The Sims as Childcare Training

Friend and grade 2 buddy Rob sends this article that discusses The Sims as metaphor for childcare.

“So it’s crying while I’m trying to juggle everything else, like getting the parents to work and making sure they clean the house.” After a few hours of domestic chaos, her virtual baby was whisked away by a digital caseworker. “I was devastated! I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to handle a real baby,” Craig says with a laugh. She kept playing though, and by the time her actual baby arrived, she felt like a pro. “My family thought I was nuts, but I swear it got me through the pregnancy,” she says.

As regular Sims players will know, it’s the most metaphysical of games. Amongst all the micro-management, it asks the profound question “what makes us happy?” Will Wright is the games inventor:

That means that you, the player, must learn and obey the rules that govern Sim life, many of which are hauntingly familiar. “You want to buy them a washer-dryer?” Wright asks. “OK, but you might not have enough money left over for a phone. So what’s more important, communication with your friends, or saving time cleaning?” he laughs. “It lays bare all these ethics of everyday life. What you shop for implies these moral choices.”

Personally, the Sims wasn’t for me. I gave it the old college try, but its open-ended nature didn’t appeal. I had the same sort of issue with online RPGs. Regardless, I was interested to read about the innovations coming in The Sims 2:

: In the new game, Sims will age and die. What’s more, the events of their youth will leave them with psychological baggage as they get older. “If your Sims have particularly happy childhoods–or unhappy ones–you’ll be able to see the way that’s going to impact them later in life. You can see how they kind of ricochet on into the future,” Wright says. He suspects it’ll turn the game into an even more precise emulation of our existence–“a spreadsheet for life.”