The Sims… Living out your wildest dreams?
The virtual world that I have chosen is the Sims. The Sims is a internet game that has been around since 2000. It swept the nation and it is still prevalent today. The sims is an interesting comparison to “Second Life” because they are similar in a lot of ways. The Sims is a game in which you can live out your wildest dreams or simple dreams. Some people become criminals, while others live a basic lifestyle. They have a wife, several kids and go to work everyday. Whether you choose to be the mayor, president or just an ordinary desk work, you are in charge of this virtual world.
Boellstorff talks about the relationship between the virtual world and reality. I agree with his synopsis to an extent. I believe that people look to these virtual worlds for the following reasons; to get outside of their “boring” lives, to be someone they wanted to be but could not for one reason or the other and to add excitement. For example, I love the game Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto is a game in which you are a criminal who is apart of a gang. You go around and do whatever you want, whenever you want. You can do missions in which you rob banks, hotels, whatever. You can also do missions in which you have to hurt, threaten or even kill people. Obviously, this behavior is not good nor would I ever even think about doing it in reality. However, it is a game. The game allows me to do things that I would never do in society because of my morals, values and conscience. That is the true relationship of virtual and reality. We are allowed to live against “societies rules”. Many people would agree with me that they play games to do that, not because we have any desire to do any of the horrible things we do in the game but because it is a GAME. We are allowed to “break the rules” in the game because no one is really getting hurt. No one is actually being harmed as it is virtual.
People are sharing in a message board a picture of their “beautiful” sims characters. They are also competing with each other to build things. See below.
He says in chapter 1, “Most virtual worlds have tens of thousands of participants, if not more, and the vast majority interact only in the virtual world”. This is interesting because now, virtual reality is connecting people together, who may have never met if not for the virtual world. This is a huge step forward in society and connecting people around the world. If you notice with the image on the right, the one messenger actually built his childhood house. He shared his own personal story as to his relationship with a real house in the real world. So maybe we can not define the relationship between virtual and reality, because it is ever-evolving.
