A point to The Sims
I love when a seemingly pointless technology winds up having a use that far outweighs anything its creators intended. Twitter being used to communicate in a locked down Iran is a perfect example of this. You had better believe that no one thought Iranians would be tweeting a presidential election. Today, Kotaku reports that a game development student in the UK is using The Sims to explore issues of poverty in society. The student, Robin Burkinshaw, has created a father-daughter pair that live in an abandoned lot in her copy of The Sims. She is also using a blog to chronicle the Sims’ lives.
Read: “The Sad Story of Two Homeless Sims” (via Kotaku)
Whether this will make any sort of difference in reality remains to be seen, but it is a fascinating chance to use a game for something more than it was ever expected to be.
Yes, the Iranians’ use of Twitter has somewhat mollified my inert rage at Twitter’s mere existence…. Ok, it’s incredible. (I still won’t use it.)
The Sims thing is pretty neat… and it sure seems like a more fulfilling and sad way of approaching the game than using cheats to overload a Sim with babies and grandbabies beyond their ridiculous wishes, or watching them go mad, or…
Yeah, the SIMs has always been weird to me because, you know, why not just go interact with real people? Still, it’s neat to see it used in such an interesting fashion. 🙂