The Sims has been released in 60 countries since it’s release in 2000, in 22 languages and has sold over 100 million copies including expansion packs, making them a comfortable $4 million in total. These figures could boast it’s diversity, but does it really relate to all it’s players? The game itself appears to be set in American-style suburban neighbourhoods with large plots of land, lakes, parks and in one of the expansion packs, malls and and super-shops like Toys R Us. Only recently has the World Adventures expansion pack been released, allowing players to travel to other countries such as Egypt, and visit the sites. This means someone playing it in Egypt, now knows that their town isn’t Egyptian, because their Sims would have to fly to get there.
Sims can get married to each other, sealed by wearing a woman wearing a white wedding dress and a man wearing a tux and then giving the other Sim a gold wedding ring. This itself is a western way of life, ignoring the marital traditions of any other cultures.
Although the player can make a Sim female or male, they are very much genderless in terms of behaviour. A female sim is just as likely to fall in love with another female as they are with a male, as they don’t have the ability to discriminate. However, it wasn’t until the release of The Sims 3 that gay sims could get married (source). This could be seen as a good thing, players have the freedom to create their sims and make them do whatever they want without question, but this also means they lack a soul. They have no opinions based on their experiences, nothing to shape their personality.
In this article Will Knight describes the simulation game NEW TIES that will attempt to see a culture form through artificially intelligent virtual characters, who unlike The Sims, have to learn to survive.
Simulated Environment May Generate Virtual Culture
17:21 14 July 2005 by Will Knight
Virtual computer characters more accustomed to battling deranged alien monsters are about to take part in a unique social experiment.
A society of virtual “agents” – each with a remarkably realistic personality and the ability to learn and communicate – is being crafted by scientists from five European research institutes who hope to gain insights into the way human societies evolve.
The project, known as New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning – or NEW-TIES – brings together experts in artificial intelligence, linguistics, computer science and sociology. It is backed by a consortium consisting of the University of Surrey and Napier University in the UK, Tilberg and Vrije Universities in the Netherlands and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.
Virtual reality show
The experiment will see about 1000 agents live together in a simulated world hosted on a network of 50 computers based at the various institutions involved.
Each agent will be capable of various simple tasks, like moving around and building simple structures, but will also have the ability to communicate and cooperate with its cohabitants. Though simple interaction, the researchers hope to watch these characters create their very own society from scratch.
Every character in the simulated world will need to eat to survive, and will be able to learn from their environment through trial and error – learning, for example, how to cultivate edible plants with water and sunlight. In addition, characters will be able to reproduce by mating with members the opposite sex and their offspring will inherited a random collection of their parents “genetic” traits.
-In The Sims 3, characters have evolved to have ‘traits’. These traits affect the personality of the Sim and their behaviour and reaction to things around them. When creating the Sim the player can choose five traits. An ‘insane’ trait may lead the Sim to act oddly in public, wear only underwear when outside the house, and trying to hug everyone in the streets. Mixing this with an ‘artistic’ trait means that the Sim may get up in the middle of the night, dress formally, and then go and paint at a neighbours house without their permission. This is an attempt to give the Sim a personality, or ‘soul’. However it does not mean it will create a culture.
Random word generator
Perhaps most importantly, however, by pointing to objects and using randomly generated “words”, characters should be able to conjure up their very own language and communicate with others inside their world.
And this language may bear little resemblance to anything spoken in human societies. “It’s quite possible they will develop a language that we have to interpret,” says Ben Paechter at Napier University in Scotland. “They may discuss things in ways we find difficult to understand.”
However, the ability to communicate could enable these agents to develop complex cultural activities resembling those found in small human societies. “A long-term aim is to see if we can get culture to emerge,” Paechter adds. “This way, we might learn something about the way human societies evolve.”
-The Sims can already function in their world without our help. They are born with the basics of life built in, such as the ability to make food, use the toilet, speak to one another. The Sims don’t choose where they live, they don’t built it nor decorate it. This is the players responsibility and without it, would strip it of any gameplay, making it more like Big Brother .
Reality check
But not everyone is convinced that it will yield valuable results. “We have real human societies that grow up on their own within computer-generated fantasy worlds,” says Edward Castronova, an expert in online gaming worlds at Indiana University in the US. “The most sensible research project, it seems to me, would be to study these societies directly, rather than conjure artificial ones.”
Castronova suggests that the synthetic nature of such a world will undermine its potential. “Inferences from an entirely artificial system are always going to be weakened by the artificiality,” he told New Scientist. “There’s no reality check.”
Nevertheless, the researchers behind NEW-TIES hope to have seen some spectacular results by the time the project comes to an end in 2007. “It’s incredibly ambitious, and it may be that, at the end of 3 years, we say we need at least another 30,” Gilbert admits. “But it’s worth a try.”
-I have been unable to find any of the results from this project, which was scheduled to be built by August 2007. This could mean that the project is still underway, or that it was never completed. The link to the NEW TIES site no longer exists and searching google has not linked me to the results. Online games such as Second Life allow users to create their own virtual character and build within an online community. However, we are able to do this from the knowledge and experiences we have from the real world. For example, in Second Life, a player did not learn to build a swimming pool because they need one due to the hot weather, but either because we are bored, or we just want to pretend to swim. Their character will not die if they don’t feed them, nor do they have to learn to communicate. Therefore, this kind of game, like The Sims, is different to that of NEW TIES.
Without knowing the full extent of the project I can’t say whether I think it would work well. There are questions to consider such as, would they enforce law, can they kill? If they don’t have emotions, then why would they kill? Can they die? They can build, but what with? And what? If weather affects them, then shelter would be built. But does it?
