#this is @ sims players specifically but it applies to many others

[a-pirate]

If you hate a game, why do you play it? Genuinely. If it makes you SO FUCKING MISERABLE, why do you play it? It's the worst game ever and full of bugs and you hate the company and- and- and- Why do you play it? No one's forcing you. Do something else, I am not joking. Do something else. If you hate it, why are you demanding sequels? Get over yourself and stop being performative. Play the game or don't. Do something good for your mental health for once in your life.

[stevetonydatingsim]

Steve/Tony dating sim announcement & writer casting call!

The best part about a multiverse is all the different Steves and Tonys we get—and imagining them meeting. And kissing. And flirting. And maybe doing something a little spicier.

But why stick with imagining that when we can make it a reality? When we can make a Steve/Tony multiverse dating game? 

That’s right, we’re making a game and it'll be free to play! What exactly does that entail? The Steve/Tony dating sim (name TBD. We’re all ears for any ideas you have) will be a visual novel-style game that’s mostly dialogue with some simple minigames thrown in. You get to play as a Steve or Tony from one of the many universes that exist who’s thrown into a rift in reality with a bunch of other Steves and Tonys. You’ll get to decide whom to work with to invent, fight, flirt, and date your way back home. 

We’ll be sharing updates on the game development and launch on this Tumblr so make sure to follow us!

Who we are

The Steve/Tony dating sim team is made up of passionate Steve/Tony fans who have come together to write and illustrate the dating game of our dreams, coded by the wonderfully talented VTsuion/@v-thinks-on. You can read more about us here.

How this works

In order to make the game, we need writers for the player and love interest characters, artists for the visuals, and more. At this point, we’re looking specifically for love interest writers, but make sure to follow us as we’ll be looking for volunteers for other roles in the coming months!

Love interest writers can either work on their own or with a partner(s) to plot out and write a simple narrative arc and series of dates for a potential love interest character (a character that the player can choose to interact with and date). They construct the foundational beats for the story and dialogue for the love interest character, and they provide choices for player responses (you can indicate that the player can respond angrily, morosely, or happily to a certain line, but you’re not writing the player dialogue yourself). Later, player writers will insert responses to the existing love interest’s dialogue you wrote. It’s kind of like roleplay! 

For example, your script may look something like this:

Tony616 “So, you’re a Steve, huh” If <angry response>: Tony616 “Sorry I asked” If <happy response>: Tony616 “You’re a cheerful one, eh?” [the player gets closer to Tony616]

To get a more detailed understanding of how this works, see this guide here. We’re also happy to answer any questions, and we have a Discord server where we brainstorm and talk as a group.

Existing love interest storylines (more to come later!)

The following characters have arcs that are outlined already, and their writers are looking for a partner to collaborate with. Here are short pitches to give you a sense of each character’s emotional journey through the game.

616 Tony 

Iron Man V.1 128 Tony is newly sober for the first time and still hiding that he’s Iron Man. The player can either help Tony open up or drive him to drinking again. 

1872 Tony

Pre-canon Tony has lost faith in humanity and himself. Will the player convince him to get back on his feet? Or will he think everyone's better off with him at the bottom of a bottle?

616 Steve 

Avengers V4 Steve has just returned from the dead after his fight with his Tony about the Superhero Registration Act. He wants to trust Player, but can he?

MCU Steve

Post-2012 Avengers Steve is lost and doesn't know his place in the new century. Through his interactions with the player, he finds his home and purpose.

Don’t see a character you want to write for on this list? 

You can volunteer to write any Steve or Tony you want! In fact, we actively want more Steves and Tonys. This is a multiverse dating sim, after all, so the more the merrier. Just contact us with the canon character you’re interested in writing for and whether you’d like to work solo or with a partner(s).

How to apply

Please email stevetonydatingsim@gmail.com with the following information:

Confirmation that you’re over 18 (just let us know you’re 18+; we’re not asking you to share personal info)

The best way(s) to contact you

What character you’d like to write for (universe and name). If you have multiple, please order by preference

Do you want to write alone or with a partner(s)?

A writing sample focusing on Steve and Tony (link or attachment) - minimum 1,000 words, ideally with a good amount of dialogue. This doesn’t have to be a complete piece with a beginning, middle, and end; it's more to get a sense of your style and understanding of characterization, so all we ask is that it’s easy to follow. This can be something you’ve already written or you can write something new for this application

Availability from now to the end of 2024. We’re pretty flexible and you can work on your script over several months, but it helps us to know how busy/free you are and when

Contact us

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. You can reach us by email, Tumblr Messenger, askbox, or Twitter DM. Thank you!

[reachartwork]

devlog #8 let's talk about potions and systems

there's been a lot of good brainstorming being done in the brainstorming discord (anyone is free to join, you'll get credit in the final game and i might buy you a pizza every now and then assuming i have the money for it). so let me go over some of the systems in GO INTO THE FUCKING DUNGEON that i feel confident talking about because i know i will implement them, in one way or the other.

1) exhaustion & camping

GITFD is a game about resource management - as i have phrased it, it's an "immersive sim survival game with light jrpg elements" (it is a first person dungeon crawler jrpg). you will likely not be able to survive the game using only basic attacks, and there are many meters that can be attacked - not just your HP, but your lamplight, your hunger, and your EP (Exhaustion Points). Spells are cast from a static EP meter that does not go up in most cases - everyone starts the game and ends the game with 5 EP. anything beyond basic attacks, throwing stuff, and talking uses up some EP. if you reach 0 EP, you gain a level of exhaustion and your EP re-fills. exhaustion lowers your stats and makes you get hungrier faster. if you run out of hunger meter you starve to death. so don't do that.

if you get enough exhaustion that it would drop your max HP to 0, you just die and can't be resurrected. so managing that is important.

anyway, there are *very* limited ways to restore EP and remove exhaustion. the primary way is via camping. it's sort of like darkest dungeon and sort of like D&D. each character gets two timeslots to do stuff. you can rest (each resting period removes xyz amount of exhaustion stacks). you can craft items. you can cook and eat meals. you can keep watch (and someone better or you'll get ambushed lol).

this is not the kind of rpg that lets you just make a bunch of bread rolls standing around in a hallway and then eat them all in one turn. that stuff takes time and a fire and tools. you can't just do that.

2) corpses

enemies do not drop pre-butchered chunks of meat for you. in fact they don't drop anything unless it would make sense for them to do so. what they do drop is corpses. and if you do not loot the corpses and take them back to camp, the corpses will attract other monsters (mostly scavengers). you can also drop corpses to do that on purpose, or throw corpses at things for shenanigans.

but anyway, yeah, corpses weigh a ton usually and you need to bring them with you to camp to butcher them to actually get meat, hide, animal parts, etc. if your inventory is too heavy then you don't get *visually* slowed down (which is a miserable experience), but instead you take fewer steps to count as an encounter tick, which means your lamplight and hunger decrease faster, because you're traveling slower.

