Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Kotaku's Patricia Hernandez recently published a piece about one of the most contentious issues surrounding The Sims 4: The ability to kill your sims. Developers have spoken about how they wanted to make it harder for sims to die accidentally compared to previous games (one expansion to The Sims 3 make it possible for sims to be spontaneously hit by meteors for instance) because it's not very fun to lose a sim in the middle of your game. At the same time, when you sit someone down with a simulation they will instinctively test for its limits -- and "simicide" is a big part of that. She writes:
First, I tried to simply deprive Princeton of food—I'd order him to do the same thing over and over again at the park for days. Despite getting many of his 'needs' meters becoming orange, Princeton did not die. Fair enough. That's probably realistic.
Next, I instructed Princeton to go take out the garbage. Then, while he was doing that, I constructed a fence to trap him in the garbage area of my house. Having nothing to do, Princeton would simply sit on a bench next to the trashcan for hours. Sometimes, he would pull out his phone and play a game or something. But mostly, he would sit there and plead for food, human interaction...anything.
I sure didn't have trouble bringing death right to my sim's doorstep, but based on Hernandez' experience I may have just gotten unbelievably lucky (if you can call this luck.) If you're curious about Princeton's eventual fate, don't miss her full article over on Kotaku.
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