In addition, the Sims now possess lifelong aspirations that dictate specific wants and fears, all of which LeTourneau says “describe a much more complex emotional life for the characters.” Those wants and fears refresh as they age and their circumstances change, although you can lock specific ones to keep them from falling out of the queue. Sims who achieve their wants receive points that can be exchanged for Aspiration Reward Objects; fears that come true deduct points. Each Sim has one of six general aspirations, such as the desire for wealth or fame, which drives their personal lives as well as their careers.
While all Sims now pass away eventually, they do come back as ghosts, an event that Wright has called “exploring the failure states.” LeTourneau explains that “some of our funniest stories in life, and thus in the Sims, revolve around failures. If your Sim just vanished after death, the story would be over. But to see your Sim again as a ghost lets the story about that Sim continue, even in a limited way.”
Build a Sim. Have at it, Dr. Frankenstein.
“Our players may have strong emotional needs to tell [certain kinds of] stories, which may have deep meaning to them or other players who view them.”
- Tim LeTourneau
From Slideshows to Movies
After the release of the first Sims game, many players began taking screenshots of the action and writing their own stories to accompany them. The Sims 2 features a new Story mode that enables you to tell your tales with either snapshots or video. You can order your screenshots into a narrative, write the accompanying text, and upload the finished story album to the official Sims 2 Web site.
You can capture sound along with your video clips, whose length is limited only by the amount of space on your hard drive. While The Sims 2 doesn’t include built-in editing tools, you can import the files in iMovie, Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro and complete your story.
You can’t upload the finished clips to the official Sims 2 site, but it does feature links to many fan sites that host movies. Given that you can create your own Sims, houses and neighborhoods — and even import cities from Sim City 4 — you can create any type of story you want.
Game Hardware
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Sadly, She Said “No.” He could have picked a better place to pop the question, but that’s what happens when you activate free will.
Within the Bounds
Well, almost. LeTourneau points out that the development team “keeps a list of what we call ‘boundary issues’ that define what we’re willing to do and not do in our game. For example, we don’t give Sims guns or knives, and we don’t permit Sims to kill each other or do serious bodily harm. We don’t think glorifying or endorsing that as a play style is ethical for our kind of game.”
However, given the Sims’ new emotional inner lives and the game’s emphasis on portraying interactions between the characters as realistically as possible, players can toy with their digital creations’ lives the same way the mythological Greek gods were said to play with human beings. LeTourneau says in response to such a proposition: “If our players want to tell stories of suffering, it’s not unethical, regardless of how realistic the depiction of discomfort may be. Our players may have strong emotional needs to tell these stories, which may have deep meaning to them or other players who view them.”
Discovering Cold Fusion on a Day Off. There are always plenty of funky machines and gadgets you can buy for your Sims.
While human beings have been drawn to tales of woe for millennia, you can always create a Sim Cleaver family and recreate old “Leave it to Beaver” episodes. “Shucks, Wally…”
If you liked this game, check out:
- The Sims Life Stories
- A Tale in the Desert II
- Ghost Master
- SimCity 4: Rush Hour
- The Sims
- Space Colony
Virtual High
Learn how to customize your Sims and view our tips, tricks and cheats section to get the extra edge for getting your Sims ahead.
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