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Nov 17th, 2006 at 14:53:30 - The Sims 2 (PS2) |
I now have control of Tutorial Jane. I have directed her to argue with Tutorial Joe, her husband. Two red minus signs hover over Jane, one over Joe. I direct her to argue again.
I have just learned about Sims' Wants and Fears, all of which are represented by icons. Tutorial Jane has a Fears icon representing the death of Tutorial Joe. I find this a bit disconcerting.
Now on to the house building tutorial. I have built a single-story home with hundreds of rooms, many inaccessible. Plenty of doors and windows. Random wallpaper and roofing.
On to the game! I select Veronaville. I have entered the Capps manor or something. I like how there is a scenario of sorts here, the apparent aim being to reconcile the two families.
Your Sims Are Smarter!
"But don't forget your Sims' basic Needs! They're smarter than ever, but they still need your help staying on top of things."
Interesting to contrast this to a comment Will Wright made about The Sims 1:
"One problem we had for a while was that our characters were too smart. They knew exactly what was best for them, and anything the user would do would lead to a negative impact. It took us a while to make the characters a bit dumber, but in a way that would be fun."
Interesting how the Wants items are randomly selected, slot-machine style. Fulfilling one prompts a new random selection. This enhances the sense of 'gameness' while decreasing the sense of 'simulatorness'.
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Nov 13th, 2006 at 21:32:00 - The Sims 2 (PS2) |
Playing The Sims 2 on PC for the first time, going through the tutorial. As with The Sims 1, I'm not a fan of the interface bar at the bottom of the screen. Icons don't adequately communicate what they represent, and there's too much information and buttons crammed into it.
As I am writing a research paper on player-characters, I am fascinated by how the simple action of directing Tutorial Joe to look for a job in the newspaper marks a decisive empathizing point for me. Telling him to take a shower and buying a dining chair did not really make me feel very involved one way or another, but directing him to look for a job, particularly after learning that he has a bad memory of getting fired from a job (the representation of memories in this game is interesting, though I imagine it would get cumbersome for the player to keep track of them unless the player bothers to fill in the details for such memories--basically the thing Maxis has been trying to achieve all along, but I didn't find myself doing much filling in for The Sims 1). This is the point where I feel like I need to make his life better. Watching him struggle on the workout bench enhances this. Human striving is encapsulated in this animation, and in the increase of a character stat.
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