Homeless Sims

A student of game design in the UK (Robin Burkinshaw) created a couple of homeless characters in Sims 3 to see what would happen to them. Alice is the innocent daughter who is extremely clumsy, yet good willed. Her father, Kev, is a huge jerk. The result is actually quite interesting.

Kev provides a lot of the comedic fodder in the experiment while Alice’s struggles tug harder at the heartstrings. She spends a lot of time being stressed out and sleeping on the park bench and occasionally on people’s couches (uninvited most of the time). The best story was when she got a part time job but then donated her first paycheck to charity despite the obvious fact that she needed it. It inspired Burkinshaw with this thought:

What does it mean when a character you’ve created makes you re-examine your own life through their astonishing selflessness?

Check out the blog here. I think it’s an interesting experiment and shows how powerful video games have become. I would argue older videos came with the objective to win and finish the levels. New video games were more immersive, but still come with an objective. But these open ended games are interesting because you don’t know what the story is going to be.