The most fascinating thing about The Sims Social is how well it exhibits the capitalist structure: One needs to plant crops (all players are farmers, for some reason), which may then be sold, the profits from which may be used to buy objects. Another way to earn money is to speak to your friends, which turns people, spectacularly, oddly, into means of production. Then there is cutting the grass, or simply doing chores, which, frighteningly, makes the experience of life itself a means of production.

 

As the game goes on, the objects become ever more important in developing the character, such that one is in constant search of capital, of that elusive a (which, of course, does not exist; there is no “end” or “ultimate goal,” so the player will go on and on and on and on). Despite the backstory of the players being individuals in a vast world simply living their lives, therefore, The Sims Social is a video game about the capitalist mode of production; and the relationship between each player is thus only subordinate to the means of production, so that one only visits one’s neighbors and friends literally to have money erupt out of them whenever they talk—which is to say this aspect of the game is the story of the capitalist relations of production.

 

I feel that this, ultimately, is how games are to be read: not in terms of the story, or the graphics, or, to an extent, the gameplay—the important part of the game is the structure which forms the consistency of the game’s experience; what Kant might call the a priori that govern the relationship between the player and the game-world. Just as human experience is limited between the subject and the things-in-themselves, so is gameplay between the player and the game. The “first principles,” as Aristotle would say, which govern the interaction between the two are the most important aspect of the game from the standpoint of ludological criticism; as, on the whole, games are made as worlds, not merely as events which occur in them, as in films. The point of criticism, therefore, is the investigation of this world and its laws, rather than the individual actions of any individual objects within the world.

 

The most fascinating thing about The Sims Social is how well it exhibits the capitalist structure: One needs to plant crops (all players are farmers, for some reason), which may then be sold, the profits from which may be used to buy objects. Another way to earn money is to speak to your friends, which turns people, spectacularly, oddly, into means of production. Then there is cutting the grass, or simply doing chores, which, frighteningly, makes the experience of life itself a means of production.

 

As the game goes on, the objects become ever more important in developing the character, such that one is in constant search of capital, of that elusive a (which, of course, does not exist; there is no “end” or “ultimate goal,” so the player will go on and on and on and on). Despite the backstory of the players being individuals in a vast world simply living their lives, therefore, The Sims Social is a video game about the capitalist mode of production; and the relationship between each player is thus only subordinate to the means of production, so that one only visits one’s neighbors and friends literally to have money erupt out of them whenever they talk—which is to say this aspect of the game is the story of the capitalist relations of production.

 

I feel that this, ultimately, is how games are to be read: not in terms of the story, or the graphics, or, to an extent, the gameplay—the important part of the game is the structure which forms the consistency of the game’s experience; what Kant might call the a priori that govern the relationship between the player and the game-world. Just as human experience is limited between the subject and the things-in-themselves, so is gameplay between the player and the game. The “first principles,” as Aristotle would say, which govern the interaction between the two are the most important aspect of the game from the standpoint of ludological criticism; as, on the whole, games are made as worlds, not merely as events which occur in them, as in films. The point of criticism, therefore, is the investigation of this world and its laws, rather than the individual actions of any individual objects within the world.

 

It says something, therefore, about the cultural production of video games when the best representation of ordinary life they can come up with is strictly capitalist in nature; that is to say, how incredible and sad that The Sims Social is not a world in which capitalism is a socio-historical phenomenon but the natural law which governs experience as a whole.

It says something, therefore, about the cultural production of video games when the best representation of ordinary life they can come up with is strictly capitalist in nature; that is to say, how incredible and sad that The Sims Social is not a world in which capitalism is a socio-historical phenomenon but the natural law which governs experience as a whole.

 

As the game goes on, the objects become ever more important in developing the character, such that one is in constant search of capital, of that elusive a (which, of course, does not exist; there is no “end” or “ultimate goal,” so the player will go on and on and on and on). Despite the backstory of the players being individuals in a vast world simply living their lives, therefore, The Sims Social is a video game about the capitalist mode of production; and the relationship between each player is thus only subordinate to the means of production, so that one only visits one’s neighbors and friends literally to have money erupt out of them whenever they talk—which is to say this aspect of the game is the story of the capitalist relations of production.

 

I feel that this, ultimately, is how games are to be read: not in terms of the story, or the graphics, or, to an extent, the gameplay—the important part of the game is the structure which forms the consistency of the game’s experience; what Kant might call the a priori that govern the relationship between the player and the game-world. Just as human experience is limited between the subject and the things-in-themselves, so is gameplay between the player and the game. The “first principles,” as Aristotle would say, which govern the interaction between the two are the most important aspect of the game from the standpoint of ludological criticism; as, on the whole, games are made as worlds, not merely as events which occur in them, as in films. The point of criticism, therefore, is the investigation of this world and its laws, rather than the individual actions of any individual objects within the world.

 

It says something, therefore, about the cultural production of video games when the best representation of ordinary life they can come up with is strictly capitalist in nature; that is to say, how incredible and sad that The Sims Social is not a world in which capitalism is a socio-historical phenomenon but the natural law which governs experience as a whole.