Sveiki!
Having read Sherry Turkle’s essay “Who Am We?”, I came across this quote: “we are moving from “a modernist culture of calculation toward a postmodernist culture of simulation.” That life on the screen permits us to “project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star….””. While in the past we used to try to calculate and predict what was going to happen in the future, have we come to a place in time, where we don’t even have to do that anymore, we can just create our own simulation of what we want our world to be like?
Taking from the same quote the topic of dramas, this week has been very rough, so in order to escape reality, I attempted to play “The Sims” again. I hadn’t played it in like 7/8 years and I found it to be such a good escape and strangely addicting. I created a family, a crazy big family and got very invested in their lives, it became more important for me to attend to their needs rather than my own at times.
My main conclusion from this mini-experiment was not even the fact that virtual reality games are addicting, it was the fact that they can also be a very good source of therapy. Since I am not a person who likes to go look for help from people this was a way to just distract my brain from anything going on in the real world and focus just on these imagined characters. I could live vicariously through them, and I think it’s good sometimes to live in a different universe, to get your brain to just “turn-off” from all serious things in life and just think about how to name your imaginary Sims dog, what style bed will my Sims want and what are the cheat codes to get more fake money for my Sims?
This week’s post didn’t have much to do with my Latvian background, but I think it’s important for any general human to find a way to escape all of their identities and attachments for a bit. It makes you mentally healthier and happier, which is what anyone- Latvian/ American/ etc.- wants.
Latvian in Portland 
Hi Anna!
I really like this take on MMORPGs, not as a cultivation of another identity, just as a way to take a break from real life and get immersed in another, alternate life with less (or at least different) stressors and challenges. I think too much of the academic discourse is centered around the identity part, but we should also be looking at the escapism, the ways that a lot of users use things like Second Life and Sims, just as fun distractions to get absorbed in for a while.
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Did you find Sims to hold up to expectations? I find that returning to anything, particularly video games, can reveal that I was looking at it with rose tinted glasses. I want to go to my old MMORPG roots, but I’m certain I’ll be disappointed.
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I know what you mean, I’ve had that happen with lots of old TV shows I used to love when I was younger, but when I tried them again recently I was so disappointed:( However with Sims I wasn’t disappointed, it was pretty much how I remembered it, the only issue was that I had forgotten most of the cheat codes my friends had showed me back then, so it wasn’t “as” fun cause I needed to work for money, etc…, but still a pretty good time.
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I really enjoyed your take on virtual reality and how you applied it to Turkle’s reading. I do see virtual reality as a therapeutic practice that can be very beneficial for mental health, its also a great way like you said to escape reality and take a break for once. It is defiantly human nature to be able to control and be the producers of our life, and virtual reality allows us to do so.
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When I was younger I was such a huge fan of the Sims as well. I think a big attraction to it and other open world games is the ability to have free will in a world other than the one you live in. I was thinking maybe playing Sims in class could be a cool exercise!
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I completely agree! We should try hint about this to Daena in class at some point….
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Interesting idea! I’ve also thought about interacting in Minecraft (though the options for creating an avatar are a lot more primitive). I do think that interacting in a world where many students already have some familiarity might address some of the learning curve issues that can be challenging with Second Life, though I do worry a bit that people would just get caught up in the game, rather than in the idea of having an alternative identity and meeting and interacting with people from within that. I should learn more about The Sims…
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