The Struggle of Impermanence or: I Will Probably Forget I Wrote This Within a Week
This game is fascinating to me for a number of reasons and one of them is the sheer weight and depth of criticism it receives, some of which I can relate to personally. Despite that, I have a great love for it on multiple levels and I find myself in this place where I want to understand why some aspects of it so deeply don't work for some people. Solutions to its issues are proposed and discussed on a regular basis, and some of those discussions I've taken part in or started over the years.
One of those topics that comes up repeatedly is impermanence. Or to put it in less academic-sounding words, the "nothing matters" problem. Wiping the slate clean is not only easy, it's got a sort of life of its own, with features like culling, to the point that the game can feel like you're playing a world that is the embodiment of short-term memory loss.
As a sandbox, this is arguably a merit. Sand is easily moved, easily shifted, and easily falls apart. Why is it then that the game can feel like the shifting of the sand is a detriment? I don't think it's just preference. I think it if was just preference, many people would simply adapt to the game as it is or go elsewhere and I don't think that happens in quite the way you'd think it would. Despite having played the game off and on over the course of multiple years, as well as doing in-depth modding of it, I still don't quite feel like I understand it. The opaque nature of it is as mystifying as the game itself. Typically, the nature of a video game is relatively easy for me to grasp. In this case, it feels at times like I'm endlessly chasing an explanation and thinking I have it cornered, only to turn round and see it sprinting off in a shape I hadn't seen before.
This could sound like a compliment, like the game is so complex and deep that it's hard to understand, but I don't think it's that. I think the game is complex and deep in its diversity of playstyles it interfaces with, but I don't think the design itself is particularly deep. This leads me to the idea that the driving contributor to the feeling of being opaque and hard to understand is that the game is an amalgamation of characteristics that are at odds with each other and don't quite fit in the same space. Like pieces of many jigsaw puzzles rammed together into a single shape.
And in this strange space is where it so passionately succeeds with some and fails with others. Some encounter one edge of the puzzle and see it one way. Others encounter another edge of the puzzle and see something completely different. Because the people are approaching it from different angles in a way that lends an entirely different perspective on the game.
So what does this have to do with the "nothing matters" problem and short-term memory loss? Like the literal sandbox, the sandbox of this game is often just sand. It is shaped as you shape it. It is perceived as you have shaped it and from the angle you're peering at it from. Despite its ineptitudes, it's still a functional Lump of Clay, providing an object that you can shape and play with, provided you are willing to do some imagining and molding.
It is, perhaps, opaque because it is more sand than it is game. There is no underlying game to perceive because there isn't one.
This is a lot of vague words, so let's look at some specifics. Some people talk of things like the shallowness of emotions or the lack of memories, but I think these are surface-level explanations of discontent. At the heart of it is a game that won't quite commit to anything and I don't mean things like being able to resurrect a dead sim rather than them staying dead, I mean more in the sense of it's trying to do too many things and they can't all fit in the same space. I did a weird sort of experiment at one point for the sheer curiosity of it, where I made all moodlets hidden for a time. Some players would probably have missed them dearly, but for whatever reason with the way I play, I found I hardly noticed their absence. And I have also almost never noticed the absence of whims, since the patch that turned them off by default. This is not meant to be a commentary on emotions or whims as features in and of themselves, but on the way the game can overwhelm you.
The brain can only process so many things at a time and the game can throw many of them at you in a small space. Emotions, whims, achievements, aspirations, satisfaction points, reward traits and potions, skills, ranked skills, quirks, perks, reward traits, cas traits, character values, weight and muscle change, aging, interaction queues, needs, object quality, environmental hazards (ex: fire), environmental changes (ex: dirty dishes, weather), careers, career goals, career rewards/unlocks, weather-aware outfits, temperature changes, thermostats for addressing temperature changes, audiovisual changes (ex: sim turning on music autonomously), things that require persistent attention to what a sim is doing to make them do it (ex: queuing up an interaction and it failing).
There is probably more I'm not thinking of, but I think I've made the point. These, of course, do not happen all at once most of the time, but I can't help wondering if many of these are unnecessary or unwieldy in their implementation and the game would feel much smoother without them (or at least with them less unwieldy). I can't help wondering if that's at the core of some of the discontent and why some people wax on about how older versions are so much better; not because of the common complaint that the older games have more, but because they have less. And not in the literal sense of less content, but in the sense of less things to focus on at once. Less systems that are in your face that are competing for your attention at any given moment. Some proponents of older iterations might at first think I'm crazy for saying this, but I think of an old video of someone playing Sims 1 that was brought up to me (or in some conversation about this game in general) a couple years ago and what I remember about the video was how focused and straightforward the gameplay was. At the time, I thought it was about how challenging it was to manage the sim's needs, or at least that was how its value was conveyed to me by the person sharing it, in my recollection. But right now, I wonder if the value in it wasn't the challenge at all, but rather the straightforward nature of its operations as conveyed to the player.
Perhaps I'm just chasing a shadow down a hall again and it will change shape once more on reflection; perhaps I'm just someone who is extra sensitive to stimuli (and I probably am) and that's why I think this is an issue. But even if I am extra sensitive to stimuli, I'm not convinced it isn't still an issue here. Especially considering that the official team for this game decided to disable whims by default. That wasn't something I thought up, that was an official decision long before I ever thought up anything like this. And normally I would think it incredibly strange to wholesale disable a feature in a game by default years into its life, but maybe the team saw then what I'm describing now; a system overwhelmed by too much, in need of some trimming.
And yet, this game is so many things to so many people. If you start smoothing the edges of the puzzle so that it turns into a cohesive whole, maybe you are fundamentally shrinking the game. Or maybe it can't come into its own until the jagged edges are addressed. Or maybe the pieces are fine, they just need better relationships with each other.
