The Sims Final
I wanted to do this project because I had been inspired by seeing other games like Pac Man in live performance. It was astonishing and hilarious to see such games played out in real life. By these means I wanted to "expose the violent cycles of capitalism”. Specifically by displaying the monotony of The Sims in real life. I don’t mean to say I think that people are not aware that this game is monotonous, but my motive was to highlight this fact and link it to the real world we are living in. I think that the performance was more effective at getting at to this point than the real game was because of the use of real humans. While controlling the characters during the performance I was suddenly hit with this really scary feeling. I felt, for a moment, like the characters were my slaves. There was something very obscene and sensuous about the way my classmates were suddenly acting on my command the functions of daily life. If the real The Sims goal was to evoke this kind of feeling I don't think the game would be so user friendly or popular. As well, with the advent of games like Second Life it is hard to believe that The Sims is not some how responsible for these virtual capitalist economies that only re-enforce our own.
From this project and from this class what I have learned most is this: the game world is in dire need of real live human bodies. On one hand this is obvious- we play games to embody characters and to pretend like we are living their lives. Where I see the need for human life most is in the form of the games themselves. Why are the games completely virtual? What happens when virtual reality and real reality collaborate in an entire world that is not just a Wii controller? Could this be the path to more progressive, alive and aware games?
P.S. I'm having trouble uploading the video to you tube. I will have it up ASAP thanks!