This thing, this game here, could really be a good solution to all those people with existential crises or mid-life crises or similar conditions. I’ve actually asked several other Sims gamer, and they all agree with me, once I pointed it out.
So. Feeling like you’re stuck? Feeling a little hollow? Play The Sims 3!