But anyway, for now I will continue to mod and sometimes muse about it all. And muse if I'm not just writing pretentious nonsense that doesn't mean anything.
One of those topics that comes up repeatedly is impermanence. Or to put it in less academic-sounding words, the "nothing matters" problem. Wiping the slate clean is not only easy, it's got a sort of life of its own, with features like culling, to the point that the game can feel like you're playing a world that is the embodiment of short-term memory loss.
As a sandbox, this is arguably a merit. Sand is easily moved, easily shifted, and easily falls apart. Why is it then that the game can feel like the shifting of the sand is a detriment? I don't think it's just preference. I think it if was just preference, many people would simply adapt to the game as it is or go elsewhere and I don't think that happens in quite the way you'd think it would. Despite having played the game off and on over the course of multiple years, as well as doing in-depth modding of it, I still don't quite feel like I understand it. The opaque nature of it is as mystifying as the game itself. Typically, the nature of a video game is relatively easy for me to grasp. In this case, it feels at times like I'm endlessly chasing an explanation and thinking I have it cornered, only to turn round and see it sprinting off in a shape I hadn't seen before.
This could sound like a compliment, like the game is so complex and deep that it's hard to understand, but I don't think it's that. I think the game is complex and deep in its diversity of playstyles it interfaces with, but I don't think the design itself is particularly deep. This leads me to the idea that the driving contributor to the feeling of being opaque and hard to understand is that the game is an amalgamation of characteristics that are at odds with each other and don't quite fit in the same space. Like pieces of many jigsaw puzzles rammed together into a single shape.
And in this strange space is where it so passionately succeeds with some and fails with others. Some encounter one edge of the puzzle and see it one way. Others encounter another edge of the puzzle and see something completely different. Because the people are approaching it from different angles in a way that lends an entirely different perspective on the game.
So what does this have to do with the "nothing matters" problem and short-term memory loss? Like the literal sandbox, the sandbox of this game is often just sand. It is shaped as you shape it. It is perceived as you have shaped it and from the angle you're peering at it from. Despite its ineptitudes, it's still a functional Lump of Clay, providing an object that you can shape and play with, provided you are willing to do some imagining and molding.
It is, perhaps, opaque because it is more sand than it is game. There is no underlying game to perceive because there isn't one.
This is a lot of vague words, so let's look at some specifics. Some people talk of things like the shallowness of emotions or the lack of memories, but I think these are surface-level explanations of discontent. At the heart of it is a game that won't quite commit to anything and I don't mean things like being able to resurrect a dead sim rather than them staying dead, I mean more in the sense of it's trying to do too many things and they can't all fit in the same space. I did a weird sort of experiment at one point for the sheer curiosity of it, where I made all moodlets hidden for a time. Some players would probably have missed them dearly, but for whatever reason with the way I play, I found I hardly noticed their absence. And I have also almost never noticed the absence of whims, since the patch that turned them off by default. This is not meant to be a commentary on emotions or whims as features in and of themselves, but on the way the game can overwhelm you.
The brain can only process so many things at a time and the game can throw many of them at you in a small space. Emotions, whims, achievements, aspirations, satisfaction points, reward traits and potions, skills, ranked skills, quirks, perks, reward traits, cas traits, character values, weight and muscle change, aging, interaction queues, needs, object quality, environmental hazards (ex: fire), environmental changes (ex: dirty dishes, weather), careers, career goals, career rewards/unlocks, weather-aware outfits, temperature changes, thermostats for addressing temperature changes, audiovisual changes (ex: sim turning on music autonomously), things that require persistent attention to what a sim is doing to make them do it (ex: queuing up an interaction and it failing).
There is probably more I'm not thinking of, but I think I've made the point. These, of course, do not happen all at once most of the time, but I can't help wondering if many of these are unnecessary or unwieldy in their implementation and the game would feel much smoother without them (or at least with them less unwieldy). I can't help wondering if that's at the core of some of the discontent and why some people wax on about how older versions are so much better; not because of the common complaint that the older games have more, but because they have less. And not in the literal sense of less content, but in the sense of less things to focus on at once. Less systems that are in your face that are competing for your attention at any given moment. Some proponents of older iterations might at first think I'm crazy for saying this, but I think of an old video of someone playing Sims 1 that was brought up to me (or in some conversation about this game in general) a couple years ago and what I remember about the video was how focused and straightforward the gameplay was. At the time, I thought it was about how challenging it was to manage the sim's needs, or at least that was how its value was conveyed to me by the person sharing it, in my recollection. But right now, I wonder if the value in it wasn't the challenge at all, but rather the straightforward nature of its operations as conveyed to the player.
Perhaps I'm just chasing a shadow down a hall again and it will change shape once more on reflection; perhaps I'm just someone who is extra sensitive to stimuli (and I probably am) and that's why I think this is an issue. But even if I am extra sensitive to stimuli, I'm not convinced it isn't still an issue here. Especially considering that the official team for this game decided to disable whims by default. That wasn't something I thought up, that was an official decision long before I ever thought up anything like this. And normally I would think it incredibly strange to wholesale disable a feature in a game by default years into its life, but maybe the team saw then what I'm describing now; a system overwhelmed by too much, in need of some trimming.
And yet, this game is so many things to so many people. If you start smoothing the edges of the puzzle so that it turns into a cohesive whole, maybe you are fundamentally shrinking the game. Or maybe it can't come into its own until the jagged edges are addressed. Or maybe the pieces are fine, they just need better relationships with each other.
But anyway, for now I will continue to mod and sometimes muse about it all. And muse if I'm not just writing pretentious nonsense that doesn't mean anything.
