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!
Skipper was Barbie's little sister. I had one. I missed getting her best friend, Midge, though. I had a real Ken Doll, but not GI Joe. I played into my teens, too. Now, it doesn't matter that my only daughter owns my Barbie collection, I've got my Sims!
My problme with "dollhouse" is no the female aspect of it, but Sims 4 seems to add more content towards female young adults that its really sad. I wish all my sims had the same amount of stuff to choose from, elders, adults, young adults, teens, kids, toddler, males and females. But no, the have gone from life simulator to a dollhouse approach to this game that... urgh... i cant even talk
Because I build my sims a house - does not make me a carpenter any more than manipulating Sims makes you play like a child with dolls in a doll house. For one thing dolls do nothing - you have to pretend they do things and move them around etc. On the other hand Sims are much like real people living their lives. Left to do their own thing they will live their life with or with out you. No dollhouse does that. No doll house lets your dolls have babies and lets you raise them up to have families of their own. Dolls don't grow old and die - they never change.
Men have homes too, raise families, etc just like females do. It's not a doll kind of thing in my view. I have a number of good male friends and relatives who equally raise their kids in homes as their exes do. It's called living life - not playing dolls.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
It definitely is a virtual dollhouse. I loved Barbie dolls when I was younger and I would get my younger brother to play with me all the time. This game caught my interest for that exact reason. I've even made some of my old favorite dolls in the sims.
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I played with 'little people' dollhouses all through childhood and Sims is my adult version I would very much say that Sims is a virtual dollhouse.
I know that dolls in dollhouses never moved themselves, never grew old etc. except in your own imagination. But Sims is just an updated version of a dollhouse which allows you to do a little more. You still need imagination for some aspects of the game. Yes, there are differences, but it is still a dollhouse just the same. Anyone who says it isn't is just kidding themselves
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with guys, gals, young or old playing with a dollhouse, virtual or otherwise.
As I someone who rarely controls my Sims & prefer watching Sims doing their own things, no, not at all. Dolls in a dollhouse wouldn’t move themselves & would require me to actively play them.
I like The Sims because it tries to simulate people, not because I get to control them.
I played with my sister's dollhouse and her Barbie's and I had a GI Joe, is it any wonder I love the sims?
My brothers as well. They had no problem picking up my barbie dolls and playing with me in my Barbie dream house and it never occurred to me that it might be 'strange' for me to play GI Joes with them. I'll never understand the 'boy/girl' stigma people put on toys. They are entertainment. Our little sims virtual dolls are no different. My baby brother is the one who introduced me to the sims and his opening line?
"Hey sis, I found these really cool little people for us to play with! Reminds me of playing when we were little." We played Sims 1 together and traded save files for years when we didn't live in the same city/state.
Loving yourself is the most simple and complicated thing you can do for you.
Personally, I think it's more of a simulation than a dollhouse, but that may be my own personal biases showing. I was a tomboy growing up, and while I had dolls, I hardly ever played with them - they were a bit too boring and girly for my tastes.
It certainly does not feel like a virtual dollhouse. There are many autonomy and progression aspects that tilt it towards life simulation more than a dollhouse simulator. If I were to call The Sims a virtual dollhouse, then any and every other life simulation to ever exist would also be that, so a no for me.
For me it is although it's also much more. It's a means to tell stories using your imagination and move around your little characters and dress them up.. so yeah that part is dollhouse and is quite wonderful. It also is much deeper in that it's own gameplay comes out. Some unexpected things can happen. You can learn how to make their lives easier or figure out the different things that can occur because you went down some game play path (had them join a career, paired them up with a sim with different traits, gave them a bad reputation ect.. ect...) You can also watch and barely guide them casually, or manage their time fiercely to keep on top of needs or goals (either game driven or player driven).
I still mostly think of it as a dollhouse for brevity though. Probably because it lets me more vividly do what I most want to do .. tell myself a story.
Personally, I think it's more of a simulation than a dollhouse, but that may be my own personal biases showing. I was a tomboy growing up, and while I had dolls, I hardly ever played with them - they were a bit too boring and girly for my tastes.
That was me - I never played with my dolls. They were dust collectors. LOL. They just stood there doing nothing so I could never consider my sims a doll in a doll house. LOL.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
As others have said, I like the unpredictability of the Sims games, that's not really something you can ever get from a dollhouse playing by yourself. There are many qualities of the games that are able to attract players who didn't like dolls as kids so I never made the correlation of Sims being a virtual dollhouse.
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 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.
