Two little things to contemplate:
Thing First—
Having muscled my way through the majority of Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard, I am excited to say that there are some amazing things that this text will be bringing to Press Start (by the way, I just took the time to Bing (not Google!) Press Start and I think I'll need a new name. Well, that's why it's just a working title). I read it to Gayle, geeking out all the while. She nodded and said it sounded good. Anyway, here's the quote. I know it isn't in full context, and you have to know what simulacra means (the OED defines it as "something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities; a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness, of something), but I'm excited about it:
simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game—total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control.
This is, in my mind, the theory behind the game, summed up in (for once) an easy to understand phrase. It is what Baudrillard calls the 'simulacrum of the third order', or most detached and aloof of all simulacra. More than that, this piece (written in 1981) predicts how games are a false reality—though he uses the more generous term of hyperreality—and the necessary foundations of the game: Founded on information (not just the information that the computer decodes and encodes, nor the binary that provides the digital DNA, but even the information that the gamer has to have in order to operate the game itself), the model (character models are an essential aspect of the overall look of the game, from the most minimal to the most complex), and the obvious concept of the game being a type of cybernetic interaction. Of course, the final three clauses (total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control) have great import as well, since those are the three goals of the game.
Complete prediction of what the game is, decades before the game could become that. It's even more interesting a bit later on in this part of the book, because he confesses his inability to even anticipate what could be an example of this third order of simulacra. Well, it's the game.
My book should show how.
Thing Second—
The next part intersects interestingly: I was looking up some sites that Bing and Google pulled about simulacra, and I happened upon this site, called the Simulacrum. It's a place for DLC of the original The Sims game. In a sense, it is its own simulacrum, but that's neither here nor there (as Shakespeare—and, since Othello came out, countless others—once said).
The reason this pertains is that my wife just informed me of a church meeting that her parents attended the other Sunday. In it, the well-intentioned teacher went on a diatribe against The Sims as not only a black hole of time, but also a satanic game because it blurs the ability to recognize the value of having what all mortals—theists and atheists alike—have yet Lucifer does not: a mortal body. Because, went the argument, we have bodies and Satan does not, he insidiously inspired the creation of The Sims to corrupt the youth into thinking that incorporeal existence is as worthwhile and significant as corporeal existence—you don't have to have a body for life to be good.
The likelihood that I am misquoting or receiving a misrepresentation of the story is high. But the crux of the idea is worth pursuing, and I'll dedicate the rest of this blog exploring it (this might take some time. If you've got something better to do, feel free to do it.......You back? Ready? Okay, good.)
Satanic Subterfuge or Simply Sims?
For the nonce, let's put aside the overtly religious hostility to hobbies and pastimes. There's ample to analyze there, but it often sounds sanctimonious and condescending, so I'll avoid it for awhile.
Instead, let's focus on what is being argued: We'll grant that being embodied is better than being unembodied, that having this perception of reality filtered through our brains via the sensory input is greater than the alternative of complete annihilation and sensory deprivation. Does The Sims argue to the contrary?
Every iteration of The Sims is focused largely on the third of the goals that I listed above: total control. As technology has advanced, so too has the capacity to control your individual Sim. Sliders, the almost ubiquitous way of fine-tuning your avatar, are increased in their specificity. Not only is height, hair color, and general disposition malleable, but its capacity has deepened in the latest version. If you were so inclined, you could create an evil kleptomaniac that has a penchant for clumsiness and a horrendous beer gut. Control, it seems, is almost limitless.
With this kind of possibility, what is left for the human behind the avatar, the god of the game who will control the life of the Sim in a myriad of ways? What is the game communicating to the gamer while the gamer is communicating to the game? Is it preaching a message of corporeality (or its lack thereof)? Is it arguing that the life of the Sim is superior to the life of the gamer?