3) potions & alchemy

in the game's alchemy system, players can create potions by combining two monster parts that share a matching effect and one chemical which you mine from the walls, find in chests, etc.. the monster parts are obtained from defeating creatures throughout the game and each part is associated with a specific effect, such as invisibility, healing, or strength enhancement. The chemicals, which are based on the non-courtly minor arcana (Ace through Ten), modify the potion's effect in various ways. for example, the Ace chemical always produces the basic "potion of xyz" effect, while other chemicals can split the effect, make it a group potion, increase its duration, turn it into a poison, and so on.

so, for example;

ace + invisibility = potion of invisibility (which also makes you take a penalty to hitting because you can no longer see yourself or aim)

two + invisibility = potion of half invisibility (makes you translucent)

three + invisibility = potion of group invisibility

four + invisibility = potion of long invisibility (lasts until you next make camp)

five + invisibility = poison of invisibility (apply to weapon, apply weapon to enemy, enemy becomes invisible)

six + invisibility = potion of duo invisibility (invisibility for you and the target)

seven + invisibility = potion of visibility (makes you or something you throw it at extremely visible)

eight + invisibility = potion of total invisibility (works on truesight!)

nine + invisibility = potion of permanent invisibility (permanently makes you invisible)

ten + invisibility = potion of perfect invisibility (gives you invisibility but without any of the downsides)

because i'm an asshole and i hate people having fun, potions are not given a name until the first time you experience their effects, only described as, for example, "green fizzy potion", and the colors and adjectives are randomized every run. so. you can and probably will quaff a Potion of Permanent Petrification or a Potion of Permanent Burning at least once, and it'll be really funny.

[byfurries4furries]

The Smoke Room (Horror Western Visual Novel)

So I talked about Arches and Echo, so I might as well talk about their prequel, the Smoke Room. Unlike the other games in the Echo series, aside from the side games, the Smoke Room is primarily made by writers who aren't Howly, who wrote most of Echo and all of Arches and Adastra. In this case, the main writer is GeorgeSquares. Howly did write the prologue and Redd, who's one of the main writers for another VN called Glory Hounds, wrote part of one of the routes, which was eventually partially rewritten by George anyways. There's also more artists working on it than there was for Echo.

In the Smoke Room, you play as Samuel Ayers, a gay prostitute in 1915 in Echo in furry Utah and/or Arizona. Sam falls in love with one of his clients, Jack. Together, the two hatch a scheme to use some hidden away gold in the mines in order to leave Echo and start a new life somewhere else. Jack is, however, tricking Sam and tries to kill Sam in the secluded part of the mine where he pretended there was gold. Sam miraculously survives the murder attempt and ends up killing Jack in self defense. Unfortunately, he's a gay prostitute in 1915, so he knows better than to try and report what Jack did to him and especially the killing. However, several weeks later, somebody drags Jack's body into town and the mine workers riot over the news. When the riot happens, Sam is stuck in the brothel with three potential clients and another on the way, one of which is a miner who saw him the day of Jack's killing and another of whom is the sheriff of the town.

The four clients are:

William Adler: The coyote sheriff who plays by his own rules, specifically the rules that allow him to plow Sam's ass

Nikolai Krol: The badger miner who's a big softie and great cuddler. However, he saw Sam the day of the murder

Clifford Tibbits: The chipper and naïve stoat who's on an anthropology trip to study the nearby furry Navajo

Murdoch Byrnes: The witty fox who happens to be the town's only photographer

The Smoke Room excels in a lot of respects. Its protagonist is very interesting, the branching narrative is very divergent, it's surprisingly historically accurate, and the supporting cast is very filled out. Let's go over each of those. Unlike many VN protagonists, there's practically no attempt to make Sam even resemble a player-insert. He's a prostitute who's simultaneously ashamed of his job and proud of how good he is at it. Even when he's off the clock, he's a very service-minded person with those he cares about and although he's pretty lost and out of his element with most other work, he's very confident and sure of himself when he's providing sexual services. But this also applies to his ability to be a good romantic partner as well. He also knows how to be patient and caring even when he's allowed to take the lead as he's very respectful of other's boundaries when it comes to sex. Unlike most dating sim protagonists, it takes no suspension of disbelief to see why he'd be able to romance so many characters. He's genuinely a great romantic prospect for any of his clients and if he were an option as a love interest himself, he'd probably be quite popular.

The branching narrative is another positive. Every route is extremely different with very few overlapping events. This makes sense as unlike with Echo, the main characters aren't a real friend group yet. Nik sometimes plays poker with Will, Murdoch sometimes does crime scene photography for Will, and Cliff doesn't know anyone at the beginning of the game. The only reason they came together at all is they happened to be trying to book Sam around the same time. Now, depending on the route, they can become closer. Will's route especially works for this, because it's the only route where Sam isn't trying to avoid Will, who's basically the connecting thread for everyone else. However, each route goes in its own direction and has basically its own side cast. Nik's side cast involves his fellow mining union members and his bosses/supervisors as they clash over labor disputes while Nik tries to help find enough gold to get Sam out of Echo. Cliff's side cast involves the expedition crew he acquired and furry Navajo members he meets along the way in his journey to investigate the troubling conditions of the nearby reservation. Murdoch's family as well as his childhood friend make up his side cast along with a star student at the school Murdoch's sisters work at who blackmails Sam into helping her solve the mystery of her classmate's disappearance. And Will's route follows him investigating the mysterious death of Huxley, an abusive drunk with a wife who might have killed him, but the details just don't seem to line up, and that's on top of Will's ex-wife and son moving to Echo without warning. So you can be sure that you won't see any route repeating itself too often.

The historical accuracy is the last point I want to go over, because it does go to a lot of lengths most westerns won't even mention. For example, as was actually the case in the Wild West, brothels are not considered dirty or debased. In fact, the brothel Sam works at, the Saguaro Hip, doubles as a saloon and it's considered an upstanding place for upper middle class families to socialize. Also homosexuality is not THAT frowned upon. It was sorta treated the way marijuana was and still is in some areas. It's illegal for sure and being too brazen about it can get you arrested or beat up depending on the company, but keeping it private would more or less be doable under certain circumstances and letting it slip occasionally isn't the end of the world. Also, it wasn't uncommon for working class guys to be brazen and open about it when not around decent folk, especially in the West. A lot of care was taken to try to accurately depict queerness before WWII.