@scrutyni That's fair, "sandbox" is indeed more of an industry term, and "dollhouse" isn't an established genre or anything. However, I don't feel like the point about logically applying that to all life simulation games and creative writing is fair, as the Sims specifically revolves around the two most important elements of play and imagination that ties it very firmly to the concept of a doll house - the house and the inhabitants. Specifically similar to dolls and their homes, you get to move furniture, decorate how you will, have your characters interact with the furniture and other parts of the home, and often with each other. That's not to say the Sims isn't still a life simulation game, it most certainly is, but it can be both a life simulator and fall into a category as a virtual dollhouse at the same time. As I mentioned, it has transcended beyond the simple scope of physical dollhouses and childhood play into something more evolved, but regardless of whether you enjoyed dollhouses or not as a child, I find there to be much too strong of a correlation between the most basic elements of the Sims and their homes and dolls and their houses to simply dismiss the notion that the Sims is a virtual dollhouse on some level.
It's much in the same way that one piece of technology today will still be called what it was called years ago - like the phone, for instance. They used to be wall mounted and corded, but now they're tiny computers we keep in our pockets. Smart phones have certainly evolved beyond the traditional phones from the past, but at their core, they still are phones and we still call them such. Even if you didn't like corded phones or even if you primarily use your smartphone for games or the internet, it's still a phone.
@TheGreatGorlon I don't disagree with your take, and I won't gripe on your and others' preference to call it a virtual dollhouse. I guess because my entire childhood, or what I remember of it, centered around video games rather than physical toys, there's definitely a disconnect to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Sure, technology has developed, but this development to me exists within the gaming realm and doesn't translate back and forth between a virtual game and toys of reality. I see the Sims as more just a video game inspired by life, just like a dollhouse is a toy inspired by life. The Sims's dollhouse-like features are inspired by actual humans' ability to influence architecture and decorate houses, as well as our own social interactions. Just as a child's imagination is inspired as such, so I feel I'd be giving too much credit to dollhouses for something that simply happens in (or is inspired by) reality. In the same vein, I haven't heard of people calling shooter or battlefield games "virtual action figures". And if you do know someone who does do that oof, well, I guess the problem is too much correlating things to other things when we should just view each entity as its own unique concept.
Now if you were consistently using a pose mod...lol. In the end, agreeing to either side is fine and reasonable, to each their own and this topic was based on feeling in the first place, so no one's opinion is any less valid no matter how literal they're taking it.
When I was a kid, long before the Sims was heard of, I use to make my own paperdolls and play just as I play in the Sims. I drew out everything. Paperdolls with their paper clothes and different paper hair much used like a wig. I drew their homes and had 3D models of my main families home. I even created an entire town that covered the whole of my bedroom floor. It had all kinds of shops and entertainment lots. It was my escape and what I loved to do.
As I got older and into my highschool years, call me a nerd or whatever, I continued to draw my paperdolls and expand my paper town even though I didn't play with them anymore I started writing stories for them. It was a combination of realism and fantasy.
When the Sims came out I was able to take that same creativity, imagination, and play into a virtual world. I only wish now that I had saved those drawings and stories.
Call this game what you want, but I think it's just a fun way to express your creativity rather you're a architect, artist, designer, story teller or just someone who simply likes to play the game. Male or female or something in-between older generation vs. younger generation, it doesn't matter, it's a life simulation game in which you use your imagination and creativity to play how you want to.
@scrutyni That's fair, "sandbox" is indeed more of an industry term, and "dollhouse" isn't an established genre or anything. However, I don't feel like the point about logically applying that to all life simulation games and creative writing is fair, as the Sims specifically revolves around the two most important elements of play and imagination that ties it very firmly to the concept of a doll house - the house and the inhabitants. Specifically similar to dolls and their homes, you get to move furniture, decorate how you will, have your characters interact with the furniture and other parts of the home, and often with each other. That's not to say the Sims isn't still a life simulation game, it most certainly is, but it can be both a life simulator and fall into a category as a virtual dollhouse at the same time. As I mentioned, it has transcended beyond the simple scope of physical dollhouses and childhood play into something more evolved, but regardless of whether you enjoyed dollhouses or not as a child, I find there to be much too strong of a correlation between the most basic elements of the Sims and their homes and dolls and their houses to simply dismiss the notion that the Sims is a virtual dollhouse on some level.
It's much in the same way that one piece of technology today will still be called what it was called years ago - like the phone, for instance. They used to be wall mounted and corded, but now they're tiny computers we keep in our pockets. Smart phones have certainly evolved beyond the traditional phones from the past, but at their core, they still are phones and we still call them such. Even if you didn't like corded phones or even if you primarily use your smartphone for games or the internet, it's still a phone.
