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  • duhboy2u2duhboy2u2 Posts: 3,290 Member
    Gender role stereotypes aside, (I don't believe dollhouses are just for girls) I think in a very real way, a life sim and a dollhouse are pretty much the same thing. Children playing with dollhouses mimic the world they see around them when playing. Isn't that wat the Sims does? Either way I agree its fascinating, but then, I've always found human interaction fascinating.
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  • StilettoBlackStilettoBlack Posts: 3,844 Member
    Yes, it is. I loved playing Barbies as a child. I never got the Dream House, or the Town House. I had 1 pink couch. That's it. Now with the Sims, I got my dolls and the houses!
    It's not just for girls. GI Joe was a man "Barbie". He could go out and do his military thing, then come home to Barbie and their one pink couch. With Sims he can really be a soldier and come home to their dream house.
    Barbies had a Skipper, a teenager. With Sims there are babies and toddlers and kids. I don't like any of them personally, I hated Skipper. But it's nice to have.
    I'm too old to play with real Barbies now. Sims is it for me!
  • LadyKynLadyKyn Posts: 3,594 Member
    It is, but to the extent where it's not 'just' a virtual dollhouse. Well, more like expanding a lot more on it. I remember playing with dolls when I was small and stuffed animals and playing 'house' and whatever else. Assigning rolls to them, creating my own stories and just using my imagination.
    Cept now, I have a lot more at my disposal with the sims and bringing more stories alive. :)
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  • EnjoyfulSimmerEnjoyfulSimmer Posts: 1,242 Member
    So what if it is? Whats it to ya? Not you OP. But just saying. All types of games are valid and welcome.
    "Let Our Hearts And Hands Be Streched Out In Compassion Toward Others."
  • OEII1001OEII1001 Posts: 3,682 Member
    Yes, it is a virtual dollhouse among other things. And if you enjoy playing it as such then what does that matter? There's no "correct" classification of this series, and so it is what you want it to be.
  • NorthDakotaGamerNorthDakotaGamer Posts: 2,559 Member
    Basically I always thought of it as a dollhouse on an electronic device.
  • catloverplayercatloverplayer Posts: 93,362 Member
    duhboy2u2 wrote: »
    Gender role stereotypes aside, (I don't believe dollhouses are just for girls) I think in a very real way, a life sim and a dollhouse are pretty much the same thing. Children playing with dollhouses mimic the world they see around them when playing. Isn't that wat the Sims does? Either way I agree its fascinating, but then, I've always found human interaction fascinating.

    The differences though is you can make your Simself and live out your fantasies in this doll house.
  • ctthomasctthomas Posts: 136 Member
    I've frequently referred to The Sims as a dollhouse for adults. Definitely expands on the idea, though. I don't know a lot of kids who built their own dollhouse before they played in it...
  • icmnfrshicmnfrsh Posts: 18,789 Member
    Pretty much. It's a more socially acceptable way for adults and males to play with dolls. :D
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  • Writin_RegWritin_Reg Posts: 28,907 Member
    Sims is a life simulator - period. Not remotely like playing dolls. It's about living life, raising families, doing what your parents did raising all of you, having careers, etc, etc.

    "Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.

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  • PrisinkiaPrisinkia Posts: 21 Member
    [quote="Writin_Reg;c-16943308"]Sims is a life simulator - period. Not remotely like playing dolls. It's about living life, raising families, doing what your parents did raising all of you, having careers, etc, etc.[/quote]

    Sounds just like the stuff I used to do with my dolls lmao
  • Samsonguy9000Samsonguy9000 Posts: 755 Member
    Not sure if that author isn't feeling more a need to just give a name to something to make them feel comfortable. Will Wright was going for simulation, but in the end it is up to the player as to what they see and experience. I honestly don't care what to call it. Sims is just fun to me. Even the current devs are keeping it a bit ambiguous with adding the first-person experience into the whole shebang.
    Give it another decade or two, and we may be calling it a holographic AI room experience. Perhaps a....holodeck?
    Cupid wrote: »
    That's pretty much what it is. We can bounce away from calling it a "Virtual Dollhouse" to make it sound less emasculating for male players, but the fact that people (like the author of the article) feel a need to do that in the first place points to a bigger societal issue in my opinion.

    On a side note the grammar in this article is horrendous. Journalism seems to be a dying art :D

    Kotaku and its sister sites like Jezebel have always been nothing but a farce. If they draw attention to something interesting, then there is likely a better article on the subject written elsewhere. Even PCGamer has decent features now and then.
    duhboy2u2 wrote: »
    Gender role stereotypes aside, (I don't believe dollhouses are just for girls) I think in a very real way, a life sim and a dollhouse are pretty much the same thing. Children playing with dollhouses mimic the world they see around them when playing. Isn't that wat the Sims does? Either way I agree its fascinating, but then, I've always found human interaction fascinating.

