The Sims FreePlay case study part 1 - Language & Audience

Language / Gameplay analysis


The Sims: FreePlay trailer 

1) Autonomy- the gamer is given "LIMITLESS CONTROL" and responsibility over everything. Power, agency, FPP, career, animal interaction, finding true love, growing your family, create your home, 'design a dream'.

2) Audience- all ages-pleasures for different modes, tween, 12+, working class, aspirers, strugglers and diverse.

3) Audience pleasures- diversion, being in control, visceral pleasure, autonomy and voyeuristic pleasure.

The Sims FreePlay- walk through

1) 3 PP, in control, 360 camera angle, adverts, creating a town and simulacra.

2) Target audience- aspirers, strugglers, and 12+.

3) Audience pleasures- being in control, autonomy, interaction, personal identity and relationships, customisation, reinforce ideologies of capitalist ideas- earning to spend, materialism and consumerism.

4) The use of adverts- they waste time.

Audience

1)  Critics reviews:

•  Average rating 4.5
• "I love it resembles actual life and you can raise babies"
• "Missing the smaller things that will make the game more fun...what if I wanted to throw a big party and only a few people can come"
• "I want my sims to be able to do as much as possible" "...more social interactions."
  

2) Reviews regarding the audience pleasures of The Sims FreePlay:

•  Audience are invested in the game, it creates hyperreality.
• Audience pleasure of personal identity and personal relationships.

3) Participatory culture is reflected through the reviews as it highlights how the reviews can actually shape the content of the game. Online communities have been created, suggested and shared content for the game. The gamers are referred to as "simmers".

Participatory culture

Academic journal article

1) Will Wright describes the game as "a train set or doll's house where each person comes to it with their own interests and picks their own goals" (1999)

2) Maxis wasn't keen because 'doll houses were for girls, and girls didn't play videogames.'

3) 'Modding'- short for modifications- is a huge part of the games appeal of the game. It changes aspects of the gameplay- anything from the strength of coffee to incorporating ghosts or even sexual content. 

4) It links to the idea of textual poaching as the modifications and process of modding enables all the fans to come together and share cocnepts which will then be reflected in the mods created; ultimately they are copying the original text and redeveloping their meanings.

5) 

• The Sims series has "the most vibrant emergent fan culture of a single-player game in history" (Pearce)
• "Today, there are thousands" of fan websites dedicated to the Sims (Jenkins)
• "it was the community that really brought [the game] to the next level" (Wright)
• There was barely a niche left unrepresented - "there was bound to be UGC available" to reflect your own interests.
• Participatory culture is inherently social, feeding on the affordances of Web 2.0 and social media, allowing individuals to come together around shifting interests to create digital communities that are ‘held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge’ (Jenkins 2006a: 137).
• -As Pearce has noted, ‘The original Sims series has the most vibrant emergent fan culture of a single-player game in history’ (2009: 272).
• Jenkins quotes Wright saying: ‘We were probably responsible for the first million or so units sold but it was the community which really brought it to the next level’

6) Intertextuality in The Sims Freeplay-

•  Form their own fandoms
• create sims of famous people- such as Japanese anime.

7) Transmedia storytelling- when the primary text encoded in an official commercial product could be dispersed over multiple media. 

Allowing players to create people and re-create narratives.

8) Over the last 20 years Sims online communites have expanded and reached wider audiences due to their expansion packs and autonomy. 

9) Individual preferences of the players create divisions in the community - between some who want to charge money for the mods and the ones who want to see it for free.

10) The Sims Freeplay is famous for creating a collaborative community and fandom that it developed and the culture of digital production that it helped to pioneer.

Jenkins interview with James Paul Gee

1) ''Modding'- short for modifications- is a huge part of the games appeal of the game. It changes aspects of the gameplay- anything from the strength of coffee to incorporating ghosts or even sexual content. 

2) Gee sess the game as "a real game and a very important one because it is a game that is meant to take people beyond gaming"

3) Wright wants the players to be more active and think like designers. He wants them to have the autonomy to create their own person. 

4) I think that The Sims has become something more than just a game as it has revolutionised the term of 'modding'. It has created an online community and many fandoms.

5) I see the future wof gaming as having a more interactive apprach by giving the players more autonomy and control over what they can do. It gives other gaming creators ideas of what content and control audiences like and will eventually become a more succesful streaming market. I agree with Gee as I beleive that as more games are being released they give audiences the control of what they want to create in games.