Jim Rossignol, editor at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and author of This Gaming Life, is our newest columnist at Boing Boing Offworld. In his first column, he looks at the connection between The Sims and soap operas. Perfect timing, as The Sims 3 launches next month! From Offworld:
Playing The Sims and watching a soap are nothing alike as activities, but they nevertheless share an important theme: they're both purely about our reaction to the behaviour of other people, and the pleasure we get from them is the vicarious pleasure of watching something relatively abnormal happening in a very mundane and familiar situation. While games are usually a series of interesting decisions, The Sims hits the same notes as soaps, offering a series of interesting situations too.I'd like to think that a good part of the art of worthwhile commentary is in seeing the kinds of connections between this and that piece of culture, and then figuring out why they might matter. The idea that The Sims and soap operas are fundamentally linked seems to me like an important connection, and one that will only grow in importance in the coming decade.