    The differences though is you can make your Simself and live out your fantasies in this doll house.

    Can do the same with a live dollhouse, too. Especially if you are crafty enough.
  • mikaelahollymikaelaholly Posts: 46 Member
    It totally is! Maybe that's why I love it so much...
  • NindigoNindigo Posts: 2,764 Member
    Of course, it's a virtual dollhouse. Boys play with dolls too - action figures. I'm actually very opposed to the idea of controlling a child's environment specifically according to their gender. It's unnecessary and based on plain homophobia. But that's a very different discussion.


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  • annaliese39annaliese39 Posts: 2,797 Member
    Yes, a virtual dollhouse is exactly how I describe it, and I am mean it in an entirely positive way. I always loved imaginative play and dollhouses as a little girl. Pretend play is, as others have stated, not gender specific and a natural part of child development. I guess I never grew out of it.
  • SimmervilleSimmerville Posts: 11,644 Member
    That is just one of many things it is. I don't spend much of my gaming time dressing up my sims, and I hardly spend time decorating their homes. To me tthis game is a superb story telling trigger. It gets my fantasy going, I even use it to create short stories that I sell to magazines. Because most of my families have longe and detailed background stories, I find story ideas everywhere, and I can stay in a house for a couple days to make notes/develop the characters. AND, when I just play, I often focis on the community aspect more than each household or sim.

    Still, yes, it's a virtual dollhouse, also, if you want it to be.
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  • NindigoNindigo Posts: 2,764 Member
    It gets my fantasy going
    The very core of my gameplay. Anything to spark that imagination.


    Origin ID: Nindigo79

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  • katrinasforestkatrinasforest Posts: 1,002 Member
    "Virtual dollhouse" is a good easy descriptor for non-gamers who don't know what it is. If I wanted to elaborate, I might say, "Imagine a virtual dollhouse... but more organized and every once in a while, the dolls will go off and do something wacky you weren't planning for. Let set themselves on fire."
    Watch me mash together Sims and Pokémon to tell a story about battling glitches in Penny Saves Paldea. Updated every other Thursday.
  • SimpkinSimpkin Posts: 7,425 Member
    Sims a dollhouse? This is what I've been saying for years.
    This is the kinda game playtime I had when I was a kid. It didn't always have dolls but playing house or whatever is the same thing. Simulating life.
    In the sims form... it's a little different and I could see why men would be into it aswell. There is a great deal of goal oriented gameplay in it, it's strategic. For me, both work.
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  • invisiblgirlinvisiblgirl Posts: 1,709 Member
    It's definitely a virtual dollhouse to me. That was always my favourite toy as a child - my dolls played out the stories in my head.
    I just want things to match. :'(
  • EnkiSchmidtEnkiSchmidt Posts: 5,334 Member
    When I hear dollhouse I think more about the creative aspect of The Sims. Assuming control of a sim, have them do something, then think about another sim would react, switch to that one and have them act. So when I roleplay I'm playing dollhouse style. I rarely felt the need to write down the geography, history and civic laws of my dolls and rubber cowboys as a child, though, which is a major part of my simming.

    But isn't that a playstyle that came later? From how I experienced the original game game it was all about time management. Go to work, buy furniture that fills needs more efficient, have more time for skilling, get promoted, gain more money for even better furniture and to expand the house to improve routing, resulting in more time to skill... rinse, repeat.

    In my mind The Sims will always be a roleplaying game in a somewhat exotic setting, because of this buy gear-level up-face harder challenges mechanic.
  • EgonVMEgonVM Posts: 4,926 Member
    Well, the game was almost called Dollhouse, but it was changed to The Sims to get more male appeal.
  • TheGreatGorlonTheGreatGorlon Posts: 382 Member
    edited February 2019
    The article is super conflicted, and doesn't really hit the point where it should or develop itself enough to be meaningful. She starts off rambling about how it's not a dollhouse, but closes with a paragraph about how it wouldn't be a problem if it was a dollhouse because of the storytelling components. So is it a dollhouse or isn't a dollhouse, Gita at Kotaku? It sounds to me like the premise of her article should have been to tell us how the Sims IS a dollhouse, but then also how it's the evolution of the dollhouse to become something completely new and unique, yet still retain the childlike potential for imagination and immersion that draws people to dollhouses in the first place. That would have been a much richer article that could have really discussed the game as a series over 19 years, instead of her weird attempt to add gender dynamics into her article that honestly are irrelevant to the Sims as a game and series. The topic she started has potential, but it overall just felt half-cooked.
  • GalacticGalGalacticGal Posts: 28,284 Member
    It was an engaging and good article — until the author dropped the F-bomb. Too bad. A paragraph prior had me in stitches.
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