Yes, this is exactly what I was doing for the past few weeks, rather months. I was playing GOD. And believe me, it is an immensely tiring and backbreaking (literally!) experience. I wonder how the Creator, the Overseer of the universe has been able to do it all this while...
Okay, I give out the suspense now. When I said I was playing God, all I meant was the Sims Life Stories, the game which on an average took up almost 8-10 hours of my day. I was obsessed with it, completely in love with my role, to an extent that my mom considered psychotherapy as the only subsequent step.
Now being a little busy with my REAL life, I have managed to get over the addiction. As a tribute to the hours spent gawking at the computer screen, the family members’ bawling, the initial withdrawal symptoms, my immense willpower in the entire situation and the amount of stuff I learnt about Godliness, I dedicate my very first post to the Sims Life Stories and the God-game genre of computer games.
Okay, I give out the suspense now. When I said I was playing God, all I meant was the Sims Life Stories, the game which on an average took up almost 8-10 hours of my day. I was obsessed with it, completely in love with my role, to an extent that my mom considered psychotherapy as the only subsequent step.
Now being a little busy with my REAL life, I have managed to get over the addiction. As a tribute to the hours spent gawking at the computer screen, the family members’ bawling, the initial withdrawal symptoms, my immense willpower in the entire situation and the amount of stuff I learnt about Godliness, I dedicate my very first post to the Sims Life Stories and the God-game genre of computer games.
To define it, a god game is basically a construction and management simulation that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine and supernatural powers, as a great leader or with no specified character, and places them in charge of a game setting containing autonomous characters to guard and influence.
This type of games does not appeal to all. People ask me “But what do you play in the game?”, “Like what do YOU actually do?”, “Don’t tell me you play dollhouse on the computer!” etc... It brings me peace when I find a million others like me on the Net who are as crazy about it. When I think about them and me, the reasons of playing the game become clear.
It is the very need to create. Again, there are numerous reasons to create. As Kevin Kelly in his book Out Of Control says, what we create is always a world. Yes, we may be unable to create anything less. It is possible that we sometimes might doodle, literally or metaphorically but we immediately realize that it is nothing but some theory-less gibberish or some model-less nonsense. In essence, every creative act is no more or less than the reenactment of the Creation.
Also, simulations are not new. Toy worlds are a very early human invention, perhaps even a sign of humanity's emergence, since toys and games in a burial site are recognized by archaeologists as evidence of human culture. Certainly the urge to create toys arises very early in individual development. Children immerse themselves in their own artificial worlds of miniatures. Dolls and choo-choo trains properly belong to the microcosms of simulation. So does much of the great art in our culture: Persian miniatures, painterly landscape realism, Japanese tea gardens, and perhaps all novels and theatre. Tiny worlds…
But now in the computer age--the age of simulations--we are making tiny worlds in larger bandwidths, with more interaction, and with deeper embodiment. We've come from inert figurines to sophisticated software toys like the Sims.
But now in the computer age--the age of simulations--we are making tiny worlds in larger bandwidths, with more interaction, and with deeper embodiment. We've come from inert figurines to sophisticated software toys like the Sims.
We post-modern urbanites spend a huge portion of our day immersed in hyperrealities: phone conversations, TV, computer screens, radio worlds. We value them highly. It is impossible to have a dinner conversation without referencing something you saw or heard via the media! Simulacra have become the terrain we live in. In most ways, the hyperreal is real for us. We enter and leave hyperreality with ease.
A perfect simulation and a computer toy world are nothing but works of hyperreality. They fake so wholly that as a whole they have a reality.
A perfect simulation and a computer toy world are nothing but works of hyperreality. They fake so wholly that as a whole they have a reality.
I have lived this ‘reality’ for quite sometime now. Even with the back pain it caused, I have thoroughly enjoyed my ‘Electronic Godhood’.
In the process, I learnt something so brilliant that I would like to term it as Godliness --
In the process, I learnt something so brilliant that I would like to term it as Godliness --
To be a god, at least to be a creative one, one must relinquish control and embrace uncertainty. Absolute control is absolutely boring. To give birth to the new, the unexpected, and the truly novel -- that is, to be genuinely surprised -- one must surrender the seat of power to the mob below.
The great irony of god games is that letting go is the only way to win.
The great irony of god games is that letting go is the only way to win.
~*~
References:
1) Sims Life Stories Official Website (For the image)
2) Wikipedia.com
3) Out of Control- Kevin Kelly 1994
