Sims FreePlay

• game designer Will Wright was inspired to create a ‘virtual doll house‘ after losing his home in the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and subsequently rebuilding his life. this made him think about adapting that life experiences can be transformed into a game. Wright says that The Sims was actually meant as a satire of US consumer culture
• Sims FreePlay is a spin-off from the highly popular and successful Sims franchise (Electronic Arts). its an example of the ‘freemium‘ commercial model- increasingly popular for app developers- in which the basic content is free but premium content is a paid for supplement.
• Sims FreePlay is a case study example of diversification and technological change as the video game industry has started to shift away from a reliance on hard copy console and PC products to streaming and to apps for tablets and mobile phones.
• reception theory- Sims FreePlay

  • preferred reading: love the game and agree that its an amazing game and very fun
  • oppositional reading: capitalist and consumerism ideology, suggests that money makes you happy. “dream home with swimming pools and multiple stories” and “earn simoleans to improve their situation”
  • negotiated reading: preferred and oppositional reading mixed together
• effects theory- Sims FreePlay

  • suggests that its easy to be successful
  • suggests you need a big house and lots of money to be happy
• uses and gratification- Sims FreePlay

  • escapism and entertainment
  • the game is a utopia- allows you to create your perfect world
  • in a way it gives you basic lifestyle
  • typically women aimed
  • aimed at teenagers
• Sims FreePlay cover

  • bold colours, fun font choices, typical sims colours
  • town hall
  • unique/castle, multiple stories, colonial- old town USA
  • person of colour in the background, not featured
  • 2011- prestigious car= success and wealth, utopia, American dream
  • colourful, high saturated
  • green grass, perfect, well kept, groomed
  • golden Labrador- signifies middle class, typical family dog, typical of nuclear family
• Sims FreePlay cover

  • happy, straight, white couple- heterosexual
  • woman is wearing more revealing clothing and is very slim and stereotypically attractive, the same as the man, slim build, stereotypical costumes
• Sims FreePlay trailer

  • typical ideology of a ‘dream lifestyle‘- stereotypical lifestyle
  • building house, leisure, love, pets, children
  • teens, maybe 10years+, adults can still play it because its accessible on a mobile phone- audience
  • social class or B and C and maybe D
  • explorers, mainstreamers, aspirers and strugglers
• Sims FreePlay walkthrough

  • lack of different skin tones
  • only male and female genders
  • typical male coloured clothes
  • every task earns you simoleons/xp e.g. using the toilet
  • sims basic needs: hunger, bladder, energy, hygiene, social and fun. Links to Maslow
  • indexical (casual relationship between sign and meaning)- hunger, toilet, speech bubbles, hygiene
  • symbolic- ‘Z’s, speech bubbles, fun
  • making your town needs to be as expensive as possible
  • shopping cart is twinkling- drawing attentions to it, making you want to click on it
  • rewarding sound- trumpet, capitalistic sounding
• Sims FreePlay walkthrough

  • clapping sound when you level up
  • get paid after task is completed
  • in app purchases are expensive
  • if you skip a task you have to watch an ad
  • EA games are utilising their players to promote the game and the in-app purchases
  • they’re updated pronouns
• Jenkins fandom- Sims FreePlay

  • fan appropriation: “fan culture reflects both the audiences‘ fascination with programmes and the fans’ frustration over the refusal/inability of producer to tell the kinds of stories viewers want to see”
  • recontextualisation
  • refocalisations
  • personalisation
  • create fake or maybe real stories
  • fans interact with the game differently to what it was made for
  • fans have the ability to make it negative
  • meant to be a utopia, fans make it dystopia
• codes and conventions- Sims FreePlay

  • app stores
  • characters posed
• particular social groups and stereotypes- Sims FreePlay

  • white pregnant women up front
  • heteronormative couple- lead- mixed face couple
  • no plus size sims
• marketed youth audience- Sims FreePlay

  • idealistic suburban
• social media- Sims FreePlay

  • 2021- added hijabs- diversity- added pride artwork- inclusive
  • level 5/6- only task is to get pregnant
  • have to get married before sim can get pregnant
  • traditional, conservative values
  • behind the sims episode 3- producers, art designers- majority white, different countries- flag next to name, females
  • globalisation- sims is international and has producers everywhere- uk, USA, Europe
  • project Renee- new way to play the sims e.g. across devices with friends, free to download
• the sims is postmodern because it shows hyper reality. people can form themselves and create a different version of them. it seems to have embraced its capitalist culture
• fandom Henry jenkins- Sims FreePlay

  • audiences are more involved in media landscape creation
  • media creates value as it travels
  • consumers engage other consumers
  • YouTube views dwarfs broadcast media
  • biggest challenge= ownership of media exchanges- ethical framework
  • Jenkins defends fan cultures and argues that fans are often stereotyped negatively in the media- they value popular culture over traditional cultural capital
  • irony- fan culture often dominated by middle class, educated audiences
• fandom Henry jenkins- Sims FreePlay

