Like many enthusiastic Vassar students, I had huge, exaggerated hopes for spring break that were promptly shut down by the joyless drudgery of reality and a failure to make cohesive plans with friends. We were supposed to go to Montréal, MAN! Instead, I flew back home to Cincinnati. In the great Porkopolis, there’s not an abundance of things to do. You could go visit the newly-constructed United Dairy Farmers near your house, one of the only places in the Midwest where you can get delicious ice cream and milkshakes while also filling up your car with premium gas. You could visit your old high school and immediately wonder why you decided to do so. Or you could be like me: do both of those things, instantly get bored again and then get addicted to the popular social simulation game “The Sims 4.”
My sister once said that only weird people play “The Sims.” She might be right. If you haven’t heard of it, “The Sims” is a free game where you create a character and just watch that character…experience life. Of course you have some control over what they do—you can decide their career, aspirations, love life, children. Actually, maybe you have full control over what they do. In a small dashboard on the right, you can keep track of their basic motives, which include Bladder, Fun, Hunger, Social, Energy and Hygiene. But I prefer to make them and let them live without interfering too much. Except for when they don’t wash their dishes after eating for the tenth time in a row. That shit irks me.
After literally ruining the life of my first Sim, Harumichi, by having him meet a woman at a nightclub, go on two dates with her, marry her, impregnate her and then come home to his new wife cheating on him, I decided to take the game more seriously. I opted to buy the “City Living” expansion pack, one of thirteen expansion packs you can purchase that spice up the game a little bit. (The most recent expansion pack, “Growing Together,” released on March 16th, focuses on family life and dynamics.) In “City Living,” you can choose to live in San Myshuno, a multiethnic paradise that includes weekly festivals for Sims to participate in, such as the Humor and Hijinks Festival, and GeekCon. San Myshuno is home to four fabulous neighborhoods: Spice Market, Uptown, Fashion District and Arts Quarter, each with their own apartments and housing. I decided to create a Sim that had aspirations to become a famous musician. I named her Naomi Berenyi, after real-life Lush frontman Miki Berenyi, one of my favorite singers. As of when this article was written, Naomi is still a C-Lister at the Stargazer Lounge—not of SNL fame—and nowhere near the threshold of celebrity. However, she’s currently in a friends-with-benefits situation with her neighbor Salim. One time, I got them to go on a date in the park and even “WooHoo” in the observatory! And they say romance is dead.
If you’re feeling dissatisfied with the general direction of your life, if you feel like you have no control over what you’re doing, if you’re a sick and twisted individual like me who enjoys watching digital people suffer through horribly awkward situations—why not try playing “The Sims?”