Previous Study on The Sims
Previous study on The Sims games has primarily focused on The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 through sociology, literacy, and game studies lenses. While we approach the game with different frameworks, these scholars contribute critical perspectives on The Sims and its players.
Tanja Sihvonen
Tanja Sihvonen's book, Players Unleashed! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming, looks at the socioculturally situated practice of modding The Sims. Her analysis of the gendered dynamics at play in coverage of The Sims impacted my understanding of how this game has been regulated to outside of the boundaries of mainstream gaming culture. Sihvonen acknowledges the novelty of a women-dominated modding culture while challenging the narratives that claim this game is a women's game (22). She writes, "[The Sims] was aimed at everybody...Even though The Sims cannot be self-evidently categorized as belonging to the 'feminine niche' of digital games, its girl's game label pinpoints to the fact that gender still plays a key role in defining the products of the game industry" (Sihvonen 22). Sihvonen also argues that the association with women could be a reason behind the marginalization of The Sims in mainstream gaming culture. She says, "The fact that The Sims is favoured by female players may also have been a factor in the practice of defining The Sims as a 'non-game' or an 'interactive toy' which can then be placed outside of the scope of 'real' digital games" (Sihvonen 22). Finally, Sihvonen argues that to analyze the game as text, we have to look at the ways in which it is emergently created-how the player interacts with the game engine's affordances (31).
Hanna Wirman
In her article, "Playing by Doing and Players' Localization of The Sims 2," Wirman analyzes modding practices in The Sims 2 community. She finds that modding is considered a form of "co-creative play" (Wirman 61) that is conducted to meet the requests of others in the community (60) to "avoid negative connotations of playing computers, by instead emphasizing one's cultural capital in a community of users" (Wirman 64). Wirman situates these findings as significant due to their role in re-contextualizing women's leisure as productive in cultures that restrict women's pastimes (64).
Elisabeth R. Hayes and James Paul Gee
In their article, "No Selling the Genie Lamp: A Game Literacy Practice in The Sims," Hayes and Gee argue that playing and negotiating The Sims as text is a new kind of literacy--one that should be valued. They choose to analyze a form of participation in game literacy that does not involve editing the game's code. Instead, they opt to study the literacy practices involved in writing and negotiating "challenges," which modify other players' gameplay (70). They argue that this kind of modification may be understated as "soft" due to the way it does not fit within "the male paradigm of game design" which places emphasis upon changes to the program, rather than the way the program is used. (Hayes and Gee 75). They situate Yamx, the player they study, as taking on a variety of roles including that of teacher in her ongoing guidance to players engaged in the challenge: "She is a teacher in the sense, not of telling people what to do, but in the sense of encouraging and resourcing their own creativity and productivity. Of course, this is very much a role we want for twenty-first-century teachers in our schools" (Hayes and Gee 73). Hayes and Gee's findings inspired me to look towards examples for The Sims 4's community's systems that engaged in these "soft" skills, which they posit are "a person's ability to understand themselves and others and to communicate those understandings" (75).
Julie Rak
Julie Rak's "Life Writing Versus Automedia: The Sims 3 Game as a Life Lab," explores The Sims as a game to experiment with life, rather than a game that inherently creates narratives. She positions play in "live" mode as "scenes" rather than inherent stories (171) and argues that this quality makes the creation of narratives more challenging and part of the game's appeal to storytelling players (174). Along with Sihvonen, she contributed to my understanding of play in "live" mode as a negotiated process between the game's engine and the player. Rake writes, "I became a participant in building the world with the game, and not a critic looking at a 'life' within the interface" (171).
Ruth A. Deller
Ruth A. Deller's article, "Simblr Famous and SimSecret Infamous: Performance, Community Norms, and Shaming Among Fans of The Sims," explores how Simmers may seek to use shaming to regulate behavior. In this article, she explores different ways that Simmers use shaming tactics to negotiate aesthetic and community norms. This article laid initial groundwork that allowed me to consider more carefully the ways in which negotiations within systems can be positive and negative, as Simmers often promote and suppress content or ideas that don't align with their own.
For information on the sources used, visit the Works Cited page.