Is The Sims A Virtual Dollhouse?

"TheGreatGorlon;c-16945290" wrote:
I think some people here are taking "virtual dollhouse" a bit literally. For instance, a game like Minecraft is called a "sandbox." It's not a literal sandbox in that you're not building in a virtual box with nothing but digital sand, but it encapsulates the sheer degree of openness of imagination that an actual sandbox presents to a child playing in one - they can imagine anything, they can build anything with the sand within the boundaries of the box, and they're only limited by their imagination and how clever they are at manipulating sand. Actual sand boxes don't have creepers running around exploding, they don't have hammers and swords that you use to burrow deeper into the earth, they don't have wild animals running around, etc, etc. You see where I'm going here? The Sims may not exactly behave like a real doll house - sure, the Sims move and are free thinking while dolls are stationary and mobilized when you move them and place them, and you design homes and structures in the Sims whereas you don't have as much control in a real doll house, but it still is a virtual dollhouse down to it's core. You're creating a world, an imitation of reality, and you're acting out life and fantasy with the characters (Sims, dolls, whatever) within your world, using your creativity, imagination, and the characters you have decided to populate your world with. That's how dollhouses are at their core, and that's how the Sims operate at it's core. Like Minecraft though, it transcends physical dollhouses and expands on the concept and evolves it into something that can never be achieved in a real dollhouse, but it still remains that it captures the same concepts of imagination and life imitation that children experience when playing with dollhouses.

I can agree with some points but "sandbox" is a common gaming term now and not used to force players to think of an actual box with actual sand. It's just to refer to a game that allows almost limitless creativity. Indeed, it is for the reasons you stated that the word "sandbox" was chosen, but using "dollhouse" to describe games is not as established a practice. By your logic, ALL life simulator games should just be called dollhouse games, instead of just calling them what they are, life simulation games. You could reduce anything that involves people and imagination to "dollhouse", even creative writing, which seems a bit oversimplified. To me, describing it as a virtual dollhouse game is fine if you wish to do so and also enjoyed dolls when you were younger, but it seems to reduce the essence of the Sims since we don't normally ascribe the word to your regular ol' life simulation games. And for those of us who never saw the appeal of actual dollhouses but enjoy Sims, it definitely doesn't feel the same, so not thinking it as a virtual dollhouse is also fine.