A positive I want to mention compared to other Echoverse games is that there's no solid expectations of paranormal stuff. The hysteria in Echo is not common knowledge in this era. Murdoch is the only one in the main cast who's lived there long enough to at least know for certain that there's a uniquely high amount of paranormal stuff going on, but even if he does know about the hysteria, it's clear that it's not common knowledge to residents or outsiders, unlike in Echo where there's at least one well known case of it or in Arches where the town is actually famous across the country for at least two cases of it, one of which happened less than a decade ago. And because the routes diverge so much and there's no clear timeline, there's no frame of reference for when it might be coming. The only clear indication is in Nik's route, but you would only know of that if you played the prologue of Echo AND connected the clues set up by the inaccurate summary of the events of the Smoke Room within the prologue of Echo. Otherwise, all bets are off and there's no telling when it will happen, which is further helped by the fact that unlike Echo, the Smoke Room doesn't keep explicit track of days and isn't afraid to do timeskips that throw off the chronology of events.

Although the Smoke Room is not really that close to complete (it's suspected with pretty good evidence that it's barely halfway done), I do highly recommend it. It is however the first VN I've recommended that really isn't close to a satisfying pausing point for any of the routes. If you have a high tolerance for incomplete visual novels, I'd say it's definitely worth the cost, even though it's free. If not, just check out other games in this series like Echo and Arches. Until next time, keep on yiffing.

Links

itch.io

[simplyanjuta]

Creating Gallery Poses II 🖼️📝 Some Pointers for Family/Group Poses

Addition to my tutorial here. 

There are some challenges and limitations when it comes to making functional family/group poses for the Gallery - as compared to in-game poses that you can use with Andrews Pose Player.

Below some pointers - for both, gallery pose makers and those of you using gallery poses, wondering why some things are the way they are. (Had the info somewhat scattered over several posts/replies and wanted to gather everything in one place.)

🔵 Position of Sims in Blender vs. Gallery Picture

The game mechanic

As you have probably noticed when taking household pictures in CAS upon saving a family (with no poses installed), the game places the sims in a sort of zigzag-manner.

Furthermore, the position of the sims in the picture (incl. zoom/distance to the camera) depends on the specific household composition (number of sims, order of sims, age and gender of sims and even family relations in some cases).

What this means for Blender

Therefore, when you are creating a pose in Blender, you have to account for the fact that the position of the models in Blender will not correspond to the position of the sims in the gallery picture. The only group poses that actually "snap into place" in the Gallery picture are so-called carrying poses for babies, toddlers & pets. Other than that, you have to fiddle with the position in Blender in order to account for the applied zoom & scattering/sort of random positions of sims in the Gallery picture.

As a starting point, when making the pose, it makes sense to place the sims in Blender together as the pose is supposed to look like. However, next step is figuring out how to adjust their positions in order for the sims to appear correctly in the gallery picture. This is more or less done by trial & error and will be different for every new group pose you create.

🔵 Preparations & Which Files to Override

For the reasons mentioned above and in order to find the relevant pose files to override, you can play around with different household compositions in CAS first (without custom poses installed) and note how your sims will appear in the picture.

For example: 

If the adult in the picture is carrying a toddler, you will need to override the carrying poses, otherwise you will need to override the standalone poses for adult and toddler (whenever possible, I recommend looking for household constellations with carrying poses). 

Or, it might be that the position of your sims will switch depending on their gender, age etc. Keep that in mind and take a note. When you eventually share your pose, you should clarify how to set up the sims in CAS to make it work.

To ensure the best possible outcome when randomizing the gallery picture, make sure that you make use of all pose files that are referenced for the sims in question. (Also see my helper file here.)

For many family poses/poses with sims of different age and/or gender, you can also use the No Randomization Mod. With the mod, you will only ever need to override 1 file per sim (this should be in particular helpful for the time when you are making/testing the pose).

Below an example set-up for a family pose I was working on a while ago and how Blender compares to the Gallery picture (it can look even weirder sometimes).

Note that for the same household you would only need 5 instead of 30 pose files, if you use the No Randomization Mod (I actually didn’t have the mod at that time. The mods were the result of my struggling 🙈)

🔵 Randomizing the Picture in CAS

For faster results, you can use the No More Mirroring Mod for any pose creation and the No Randomization Mod for many family poses/poses with sims of different age and/or gender.

Be aware that there are limitations for how many sims and what kind of sims you can pose, since, unlike with the in-game pose player, there is no way to select or assign poses to certain sims aside from some general criteria like age and gender (by using the corresponding pose files). The rest is up to chance, when you randomize the portrait.

For example:

For a pose with 2 adult female sims, there's no way to tell the game what sim should use what pose. You can split up the relevant pose files for pose 1 and pose 2 equally among the relevant files, but then the result is randomized.

So, in this example, and assuming the game picks equally from all possible results, the chance for each sim individually will be 1:2, or 1:4 without the No More Mirroring Mod.

For both sims the overall chance will be 1:4 or 1:16, respectively.

And the chance gets exponentially worse the more sims of the same kind there are. (More info here and here.)

Therefore, for practical reasons, a group pose with 3 sims of the same age and gender is the highest you can go.

[lord-riverstyxx]

Welcome to my blog friends

As you guessed from my bio, I am a Steven Stoughton irl. My source media is the pokepasta Strangled Red (and the other parts Door’s Open and Strangled) and you may have heard of me from the FNF mods Hypno’s Lullaby or Pokepasta Perdition. Apart from irl/fictionkin, I am also otherkin.

Other irls include:

Grey (currently exclusive to FNF Hypno’s Lullaby mod) [weaker irl] 💿🪦

Alternate!Cesar Torres (Mandela Catalogue) ☎️🥀

Kevin (Spooky Month) 🍬💢

Adam Murray (Mandela Catalogue) 👁️‍🗨️🍎

Inosuke Hashibira (Demon Slayer) 🐗🗡️

John Doe (John Doe) 👁️🦷 (has a separate blog @lil-doedoe +18 ONLY)

Hank J. Wimbleton (Madness Combat) 💣🎱 (has yet another separate blog @bl00dysexpxrty but warning for weapons and violence)

Vincent Charbonneau (Dead Plate) 🔪🥩

I also kin (but not to an irl extent like Steven):

Astarion (Baldur’s Gate 3) 🦇

Kotoko Utsugi (Danganronpa) 🎀

Ruby (Pokespe) 🧵

Kuromi (Sanrio) 😈

Medic (Team Fortress 2) 🏥

Mukuro Ikusaba (Danganronpa) ⛓

Seiko Kimura (Danganronpa) 💊

Kirumi Tojo (Danganronpa) 🕸

Tavros Nitram (Homestuck) ♉️

Giyu Tomioka (Demon Slayer) 🌊

Nezuko Kamado (Demon Slayer) 🎋

Black Pearl Cookie (Cookie Run Kingdom) 🔱

Randall Purpura (Purple) ☔️

Astolfo (FGO) 💗

Rosaria (Genshin Impact) 🛐

Lisa (Genshin Impact) (we even share the same birthday!!) 📚

Tate Frost (Purple/Frost Bite) (except he’s super fucking cunty /hj) 🪓

Maison Talo (House Hunted) (MIGHT be irl but I’m not sure yet) 🏠

Pest (Roblox Regretevator) (questioning if irl) 🪲

Deimos (Madness Combat) ⌨️ [and maybe the rest of S.Q./Sanford and 2BDamned but I feel like that’s something else as a whole..]

