Simmers make all kinds of different writings or "content." Here, you can see some of the many forms that Simming content can take.

This project utilizes Marilyn Cooper's ecological framework

By understanding the Simming ecology's interaction as taking place on an interconnected web, we can better understand how systems can create change across the wider ecology. Changes in one spot may impact the connections in others

The Simming Ecology:

The Sims 4 Community's Content Creation as a Writing Ecology

Simming, defined to the left, occurs in an environment with interconnected, dynamic influences that shape the course of content creation. These influences are socially negotiated, and can be made visible by ecological Writing Studies theory. This Writing Studies project envisions The Sims 4 network's production as an "ecology" through updating and applying Marilyn Cooper's Ecological Framework.

The Sims may be a single player game, but its fanbase is anything but solitary. Frequently referred to as a "community," the group of people who practice Simming produce content with and about The Sims games. Additionally, this network continues to gain steam. Mainstream publications like Buzzfeed, ABC News, Forbes, and AJ+ feature content and tap into trends that Simmers created and negotiated. Multiple Sims-dedicated YouTube accounts passed 1 million subscribers in the last twelve months, and many more make enough revenue to allow content creators to "Sim" full-time.

For these composers, building and maintaining the community that gathers around their posts is an integral piece of the writing process and not simply an act of disseminating a message that they've formed previously on their own. The interconnected network that Simmers inhabit is a kind of mixing bowl from which compositions emerge. Therefore, productions emerge from the environment itself, shaped by the interconnected influences at play.

What does this tell us? That "Simming" content creation (which I examine as a kind of writing) has captured the attention and interest of many. It seems to entice hopeful participants with comforting images of writership, presenting Simming as an escape from loneliness, as fundamentally playful, and as an opportunity to gain influence. Some of these notions are radically different from previous ideas of what it meant to be a good writer, and the recognition of collaborative influences in popular Simming content challenges solitary models of authorship.