Kev and Alice."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."
I have done similar projects with friends. The Sims is amazing for the amount of narrative it allows us to create, even if it is happening in our heads. We develop emapthy forthese digital beings. I also find it interesting, from a storytelling stand point, how we often feel more for Sims than we might for a character in a scripted game. Perhaps we see the randomness in our own lives in their plights.