And many more to come… (these lists are subjected to change)

(More below the cut):

My otherkin types (this list subjected to change):

Alternatekin (like the Mandela Catalogue)

Vampirekin

Dollkin

Eldritchkin

Cryptidkin (more specifically, Mothman)

⚠️ Warning!! ⚠️

This blog may possibly contain shocking, terrifying or suggestive content that may not be suitable for certain ages or people. Viewer discretion is advised.

If you choose to ignore this warning and enter this blog intentionally regardless of what I have said, then so be it. I’m not warning you again so don’t blame me for your negligence and inability to obey my rules.

Minors!! This also applies to you too. Don’t be looking at stuff you shouldn’t be looking at and go.

Also, don’t like what you see? Then move along or just block me. I don’t want to deal with you throwing a tantrum over my stuff.

Who is welcome:

Fans of FNF Hypno’s Lullaby or Pokepasta Perdition

Irl or fictionkin

Autistic/any form of neurodivergent

LGBTQ+

Vampire lovers

Weirdcore/dreamcore/nostalgiacore (tw for derealization?)

Creepypasta/pokepasta/general horror fans

Vintage/retro/silent film lovers

Goth, Emo, EGL, anyone alt

Roblox players

If you like male yandere/crazy boy dating sims

Fellow horror villain/slasher kinnies and irls (so I feel less lonely and learn to accept myself more)

General people who aren’t fucking assholes

DNI:

Basics (racist kkk nazi shit, homo/transphobe, allow cringe culture, pro harassment, ableist, always bringing some kind of discourse in normal spaces /s, etc)

Anti otherkin, fictionkin, irl, etc (why are you even here?)

Anti xenos/neopronouns (they’re not that hard to use but no pressure)

Minors (remember: some of the content here may not be suitable for anyone under 18)

If you judge others quickly/make fun of them based on their irl/kintypes or forbid someone from dating another because of their irls/kintypes (I love my partner dearly and I will make sure you understand that)

If you make fun of someone for their interests

General shitty people

I also tend to block freely, so if I see something that makes me feel uncomfortable in your blog then I apologize in advance

Interact with caution:

Steven simps: Some of you guys are.. interesting to say the least. But PLEASE do not be weird to me because I am a person with feelings too.

Astarion simps: While not as bad as the two above me, I humbly request that you don’t obsess over me.

Ruby haters: Yes people are allowed to have opinions but don’t let it be your whole personality. And this is not a place to express how much you hate me/Ruby.

Medic simps: I’ve only seen a few but Medic simps seem to be like Steven simps. Please please PLEASE don’t be weird to me because I won’t accept your feelings.

Alt!Cesar simps: I was once a Cesar simp denying his feelings until I found out I was an irl of him. And oh my god the simps are no different than Steven simps. And for that reason I really don’t want you to be weird to me please.

Adam simps/haters: It just gets better/worse. If you’re here to slobber over me or be pissy to me I’d rather you not because I am not providing you with anything.

Giyu or Inosuke simps: Why do I keep getting the baddies /j but as per usual don’t be a creep.

And that’s all I have to say. Please be civil and kind on this blog and do NOT spread negativity here. Nobody has time for such trivial stuff and I know I don’t so just be fucking nice and if you see something you don’t like then just leave. I have zero time for your tears.

Have a good day and sending kisses to you all, especially a certain person out there 💋💋💋

-Steven

[khal-ulti]

[Testers Wanted] ROLANDS TOWN, a custom neighborhood inspired by MySims

Hi! I've been working on this custom neighborhood for quite a while and I have reached a point in the process where I can finally share it as an almost finished product for playtesting and collecting your feedback! I would really appreciate if you could try it out, tell me what your impressions are on storylines, characters, buildings and landscaping, any bugs that you might encounter and other details that you might like or not like. The ONLY thing that I have yet to do is shoot the pictures for the storytelling albums and the main neighborhood picture. I will pose the sims and take the photos through a backup of the hood folder, so I won't modify the hood in the process of taking the screenshots. Any new edit will be due to your feedback, suggestions and bug reporting.

To make this hood, I used ALL THE EXPANSION PACKS AND STUFF PACKS and a minuscule amount of custom content that I included in the rar. These custom contents are: - the mummy hair and outfit from the Sims 2 Store; - unlocked versions of the bellhop red outfit from BV, butler outfit from AL and therapist/shrink glasses; I don't even know if these are necessary in your Downloads folder since it's vanilla content, so if you could give me feedback on this I would be grateful; - a skyline and a skydome. This hood is inspired by all the MySims videogames and features more than one hundred characters from the MySims Saga, with storylines that may be directly inspired by their stories in MySims or that may divert to fit in the overall story of the hood. There are about 15 households, an abundant townie pool, some dead premades, some custom service NPCs, and also 4 unplanned hobby instructors that spawned in the process and I decided to makeover instead of deleting. I put effort into making each sim, so each townie has been created in Bodyshop and has a specific appearance, a bio, specific personality and interests, job, predestined hobby, preset relationships and even in some cases family ties with other townies or NPCs. I didn't give memories to every single townie because I thought it was not necessary but some of them do have memories. The same applies to dead premades: some of them are fundamental to the story and you as a player can resurrect them to read their memories and learn their POVs. By reading the households' descriptions, the sims' memories and in some cases even looking in their inventories, you will learn what's currently happening in this hood and what has happened in the past. There are a lot of secrets and mysteries for you to try and unknot. You may be confused by what you read in the sims' memories, because sometimes they contradict each other, but that's on purpose and you will soon find out that it's just a matter of point of view. I strongly suggest you to explore the community lots that I've built, as you may find easter eggs if you look with attention, and I also want to know your opinion on the quality of the lots and if you find them amusing. Many community lots are businesses owned by townies. I love townie-owned businesses because it's a way to give townies more depth and backstory and it also works perfectly with MySims inspired characters, since in the MySims saga most of the characters manage shops and venues. I have checked the neighborhood with HoodChecker repeatedly through the process and corrected any errors. I have used clean subhood templates of course, and I have all the anti-corruption mods. I use Pooklet's face templates (link) because I love how they look and I also feel like they are the best templates for ethnic diversity. I also used custom sliders to add even more variety. Once I fill the neighborhood and households' albums with pictures, I will edit this post with an updated version of the hood. I don't think there's anything else to say for now. I will wait for your feedbacks! I am extremely curious and I honestly can't wait to read what you have to say! Note: I'm not a native English speaker so I may need grammar corrections as well. If you encounter any spelling errors anywhere in the game, let me know and I will fix them.

