The Sims in Time Magazine

Reporter Anita Hamilton takes you through the lives of her Sims in Time Magazine's February 7 issue. Want to check out The Sims on Time.com?

Go to Time.com

FEBRUARY 7, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 5
BY ANITA HAMILTON

Hangin' with the Sims

A new game from the creator of SimCity lets you design--and control--your own dysfunctional family

I live alone in a shingled cottage by the shore. Every morning I get up from my feather bed, putter across my shiny parquet floors and eat breakfast in my sun-filled kitchen as I wait for the chauffeur to swoosh me off to my job--as a bookie for the local crime ring.

O.K., so it's just a fantasy. In real life I share a tiny apartment with a roommate and am lucky if I get to grab a bagel before racing to the subway each morning. But when I flick on my computer to play The Sims, the new game out this week from Maxis that lets me explore alternate identities in intricate detail, that fantasy becomes my virtual reality. Taking the genre of simulation games to the extreme, The Sims lets you play puppeteer and watch your own drama unfold. Whether it's a Norman Rockwell dream come true or a Stephen King nightmare is up to you.

Designed by Will Wright, creator of the best-selling SimCity game series (SimWorld, SimAnt, SimTower), The Sims allows me to dictate every aspect of my characters' lives: where they build their house, whom they live with, how nice they are, how often they brush their teeth. I decide when they eat, where they work and whom they love. Like elaborate humanoid Tamagotchis, the Sims' needs (like food, hygiene, comfort and fun) pop up on a little control panel on the bottom of the screen. Ignore the warning signs, and you'd better be prepared for trouble. "They're like human guinea pigs," says Wright. "It makes you realize how much of your own life is a strategy game."

Power, I learn, has its price. If I forget to have my Sims use the toilet, they'll relieve themselves on the floor, leaving unsightly puddles. If they don't learn to cook, the stove will catch fire. Forget to buy a burglar alarm, and you may wake up without a couch--or a house.

One day I created a married couple whose newborn baby gets taken away by Social Services. The parents had left their child out on the lawn and watched soaps all day while the kid wailed in vain. Another day I made a pair of bored, unemployed roommates--one a neat freak, the other a slob--and watched them get into fistfights as flies buzzed around heaps of garbage in their dingy living room.

My pride and joy, however, is my virtual Anita. From the moment I selected her sporty outfit and made her just a tad neater and friendlier than the real me, I knew we were soul mates. I spent hours fretting over the floor plan for her house, picking the blue tile for the bathroom and ecru wallpaper for the kitchen. After a high-paid but short-lived stint as a lobbyist--a job I found in the simulated morning paper one day--I could even afford to spoil myself with a swimming pool in the backyard, an oil painting on the living-room wall and a computer in the study.

But even virtual life isn't all sweetness and light. Time goes fast in The Sims, and I kept getting fired because I dawdled over breakfast and missed the carpool. Not that I minded. My gigs as lab technician and security guard paid horribly, and in these boom times I could usually find a new job the next day. I kind of miss being a military recruit, though, because I got to wear great-looking fatigues and get picked up by a jeep every morning.

Yet as much as I loved my self-indulgent life, I got lonely. I tried to find love with my studly neighbor Joe, but he was a total tease. He would flirt and kiss and eat my home-cooked meals, but I never got the gold ring. I asked him to marry me five times, and he always gave me some lame excuse: either he was too hungry to think straight or he didn't think we talked enough. Since when does a guy want to talk?

So I started making new friends. Bella, the sexy brunet next door, stopped by from time to time. But she was so sensitive. If I said one thing she didn't like, she'd storm off in a huff. Another neighbor, Sally, was cool--she worked as a bungee-jump instructor--but a couple of days ago, she came over with Joe and started kissing him right in front of me. The nerve! I never spoke to Sally again.

At least my job is going well. It takes a lot of creativity to be a good criminal, so all that quiet time painting in my study really paid off. Now I just have to work on my charisma. If I make two new friends, I'll graduate to con artist and earn $350 a day. Play my cards right, and I could become a Mob boss. I can dream, can't I?