In answer to the last two questions, I would argue no. It seems ludicrous to think that the game itself is preaching either posit. For the former, The Sims is more interested in letting avatars reflect their own lives as quasi-autonomous 'lifeforms'—and letting the gamer inject her own preferences within that life. What it is doing is allowing what cannot be controlled—you can't fight your genes, after all—to become subservient to the gamer in a fictive world. If anything, it should be that that alarms us, not a diabolical distraction that assaults one's perspective of the body.
As for The Sims being superior to real life, I think I will capitulate to Robert Nozick for this one and his thought experiment of the Experience Machine. If you're not in the mood to read through Wikipedia's explanation of the experiment, let me give a brief sum up insofar as I understand it: Pretend you have the option of being plugged into a super computer that, like the movie The Matrix, implants all of the experiences you've ever wanted to have straight into brain, letting you 'remember' experiences that you only think you've had. Ever wanted to hike Mt. Everest? You can implant the memory of having done it, without leaving the full virtual reality seat in which you are sitting. Want to have the highest score on Rag Doll Kung Fu? Same thing; just plug in and it's yours. The question, however, is, do you personally plug into this machine and gain false memories? If you do, what's the difference between those memories and the ones of your real, true experiences?
My answer: (1) I don't know yet. I haven't thought about it long enough. (2) Yes. There is a very important difference—for me, it's one of honesty—between the real experiences and the real remembrances of a false experience. It is subjective.
Back to The Sims. Is the life that the Sims show on the screen superior in some way because of the control it provides? My answer: No. The aspect of control is also (perhaps tacitly) a part of the Experience Machine. Once you've experienced everything—once you've been in control of everything—what else is there to do? If you plug in all of the time and eventually go through every man-made simulation, what would you have left? Nothing, really. And the same pertains to The Sims. If anything, the game is arguing that prima facie unlimited choice is actually limited—perhaps not by the game itself, but by the limited mortal using it. If anything, the game is preaching that what we have as real humans is superior because we have it. It is not the predestination of an algorithm that controls a human's life, but one's own free will and choice. Contrary philosophical arguments between fatalism and agency aside, this is what the game is saying to me.
More Questions, More Answers
The idea of what the game is communicating fascinates me. I am not so alarmed at the possibility of an insidious eradication of personhood as I am at the quasi-hedonistic celebration, the bacchanalian embrace of unbridled avarice and blatant consumerism that the game endorses. I will agree that The Sims 3 gives unparalleled possibilities for user-generated storytelling, the passing of the narratological baton to the gamer. That cannot be a step backward (though I will not go so far as to say that it's a step forward, either) for a purely narrative sense. However, the context of the game is one of pure and simple acquisition, insatiability, and constant desire of what is not (not theirs, not available, not cheap enough...).
There is a bizarre relationship between designers of the game and the consumers of it, and it seems like a simulacrum of the third order with a heightened irony that a game can be sold to a gamer who will in turn take his Sim and make him into a consumer—and, if so desired, let the Sim become a gamer as well. (What will the Simgamer do to his Sims? Make another microcosm of Sims, one of whom will be a Simsimgamer? And more after that?) This takes the idea of Wark's military entertainment complex to a disturbing and pervasive level. If ever there is something to boycott in The Sims 3, it is this: letting anyone play a game that echoes life so fully—for if they think of it as a game, how in the world will they be able to take it seriously enough to participate in endless consumption in real life?
Closing Thoughts
There is a post hoc fallacy running through this Satanic-argument that is part of the fear that hegemonic society has towards video games. The idea that one thing, because it precedes another, is the cause of it is inconclusive at best, and fallacious at worst. Simply because there is time invested in a game like The Sims does not necessarily mean that it is time that is spent pushing an unembodied-is-better-than-embodied agenda any more than sending text messages is doing the same. (Though it can be argued, using this same train of thought, that it is; after all, a text message is not hand written—it's purely digital, completely removed from 'natural' forms of communication. No voice is heard, no face seen. Text messages are endorsing the diabolic dichotomy that not having a body is better than having a body.)
There is a valid fear about what games can do. There is genuine and valid concerns over the addictive properties of games. Let's discuss those in a rational light, and leave out inflammatory, fallacious rhetoric, shall we?
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