[opalmaplehibiscus]

Information as to Why Twisted Wonderland is NOT an Otome or Dating Sims Game

Hello Everyone! It’s been a while~ ヾ(•ω•`)o I finally found the courage to write Twisted Wonderland content after what happened a couple months ago, when I literally just came back, and while writing a couple of analysis I thought I would write this as an informative rather than an actual analysis of the game.

DISCLAIMER: This post is NOT by any means demeaning otome games or dating sims whatsoever. This was written to clear the misunderstanding people had on the genre of Twisted Wonderland and that anyone should be allowed to be play without feeling restricted or thinking it’s not something they want to try because of misunderstandings. Do NOT use this post as a source to offend people but please use it to inform others.

It’s no longer old news that Twisted Wonderland frequently gets called an “otome game” or dating sims by people who never played the game before. People on twitter, youtube, and even those that were trying to or supposed to advertise the game have often categorized it as such. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal had people recognize and acknowledge that the game isn’t after being explained to about it, but after hearing their arguments as to why they refuse to change how they think about it, the frustration pent up for nearly a year has finally bubbled over.  Buckle your seats everyone cause today is the day this argument ends once and for all!

First off, let’s start off with what makes an otome/dating-sims an otome/dating sim. Both are very similar, where, according to Japan’s Wikipedia, Nico dictionary, Kotobanks, and many more Japanese dictionary sites, otome games (i.e. 乙女ゲーム)  are games which includes a female MC who has the opportunity to attract the very attractive male characters in the game and enter a love route with each of them separately or harem-like. Dating sims are a bit different. Dating sims (i.e. 恋愛シミュレーションゲーム)  falls into to two definitions with the first one being the exact reversal of otome: MC being male, the love interest characters being very attractive females. The second definition is the one many are familiar with – a romantic visual novel. Believe it or not the first definition is the original definition of what dating-sim games are, the second meaning derived from many attempts of using the term “dating-sim” incorrectly by the English speaking gamers to the point society now believes it’s the actual meaning.

However, this difference doesn’t change that both otome and dating sims are very close. Both genres include gender-specific MC(s) (there’s been games where a player can play either male or female), handsome/beautiful characters with their respective love routes, and a main plot to follow. In addition to this, when the game is in mobage format, there’s going to be showers of fan service in the form of events and gacha-cards, though, arguably, it doesn’t change the fact that the MCs would still be interacting with the characters romantically.

So, from the explanation written above, Twisted Wonderland falls into that category, right? Sorry not sorry, that’s wrong. Sure, Twisted Wonderland has many characters to swoon over since…I mean…they’re drawn and written by Yana Toboso and her staff and…there hasn’t been anyone so far who had the capability of saying no to characters she personally had drawn or created. But! It doesn’t mean that the game is a dating sim or otome.

One of the reasons Twisted Wonderland isn’t one of them is how the game is set up. There are no routes the MC can enter nor can the MC pick and choose which characters to focus on in general. Like FGO and Granblue Fantasy, the MC solely follows the main plot and has to interact with all the characters they’re introduced to whether they like it or not. The same logic is applied when playing events – the MC will be participating and talking to all the characters involved in the event. Not once does the game give the opportunity for the MC to choose who they can talk to and participate in the event with the person they chose. The only time it’ll be one-on-one is, most of the time, getting the desired character’s card through gacha or when the event sets the story where the MC has no choice but to talk to a character one-to-one. For the latter though, the MC isn’t going to be able to wish for the character they want to talk to – it’s completely random and up to the writers who they want the MC to interact with.

For otome and dating-sims alike, especially in mobage format, the MC has the opportunity to choose who they wish to focus on and interact solely with the characters they chose whether it’s the main story, event, and card story. It can even be arguably said that otome and dating sims focus solely on the MC and their love interest interaction more than anything else. As for Twisted Wonderland, again, that does not happen. Twisted Wonderland, in addition to progressing the main story and revealing more about the characters involved, focuses on everyone’s interaction with each other including the NPCs. The game shows the other characters that aren’t interacting with the MC talking to other characters and what role they were playing while the MC was busy with the group the writer had them interact with during that time. Even in the card stories, most of the card stories involve more character-to-character interaction rather than MC-to-character interaction.

Speaking of which, the MC in Twisted Wonderland, the game, is gender ambiguous.  Not once did the game developers and story writers mentions the MC as a specific gender like the other romance games. Heck, most of the characters don’t even use a gender-specific pronoun such as 彼女 (“kanojo” = she) or  彼 (“kare” = he) when referring to the MC. They usually refer to the MC by their given position, 監督生 ( “kantokusei”  = prefect). The only exception is when the game’s mascot and MC’s buddy, Grim (the blue-fire monster), who uses あいつ ( “aitsu”) which is a gender neutral pronoun that holds the vague meaning of “that one” or “that person”. There’s also the fact that the MC’s default name is ユウ (“Yuu”), which is name used by either genders in Japan and how the MC uses gender neutral pronouns when regarding themselves  as 自分 (“jibun”) and others as 貴方/あなた (“anata”).

Even during the official advertisement, official summary, official game archive book ( i.e., Twisted Wonderland Magical Archives), and posts made by the staff on twitter, not once did they specify the gender of the MC. In fact, they never once even specified the gender of the audience they’re targeting the game towards nor say anything about there being romance or any hints of harem-esque situations that involves the MC in any shape or form. The most “direct” statement made by Twisted Wonderland’s staff was from an email a fellow Twisted Wonderland fan had sent to the staff after a magazine had advertised the game as “Disney’s first game for women”. The email from the staff mentions that they wanted the game to be enjoyed by everyone, REGARDLESS OF GENDER. (link to said post here)

If they had any intentions of making the game otome-like or dating sim-like, Aniplex, Disney, and Twisted Wonderland staff would’ve mentioned that the game has romance or the possibility for there being romance when releasing the story summary, game system set up, and their ads. Not only would they have done that to get the audience they wish to target but speaking of it legally, they are required to mention it since there’s liability on their part on informing their customers on anything they need to know in regard to the game they’re playing. Age restrictions, fees, game play, and the like – Twisted Wonderland also had to go through the same process like any other visual novel games to be developed and released.

