12th February, 2025
In my Digital Artifact Pitch, I outlined my plan for this semester’s Digital Artifact. To re-hash, I am creating lookalike avatars of my volunteering peers using The Sims 4 interface. I am then posting about this process on an Instagram page, @you.but.make.it.a.sim. I am looking at this process and analysing it through the analytical framework outlined below.
Framework:
Psychoanalytic
Looking at The Sims 4 through a psychoanalytic lens involves considering how players might use the game in process of self-actualisation. The appeal of The Sims being its familiarity – the absence of spectacular or fantastical storylines, opens us up to the question; Why do we find it enjoyable to replicate real-life virtually? What is enticing about it? How might our gameplay reveal subconscious ideas about self-perception?
Political Economic
The political-economic lens opens up a discussion around the meaning of gameplay on the sims considering its ‘real-’life’ genre. What does game-ification of real-life say about our dissatisfaction with the current state of the world politically & economically? How might games make our day-to-day lives more enjoyable or enriched?
“Few could have imagined a thriving audience for virtual domesticity. Will Wright, however, did. In the year 2000, the PC-gaming auteur delivered The Sims unto the world, and several million people deemed it good. Here was a game as menial and repetitive as life itself, and its utter dearth of the fantastic perversely served as its hook.”
Signifying Play: The Sims and the Sociology of Interior Design
Genre/Narrative Criticism
The last leg of the analytical framework that I’m engaging in while looking at The Sims is an analysis of it through genre & narrative. This is particularly relevant to The Sims as a game that stands out for its ‘real-life’ genre and self-invented narrative form. Looking through research on the topic leads me to ask – how does the ‘real-life’ genre inform our reality/understanding of ourselves and our world?
“Real life as a genre is problematized (in The Sims), the tensions and conflicts of contemporary real-world conceptualizations appear to be represented in the game. What is interesting then, given this, are the ways in which players negotiate the gameplay.”
A 2010 article titled ‘The Sims: Real Life as Genre’ by Diane Nutt & Diane Railton

