Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 399)

Trigger Happy
401
buying new things for the Sims’ house in order to
increase its inhabitants’ happiness (such as a large
mirror, which will boost their charisma, or a new oven,
which will help them cook meals for their housemates
and so become more popular), and in helping them
climb the slippery pole of a career as a politician or
scientist. More money makes a Sim happier; social
dissidents are not allowed. Once more, we reach a
stratum in videogame design where certain gameplay
possibilities have been ruled out by the assumptions
buried deep in its structure.
This will, for the forseeable future, continue to be
the case. Even in the splendidly ambitious Republic, a
forthcoming game that promises to simulate
revolutionary politics in a life-sized eastern European
city, there is a fundamental assumption, according to
one of the designers at London’s Elixir Studios, that
everyone is cynically self-interested and
powerhungry. That still represents a certain angle, a
necessarily partial explanation of how the world
works, although it seems a more potentially fruitful
and provocative starting point than the Sims
philosophy. Simplification in videogame design, as
this book has insisted, is not only inevitable but