In a way, Twisted Wonderland can be seen as another Touken Ranbu or KanColle, but with an actual main story plot to progress through. All three games’ MCs are gender ambiguous, great characters to throw-er-spend money on, and have fun game plays. Sure, unlike Touken Ranbu and KanColle, where their MCs continues to be gender ambiguous in their anime and manga adaptation, Twisted Wonderland’s MC in the manga adaptation ended up being male – however, a statement was released by Yana revealed that the MC in the game and the MC for the manga are not the same people. (Link here) Meaning, the “real” or “official” MC’s gender continues to be gender ambiguous for the sake of continuing to attract all genders to play the game.

All of this being said, Twisted Wonderland is a fun, visual novel game and supposed to be enjoyed by everyone – each to their own way and passion. No one shouldn’t be discouraged from playing it solely because of false advertisements or misconceptions made by others who haven't played the game yet.

I hope this clears things up and hopefully helps others persuade people into playing the game! 

[ceescedasticity]

I didn’t lie this isn’t a continuation

It's a redo, so there. But it's still a terrible idea.

Magnus Archives SBURB session, canon-compliant-ish to ~190, similar but not identical to my last run at this concept, not complete, this introductory monologue may or may not be completed, we’ll see.

Statement on tape found without obvious explanation on nine out of fourteen planets:

ARCHIVIST:

On 18 October 2018 Jonah Magnus succeeded in orchestrating a ritual to open the door and bring all the so-called Dread Powers into the world. The Archivist was the central if unwilling component of this ritual. Consequently Earth was subjected to a Change, after which natural laws ceased to apply and everyone became either a Watcher of suffering or someone who was Watched. No one was born, and very few people were allowed to die.

There were some survivors not completely overcome by their roles, who looked for a way to reverse the Change. After the door was opened the extradimensional pocket containing the entities had ceased to exist. There had to be somewhere else to put them, and then they had to be pushed or pulled there.

The survivors succeeded in accessing the knowledge of a ritual meant to feed an entirely different sort of entity. The ritual was not meant for our Earth, still less our Earth after the Change, so forcing its execution was complex. It created a connection between Earth and a different extradimensional pocket known as the Medium, which contains "almost unlimited creative potential". This could be used to lure the Entities away from their already plentiful diets on Earth.

But raw creative potential alone was not enough. Human minds were needed to draw the Entities across. The ritual itself also required human — or at least sapient — participants to enter the Medium.

All of the survivors involved in creating this plan committed themselves to the ritual, but there were not enough of them to fully anchor the fears. More people were needed. Gathering more Watchers or Watched would require rehabilitating them from the Change's overwhelming impact on their minds and wills. Most of the Watchers were too far gone to want to reverse the Change, and most of the Watched had a chance to return to normal.

The ritual has a built-in function for a one-time simple resurrection of any participant who is killed. Normally it only applies to participants after the ritual is initiated, but the Archivist's psychically stored statements enabled manipulation of the system and postmortem entry. Participants so restored are fully alive, no strings attached, and are no less human than they were before.

Yes, you died; yes, you are now alive; yes, you have been conscripted without your consent into a world-saving scheme with at present no exit strategy.

If you would like to collaborate on an exit strategy and are willing to work with the people who engineered this, you can connect through the computer that you should find nearby. It will be necessary to play the Game.

If not, the Medium is quite expansive for a pocket dimension and has many things to do and places to investigate. Its ruling entity doesn't benefit from your suffering. Hopefully you can enjoy yourself. You may be attacked by monsters but it should be manageable.

_____

Statement on the Medium, the entities, and the players. Recorded by the Archivist in situ, date… seven hours after entry.

(1/14)

ARCHIVIST:

The Eye was sent into the Medium with the Prince of Light, who is its Archivist and marked by all other Entities, who — who is Jonathan Sims. He was… fully participant in invoking the ritual of Skaia, although he was still… surprised, by some facets.

At the center of the Medium is Skaia, and visions in the clouds of Skaia may show anything happening in the Medium or any events relevant to the Medium. The Prince of Light believed, prior to entering the Medium, that this would have the effect of strengthening the fear of the Eye. It does not. Skaia is perceived by the majority of the Medium's natives as an inherently positive force, and even those who do not like it very seldom fear it. Players, too, are encouraged to see Skaia as positive.

The effect of Skaia is that the ecological niche of observing everything is taken.

Skaia does not know everything; it does not deal in understanding. Knowledge and understanding, especially knowledge and understanding with no discernible source, fall under the heading of the Light Aspect, which is less… assertive.

When the Prince of Light entered the Medium, he was immediately affected by the drastically reduced strength of Beholding, and collapsed. In a vacuum, he might have simply died. But he was not in a vacuum; he was in the Medium. Beholding's weakening left space inside him; Skaia and Light moved in.

When he woke from his collapse, some five hours after entry, the Prince of Light began an adjustment period for having two wildly incompatible entities of seeing everything cohabiting his mind. It is not painful, merely disorienting and uncomfortable. He is in fact less bound to his role as Archivist than he was before entry, but moving away from it means moving closer to Skaia, which does not facilitate verbal communication, particularly not about unnaturally obtained information. He understands that strengthening his Light Aspect powers will make Skaia more tractable, and also believes experience and practice should improve the situation, but since this information was needed now chose to invoke Beholding in order to deliver it.

Prior to beginning this survey, he made some attempt to familiarize himself with the Land of Glass and Searchlights. He found his 'house', and computer, and verified that neither his server player nor client player were available. This was not unexpected.

He has had some unexpected difficulty with his assigned 'sprite'. As expected, it took a form influenced by Beholding, specifically a giant, ominous eyeball. However, it seems that 'easy mode' is not satisfied by sprites which are not able to speak and reason, and so Beholding must draw upon its catalogue of deceased avatars and victims to find a spokesperson. It first tried Jonah Magnus — recently deceased indeed. The Prince of Light reacted… poorly, and Jonahsprite was unwilling to focus on sprite concerns, so the sprite ran through several alternative mouthpieces with varying degrees of coherence. It has currently returned to being a giant, ominous eyeball. He will try again later.

But first: the Medium, the entities, the players.

