A game is just a game, but for some hardcore gamers, it’s larger than life. The latest growing craze on The Sims Social (Facebook game) by EA Playfish has prompted several cases of dilemma between virtual and reality. If you’re new to the game,The Sims Social is the “social network” version of the popular Sims franchise, in which social interaction are marked with dialogue trees. The dialogue trees guides individual Sims to move towards friendship, romance or even animosity. One that caught attention is of course the asynchronous relationship system.
Virtual vs. Reality
The most interesting feature of this relationship system of this game on Facebook is the excessive need for permission especially when you move up to higher levels. The game only uses a player’s social graph of friends list. Hence, there’s no way for The Sims Social to know that your friend indeed is engaged or married to another The Sims Social player in real life. This might lead jealousy or misunderstanding between the couples who are in real relationships, which ultimately leads to break ups. One example is shown in the sequence of images below (credits to bbgsite.com):
You can request the Sims Social player to break up with his or her current “lover” and accept your request.
And if you don’t want to accept it, you can message the player and inform him or her about your decision.
WooHoo Easily
As with the Sims franchise, the Sims Social also include sexual relationships (known as WooHoo) for players who have reached a higher level of Romantic relationship. You can even WooHoo in the shower! Now, some might be excited about this especially when they tend to “fantasize” that their virtual Sim partner is the real person behind it. Oh well..you know what would happen next.
So, if you’re playing the game, make sure you don’t treat it too seriously! Haha