I find The Sims at its core a life simulator, moreso than a virtual dollhouse. Main aspect is that yes, you may turn off autonomy and control your sims, but there's a whole neighborhood (or a whole world running in TS3's case) moving around, doing their own thing, an A.I. basically. The idea of tying The Sims to the concept of a virtual dollhouse just doesn't make sense to me, because that'd mean every single life simulator could essentially be tied to a virtual dollhouse when the game is trying to simply simulate life. It's a basic part of life to have a house, to furnish it, to use said furniture, to socialize, to take care of your basic needs, those things are tied to simulating life itself as an integral part of our lives is, you know, having a place to live in. Dollhouses are on their own a physical way of simulating life, albeit static of course since it's not a software.
To me the Sims has always been a virtual dollhouse-ish thing. It offers more than just a dollhouse though. But creating families, giving them clothes, finding the perfect house and furniture.. Seems like a dollhouse to me. I never really played with dollhouses as kid, though.
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Skipper was Barbie's little sister. I had one. I missed getting her best friend, Midge, though. I had a real Ken Doll, but not GI Joe. I played into my teens, too.
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Men have homes too, raise families, etc just like females do. It's not a doll kind of thing in my view. I have a number of good male friends and relatives who equally raise their kids in homes as their exes do. It's called living life - not playing dolls.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I know that dolls in dollhouses never moved themselves, never grew old etc. except in your own imagination. But Sims is just an updated version of a dollhouse which allows you to do a little more. You still need imagination for some aspects of the game. Yes, there are differences, but it is still a dollhouse just the same. Anyone who says it isn't is just kidding themselves
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with guys, gals, young or old playing with a dollhouse, virtual or otherwise.
I like The Sims because it tries to simulate people, not because I get to control them.
My brothers as well. They had no problem picking up my barbie dolls and playing with me in my Barbie dream house and it never occurred to me that it might be 'strange' for me to play GI Joes with them. I'll never understand the 'boy/girl' stigma people put on toys. They are entertainment. Our little sims virtual dolls are no different. My baby brother is the one who introduced me to the sims and his opening line?
"Hey sis, I found these really cool little people for us to play with! Reminds me of playing when we were little." We played Sims 1 together and traded save files for years when we didn't live in the same city/state.
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I still mostly think of it as a dollhouse for brevity though. Probably because it lets me more vividly do what I most want to do .. tell myself a story.
That was me - I never played with my dolls. They were dust collectors. LOL. They just stood there doing nothing so I could never consider my sims a doll in a doll house. LOL.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Rookie builder and casual Simmer || Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/ycummopq
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.
Rookie builder and casual Simmer || Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/ycummopq
It's much in the same way that one piece of technology today will still be called what it was called years ago - like the phone, for instance. They used to be wall mounted and corded, but now they're tiny computers we keep in our pockets. Smart phones have certainly evolved beyond the traditional phones from the past, but at their core, they still are phones and we still call them such. Even if you didn't like corded phones or even if you primarily use your smartphone for games or the internet, it's still a phone.
Now if you were consistently using a pose mod...lol. In the end, agreeing to either side is fine and reasonable, to each their own and this topic was based on feeling in the first place, so no one's opinion is any less valid no matter how literal they're taking it.
Rookie builder and casual Simmer || Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/ycummopq
As I got older and into my highschool years, call me a nerd or whatever, I continued to draw my paperdolls and expand my paper town even though I didn't play with them anymore I started writing stories for them. It was a combination of realism and fantasy.
When the Sims came out I was able to take that same creativity, imagination, and play into a virtual world. I only wish now that I had saved those drawings and stories.
Call this game what you want, but I think it's just a fun way to express your creativity rather you're a architect, artist, designer, story teller or just someone who simply likes to play the game. Male or female or something in-between older generation vs. younger generation, it doesn't matter, it's a life simulation game in which you use your imagination and creativity to play how you want to.
I find The Sims at its core a life simulator, moreso than a virtual dollhouse. Main aspect is that yes, you may turn off autonomy and control your sims, but there's a whole neighborhood (or a whole world running in TS3's case) moving around, doing their own thing, an A.I. basically. The idea of tying The Sims to the concept of a virtual dollhouse just doesn't make sense to me, because that'd mean every single life simulator could essentially be tied to a virtual dollhouse when the game is trying to simply simulate life. It's a basic part of life to have a house, to furnish it, to use said furniture, to socialize, to take care of your basic needs, those things are tied to simulating life itself as an integral part of our lives is, you know, having a place to live in. Dollhouses are on their own a physical way of simulating life, albeit static of course since it's not a software.