[theluckiestrose]

So weird seeing normie gamer types interact with divination

I watched the scary game squad "The Shape on the Ground" video and everyone seemed to enjoy it except Jirard and the comments section

It had a lot of really cool imagery, and it shows you these neat and creepy dioramas as a way of gauging your state of mind. It is, however, not a game in the traditional sense

You could call it a walking sim, but it seems more like it's just using the tools and resources of a game to give a different kind of experience entirely

The rest of the squad got into it, analyzing the dioramas and trying to figure out how they felt and catch as amny references as they could. I think they only really picked up on the Tower of Babel though...

The comments though... they were still approaching it as a game and scoffing at the divination aspect of it like... yeah man, it's gonna be vague. There's twelve questions with 3 possible answers each, made for anonymous players. It's hard to get really specific given such constraints. Also, the "ending" was literally just getting your reading. It's fine and normal to be disappointed in your reading, it's just... weird that the vehicle it came in tainted it so much for so many people.

Idk. I thought it was a cool experience and an important experiment within the medium. I like the idea of games as divination, and i think there's a whole lot more to explore in that space. The squad also mentioned a couple games that use the gameplay to get a read on you and change aspects of how they start as well.

I just... i feel strongly that the medium of "video game" can be used to do so much more than just entertain and educate. So long as you refuse to approach games as art, you will never, can never, appreciate experiments like this. Im glad people are making small titles like this for purposes other than giving the player something fun to do for a while.

It's just a shame when the audience isn't receptive to it. Applying certain expectations to everything that looks like a video game is always going to keep you from enjoying the work on its own merits.

That said, there are still bad video games. Games that promote bad ideas, games that fail at their own goals, games that just don't work right, and games that don't elicit any response whatsoever, positive or negative.

Idk. I like the Scary Game Squad best when they cover these hidden little titles and really enjoy themselves, and start thinking deeply about what the game is trying to say or do, what their inspirations are, how it makes them feel. I think that's the most fun kind of let's play.

[earblog974]

Sims 4 How To Enable Script Mods

Sims 4 How To Enable Script Mods The Sims 4

How To Enable Script Mods In Sims 4

Sims 4 How To Enable Script Mods 1.12.2

If you’re already aware of how to install the Sims 4 mods, you can pretty much control all the aspects of the lives of the Sims 4 characters. There are many other types of Sims 4 custom content which includes players created lots. There are many steps in walled as well which holds extra features such as careers, traits, sim animations, etc.

How Can Your Receive Custom Content for Sims 4

Again, make sure script mods are enabled in game. To prepare for installation of this mod, you will need to head over to Sims 4 Studio and download Teleport Any Sim. Once you have downloaded the.zip file, educate yourself about the mod by reading their functionality intro to the mod. Installing Teleport Any Sim. Open the Mods folder (it should have a resource.cfg file in it). Now, every time you want to add a new mod, just drag it into this “Mods” folder. When you open The Sims, you should get a popup with a list of all the mods you have installed. If you have downloaded any script mods, then make sure to enable them in your in-game settings.

You can usually download scripts, mods so, other custom content for The Sims 4 from an array of websites. Many such websites are:

Try moving the Documents -Electronic Arts- Sims 4- options or options.ini file to the desktop. Start the game, go to game options and enable cc/mods and script mods. Reload the game, and see if you can then use both cc and script mods.

Go to the folder where your download the rar and extract the files on the following path C: This PC/Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods Open The Sims 4, go to Game Options and enable Custom Contents, Mods and Script Mods. Restart your game and you will be ready to go. It all started with the major update earlier in the year where the game disabled all mods. I go onto the game and it comes up with the standard dialogue 'Mods have been disabled' 'EA does not support Mods' 're-enable mods through the options', so I go to options, re-enable mods, apply the changes, restart the game, but when I load up to the main menu it comes up with the same dial.

Sims 4 How To Enable Script Mods The Sims 4

1. Mod The Sims

2. The Sims Catalog

The customize content usually comes in a compressed form such as RAR or ZIP file. You can easily extract and move to specific folders in the Sims 4 game files. After that, these mods have different extensions which include the following:

.package, .ts4script, .bpi, .blueprint, and .trayitem.

All the custom content can be accessed in several ways. For example, you can generally use various modern tools such as the MC command center. This will help you in allowing all the variables down by editing and dictating the behavior of the individual sims. So, whenever you click an object, you will see an MC command center as a new option listed there.

How to Add Mods to Sims 4?

Before you go on downloading and installing mods for The Sims 4, make sure that you download the latest updates along with the patches:

1. Launch the Origin digital store and select Game Library.

2. Right-click The Sims 4 and select Update game.

3. Launch the game and select the Options Menu icon in the top-right corner.

4. Select Game Options.

5. Select the Other tab on the left side of the Game Options window.

6. Select the boxes beside Enable Custom Content and Mods and Script Mods Allowed.

Tip: This will be helpful for you as you can come back to the menu at any time. You can easily select the view custom content and view the mods that have already been installed.

7. Select the checkmark to acknowledge the warning about using mods.

8.. Select Apply Changes and close the game.

Note: Meanwhile, you need to repeat all the steps from 1 to 8 and there will be a new patch that will be released.

9. Open The Sims 4 game folder on your computer (it saves to Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 by default), then open the folder containing your custom content in a separate window. Drag-and-drop all .package or .ts4script files into the Mods folder, and move files ending in other extensions into the Tray folder.

10. The custom content will be available the next time you start the game. To remove custom content, delete the files from the Mods and Tray folders.

Tip: Before you delete any file, always create a backup of the Save folder within the Sims 4 folder. Always remember that’s the first thing that you must do in case, something goes wrong.

Also Read: 15 + Best Sims 4 Mods That Can Make Your Gameplay Interesting

How to Use Custom Lots in Sims 4?

There are many custom laws that should be stored in the tray folder within The Sims 4 folder. In order to view your custom lots:

1. Launch The Sims 4 and select the Gallery icon in the top-right corner.

2. Select My Library at the top.

3. Select Include Custom Content in the left pane.

4. Select your custom lot to view its details.

How to Use Custom Objects

To use custom objects in Build Mode:

How To Enable Script Mods In Sims 4

1. Select Build Mode at the top of the screen or press F2.

2. Select the Objects by Function tab.

3. Select Filter Items.

4. Select Content > Custom Content to see your custom objects listed.

Troubleshooting Sims 4 Mods Installation Issue

Sims 4 How To Enable Script Mods 1.12.2

If the mod doesn’t work or if you face any issues with the experience or the installation of the customized content, you may try the following things:

1. Check that custom content files are in the correct folders. Those files that end with .ts4script or .package go to the Mods folder. Other files that end in .blueprint, .bpi, or .trayitem that is placed in the Tray folder. Instead, the other files that end with .zip or .rar won’t be able to access or operate.