  • he discusses ‘textual poaching‘- fans take text and re-edit or develop their meanings-semiotic productivity
  • fan communities are quick to criticise if they feel a text or character is developing in a way they don't support
  • the sims tv- fan asked question about body shape, 3 directors spoke to the fans ina genuine way to explain why they cant add different body shapes. the relationship isn’t one-sided they are responding to feedback and complains
• The book is not about gender, it is about women and girls who take gaming beyond gaming to become designers within well-designed passionate affinity spaces that change their lives and the lives of others
• Women and girls are leading the way in areas like modding the Sims to create challenges and gameplay that is simultaneously in the game world, in the real world, and in writing things like graphic novels
• Such modding is the force that sustains a passionate affinity space that builds artistic, technical, social, and emotional skills
• The book was written because these women and girls "rock", not because they are women and girls
• Will Wright, the designer of The Sims, has been outspoken in his desire to empower his users to construct community and build their own content around his games
• Games like The Sims, and gaming beyond gaming, will eventually be the new center of gaming or maybe something eventually altogether different
• The author does not want to compete with the interviewer for the participatory culture space, and wants to stress production rather than just participation
• The current accountability regime in education must be removed as it is immoral, stupid, and counterproductive
• Accountability should be for curriculum and pedagogies, not teachers per se, and should be based on a common measure like a NAEP test given to a sample of students
• Games and digital media can collect, mine, and artfully represent copious moment-by-moment data on learning, which can be used to assess learning across time in terms of growth, discover different trajectories towards mastery, and compare and contrast learners in ways that inform and develop them
• When such assessments based on growth, trajectories, and comparison among thousands can be contrasted with the standard "test score", the choice will be stark - either we will develop only some or we develop everyone, and the bell curve will be gone
• Equality and gender- Sims FreePlay

  • simulated life
  • the sims gives a fixed amount of money to every sim family that is created
  • equality of opportunities that is undoubtably interesting, but that somehow interferes with the logic of the simulation
  • in the sims there is no discrimination according to sex in terms of salaries
  • as long as you follow the pre-established ways of being happy in the game and you have patience and gaming skills to succeed, all sims are treated in the same way
  • same salaries, same jobs opportunities, same concept of success
• Equality and gender- Sims FreePlay

  • even though western societies are struggling to reach these goals, they are not a reality yet
  • women are usually paid less than men in equal working roles, however the sims doesn't take that into account
  • can argue that the game portrays a vision of the late capitalism in which the ultimate goals of the ethics of daily life (equality of opportunities, success) are possible to be fulfilled no matter the gender of the (simulated) individual
  • idealistic views of the sims on its simulation of contemporary societies
• Equality and gender- Sims FreePlay

  • the sims seems to be a game that simulates the perfect utopia of the late capitalist societies according to the relation of the individual with the means of production
  • the ethics of daily life are also related with personal relationships
• homosexuality- Sims FreePlay

  • the sims seems to be one step ahead of the societies it simulates
  • nothing in the game that didn't allow gay relationships or that made it strange- the other sims acted normally with the gay couple
  • can get promoted in their jobs and have a child
  • the sims is a very progressive simulation of societies as its normal to plat with gay couples that have all the rights that may lack in some real societies
  • very few social constrains: the society it simulates is advanced, much more than the real one
• homosexuality- Sims FreePlay

  • its important for the successful constitution of the sim its happiness work lives as well as in their affective lives
  • speaking with game language, in order to succeed in playing the game, there are no retrains in the avatars we select, they are all equal to the game system
  • one of the goals, to obtain happiness, can be acquired by those means the player believes useful or relevant, no matter what the simulations degree of realism is
• The Kurt Cobain Refutation- Sims FreePlay

  • made a sim miserable then the game took control
  • all sims must be equal, allowing only some minor combinations of their lifestyle
  • no misfits are allowed, only the stereotyped winners of late capitalist societies
  • this game simulates a capitalist society in which the economic means are the values that determine the conditions of happiness and social integration
• the Kurt Cobain Refutation- Sims FreePlay

  • the more you earn, the more friends you can have in your home, the more successful your life is, the more you are inserted in the material relation of capital, the more you will be accepted in society
  • if any individual defies those material relations, its excluded of society until it returns to “the good path”.
  • the game assures that the sims behave according to the rules of the game/the simulated capitalist society assures that the values considered more important prevail and are accepted by the individuals
• The Kurt Cobain Refutation- Sims FreePlay

  • by encouraging players to work and earn money to have more friends and master the games happiness, what the sims does is a process of presetting the player with the representation of their relations with the means of production
  • the sims encourages players to forget about that alternation by gig in them the illusion of free will: equality of rights, as long as thier lives are productive to the system
  • makes all the players and sims equal in order to maintain the simulation of capitalist means of production
• the Kurt Cobain Refutation- Sims FreePlay

  • in case there is a misfit, the system takes over, acting like an RSA and controlling the sim until its simulated back in the good track
  • late capitalism is able to assume its contradictions (the real inequalities) in its representation of itself, with the goal of prevailing as the dominant system in western societies
  • the sims isn’t a simulator of life, it’s not a social simulator
  • the game can be understood as a simulation of the ISAs that ensures the domain of capitalism becoming itself an important part of the ideological apparatus
• the Kurt Cobain Refutation- Sims FreePlay

  • while ethically and politically there is a dangerous fact, for game development is an open door to a next step in the art of computer games the era of ideological games