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PC Games Imitating Life? Or Taking Over Real Lives?

Alex Nekrassov jnr writes: The recently released The Sims 3, the third part of the trilogy brought to us by the giant games publishing house, Electronic Arts, once again allows the player to ‘construct’ a life of an individual or a of whole family. You build their lodgings, you create their personalities, you choose the clothes they wear, the food they eat and you pick friends for them. You mentor them through every stage of their lives, including their school years, their first job, marriage and even their death.

You can understand Electronic Arts’ reason for releasing the third title in the series – the game has been a cash cow for the company and is one of the best selling PC titles in the world. The developers have targeted the game at a universal audience: its content is child-friendly and the micro and macro level management has captured the imagination of many adults. Building your dream home requires you to balance your desire for a certain style and ambience against the needs of your sims – putting a bedroom closer to the front of the house to shave valuable minutes off your sim’s morning chores to allow him to get to work on time is just a small example of the required strategic element to success.

There is no doubting the universal appeal of The Sims series – 100 million sales worldwide is a difficult figure to argue with. But it is this popularity that is slightly disturbing. Say, for example, a mere half of the 100 million people who have purchased the game to play themselves are adults – in reality, the figure is probably far higher. This would mean that there are currently around 50 million adults out there who are busy building an imaginary home and having an imaginary family and holding imaginary jobs.

It sounds utterly ridiculous, if you think about it. Do adults genuinely have so few problems to deal with in their actual lives that they need to create more in their virtual ones? An adult playing The Sims is comparable to grown-ups constructing Lego sets or dressing up Barbie dolls twenty years ago.

Adults playing computer games to escape from reality does sound a bit spooky. Take Second Life, for example; an online game in which your newly formed character roams in a huge virtual world and interacts with other virtual characters. The game is not the same as The Sims, in that the emphasis is much more on networking and social interaction between people, as opposes to The Sims’ bigger focus on the single player element. Tens of millions of users subscribe to Second Life, but with its rapid development and lack of oversight or control it has become a breeding ground for paedophiles, adulterers and porn addicts. The developers might describe the game as a light-hearted retreat from the real world. Unfortunately, the product has a much grimmer and murkier side and there is no effective block to children getting involved.

Another title in this genre is World of Warcraft, another multiplayer game played out in a huge online world. Although much more focused than Second Life, in the sense that the player is expected to work with others to complete missions set by the computer, it still allows for a similar degree of freedom. Worryingly and as recently as two years ago a UK-based man in his late twenties took full advantage of this freedom and virtually ‘married’ his US-based girlfriend, whom he had met online. The game allowed them to carry out a digital wedding ceremony and it would have been just a bit of harmless fun if the ‘wife’ was not only sixteen. So what next: online sex?

It is hard to imagine life without the Internet and as long as people keep buying computer games these too will be around for a while. With more people than ever having access to high speed broadband there is no doubt that multiplayer gaming and online social interaction is the wave of the future. Unfortunately, at its core and by its very nature, the Internet is an ungoverned, unregulated and lawless place. Governments of the developed world where internet poses the greatest threats are unwilling to act, giving the usual drivel about censoring freedom of speech. While most will accept that the Internet as a whole cannot be effectively overseen we should start taking a closer look at online PC games.

The next time someone bangs on about the need for freedom on the net, spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of children who are denied their freedom by some sick and twisted individuals who manipulate the web through gaming. It is not just about games imitating life. It is more about games taking over real lives. Young lives especially.

– End –

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