Artificial Life and Puzzle Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 580

While the Birds of a Feather and Opposites Attract rules seem to be mutually exclu-
sive, they aren't if they apply to different attributes. One character might prefer the
friendship of others who are similarly well organized (the Birds of a Feather Rule,
applied to organizational ability), but also enjoy the company of people who have
quite different talents from their own (the Opposites Attract Rule, applied to talent).
THE SUCCESS OF THE SIMS
The Sims likely owes its huge success to two things: the unprecedented scope for
creativity it offers and its emphasis on interpersonal relationships.
First, it enables the player to exercise his creativity in a familiar sphere: the ordi-
nary suburban home. In addition to building and furnishing a house, players can
design their own skins for the sims, creating people who look like themselves (or
anyone else). The game actually offers more creative play than SimCity or SimTower ,
for example, because The Sims offers many different kinds of things to do. Players
can also take photographs of their sims' houses and store them in albums, along
with written commentary that the player supplies, effectively creating illustrated
stories. And they can share all of these things over the Internet. The game offers
more scope for personal creativity on the part of the player than just about any
other video game or software toy on the market.
The second reason for the success of The Sims is its focus on human relationships.
The player's immediate objective in playing The Sims is to make sure his sims' phys-
ical needs are met; but his secondary, longer-term objective is to meet the sims'
mental or emotional needs: fun, social interaction, and quality living space. The
sims' need for social interaction is considerably more complex because it involves
building relationships with other sims rather than simply interacting with objects,
and those social interactions produce emergent behaviors that affect their relation-
ships. Players enjoy watching and influencing these interactions. In fact, the player's
imagination plays a very large role in the game, just as it does in playing with dolls.
The sims are not terribly complex simulations, but players give them names and
personalities and ascribe many more characteristics to them than they actually
possess. The fact that the game is about human relationships rather than abstract
challenges contributes strongly to its success, especially among female players.
God Games
The term god game refers to games in which the player takes on the role of a god,
but one with limited powers like the gods of ancient Greece, rather than an all-
powerful god from monotheistic traditions. In a god game, the player's power
derives from a population of simulated worshippers—artificial characters that the
player, in his capacity as their deity, must nurture and care for. The population is
usually depicted as a tribal people rather than a civilization.