Game Journal

In The Sims you create a Sim – a person, which you control and make a life for in any way you want. You can be cruel and kill them, make them miserable, make them have eight children or make it the richest Sim in the town. It is all up to the player. 

We discussed in class about if it really is cheating when you play against yourself and with no actual finish line?  It is debatable but I will say that the answer to that question is yes. Even if you don’t really have an opponent or a goal, it is still cheating because when you cheat you kind of destroy the purpose of the game when you can make anything happen.

The mechanics to cheat in this game is to press shift+ctrl+C and an empty text field will appear in the top of the screen. This is where you write your cheat code. One google-search away and you will have all the possible cheats in a neat list in just a second. Pick which one you want to use, and just write it in the text field. Depending on what cheat you want to use, you might have to click on something else, or do something else, to make the changes you’d like. For instance, if you want to change the age of your Sim, you have to shift-click the Sim after you’ve written the cheat code in order to get to the options for changing the character.

The dynamics will be that the player will have some sort of god complexion. You have all the power over the game, and you can make everything you want to happen exactly when you want it to happen. The original purpose of the game is that the Sim will have to build a life for himself. To earn money and work for the things that he/she wants. It needs to be happy, build relationships and so forth. But all this can be skipped when/if you cheat, and you will reach your wanted end for your Sim in just a few seconds without actually having to play the game. This can both ruin the game experience or enhance it. Depending on the players view of the game. If you want a successful Sim with a great career and want to play from that stage in the Sims life from the beginning, this cheat will probably enhance the game. Otherwise the player would perhaps lose interest, and do not want to play anymore.

So why do they make it so easy and accessible to cheat in game? One example could be that I think many people play just to build the houses and decorate the houses. If your Sim doesn’t have any money, you can’t buy the things and furniture you want. You have to play for a long time to be able do that. That is why most people that play this game will cheat with giving the sim more money from the start. It is the same if you want to buy a big house for your Sim-family. You can pick any house you want with just one simple line of text. Also because of the fact that you do not have any real opponents in the game, the cheats will not affect any one elses game, so it doesn’t really feel like cheating for most people. 

Johan Huizinga explains the difference between cheating and spoil-sport in his book Homo Ludens. He writes that play is built upon order or rules, and if you deviate from this order you are a spoilsport. You spoil the game and makes the game worthless. Whilst if you cheat you still stick to the rules of the game, and doesn’t necessarily destroy the play or game experience. Depending on how you look at it, you probably are both a spoil-sport and a cheater if you use cheat codes in the Sims. But if you consider using the cheats destroys the game, the player won’t probably use them. Because you are the boss in this game, and doesn’t have to consider anyone elses feelings.

References

Huizinga, Johan (1949). Homo Ludens – A study of the play-element in culture.