2. Check that custom content is enabled in your game settings.

3. See if there are any new updates available for your mods. The Sims VIP website has a list of broken mods.

4. Rename your mod files. There can be various issues that occur when these files have special characters like #, $, or @. Rename files to remove these characters if necessary.

5. Delete the game cache. You can go to the Sims 4 folder on your devices such as a laptop or computer. Delete that file which is named from ‘localthumbscache.package’. After this, you may also delete the contents of other cache and cache folders but do not delete the actual folders themselves.

6. If you see a folder named onlinethumbnailcache, it’s safe to delete the entire folder.

7. Repair the game. You need to head to the Game Library after this in the origin and do the right click on that game. After this, you may select the Repair to reinstall The Sims 4.

[fightmeyeats]

ACNH: Colonial Desires in the Context of Quarantine

Since finishing up my undergraduate studies in June, one of the major things I've been doing with my free time is playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (please don't @ me but I've already logged something like 400 hours). As much fun as the game is, one of the things that's really stood out to me is how much AC:NH depends on and reifies colonial logics, and how important it is to unpack this in the context of the game's popularity and the ongoing pandemic.

One of the first ways I want to address colonialism in AC:NH this is through the way I was first introduced to it, namely through its connection to my thesis and what I refer to as the "terraforming imaginary". Before I started playing or had even decided to buy the game, I was working on my thesis "Constructing New Worlds: An Investigation of Climate Change and the Terraforming Imaginary" (which, shameless self plug but if you're interested you can check out my 10 minute video presentation for symposium at Johns Hopkins University here). During this time I was talking about my thesis pretty non-stop with anyone who would listen and as a result probably about half of my friends independently sent me this meme

[ID: meme from @animalcrossingmemes which shows two children; the one on the left is smiling and looking off into the distance with the label "daydreaming about terraforming" while the child on the right looks stressed and upset with the label "actually terraforming". Beneath this meme is text from @kaijuno which reads "I realize this is an animal crossing meme but as an astrophysicist I was really excited for a second that someone was finally seeing the light on how fricking difficult an a huge waste of time it would be to try to terraform Mars". Beneath this text is another meme with four hands gripping each other's wrists to make a circle. In the center is the initial animalcrossingmemes image and each arm is labeled, respectively, "Minecraft Players," "Sims Players," "Animal Crossing Players," and "Astrophysicists apparently"]

Although my thesis addresses terraforming in the context of space exploration/colonization, AC:NH's engagement with "terraforming" (alongside other aspects of colonial practices and desires) helps to expand on the stakes of this. The reason I put "terraforming" in scare-quotes is because…technically, there isn't any terraforming in AC:NH, given that terraforming is "the operation consisting of rendering other stellar bodies—mainly planets and eventually asteroids—appropriate for human life" (Frédéric Neyrat, 46). While I'm all down for an interpretation of the Animal Crossing world as a non-Earth planet and the villagers as aliens, the island is already suitable for human life and the use of "terraforming" in the game is generally more readily identifiable as geoconstructivism: players redesign and restructure their islands, shaping waterways and topography to create idealistic spaces (as opposed to making the island literally livable). Either way, it speaks to the terraforming imaginary—the underlying set of logics and desires conducive to the imagining and desiring of “terraforming”, ie the logics and desires of colonization. Even though AC:NH's terraforming isn't technically terraforming, it is an embodiment of the terraforming imaginary, centering desires for the "civilizing"/"cultivating" of a space into an orderly, colonized ideal. On even a very surface level it is useful to think about this through the island rating system: islands are ranked out of five stars, with deductions made for things such as having "too many" weeds or not "cleaning up" by leaving items lying around rather than placed with intention. 

Another, perhaps more obvious, way in which AC:NH embodies colonial logics is through the "Nook Miles Tickets". Players trade in Nook Miles (an achievement based currency) for tickets which they can take to the airport and use to visit other, uninhabited islands which they can destroy to extract all of the resources slash-and-burn style. Players also have an increased likelihood of catching rare insects, fish, and sea animals to display to their own island museum or sell. As Wilbur, a dodo pilot, explains about this process: "we run the 'finders keepers' protocol here. Lumber, fruit, fish, whatever? Yours if you can carry it", going on to emphasize the importance of not leaving anything behind as there will be no returning; they "burn the flight plans" after each flight.

Although the rampantly destructive extraction of resources is the most apparent embodiment of colonial logics, the centrality of the museum and the imperative to complete each wing by finding and identifying all of the bugs, fish/sea creatures, fossils, and artworks in the game is an equally significant connection to colonialism. Benedict Anderson argues in Imagined Communities that the museum, along with the census and the map, "shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion—the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry" (164). The specifics Anderson goes into differ of course, because he's talking about actual colonial states while AC:NH has the fluidity of embodying the underpinning desires which colonialism as process requires to function, but what holds true is that these specific forms of producing, organizing, and displaying knowledge which produced "a totalizing classificatory grid, which could be applied with endless flexibility...to be able to say of anything that it was this, not that; it belonged here, not there" (Anderson 184). Essentially, in AC:NH part of a player's ownership of the island occurs through a player's ability to classify and collect artefacts for the museum. Furthermore, this imperative to collect and preserve fossils, art work, bugs, fish, and sea creatures is part of the way the player's island is positioned as a place of value. 

The museum also implicitly functions to reify positions of authority, legitimizing a kind of monopoly of knowledge. In AC:NH, this primarily means the positions of the museum curator (Blathers) and, to a degree, Tom Nook (who selected and invited Blathers) are secured as the authorities on knowledge. When Tom Nook tells the player that the island(s) are deserted, we must take this as truth...yet fishing both on the player's island and the Nook Miles islands can turn up trash items like old tires, tin cans, and boots. Colonial logics depend on a management of who counts as "people" and what counts as "inhabited" and the myth of empty lands; Tom Nook's instance that these islands are all deserted is haunted by these lingering traces of some other inhabitation prior to the game's start. 

Okay, so you might be asking what does this all mean and why should we care? Let's talk about both the game's popularity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which contextualized its release (and continues to shape daily life). Animal Crossing: New Horizons has not only received overwhelmingly positive critical reception, but is one of the best selling games both for the Switch console and the Animal Crossing series. According to freelance journalist Imad Khan's New York Times article "Why Animal Crossing Is the Game for the Coronavirus Moment," the game's appeal centers in its function as an escape to an "island paradise where bags of money fall out of trees and a talking raccoon can approve you for a mortgage". Khan quotes Dr. Ramzan (a professor of game narrative at Glasgow Caledonian University) who refers to it as "the universe you’ve always wanted, but can’t get." Given the significantly decreased mobility and connection that has accompanied social distancing, as well as the increased stress and heightened inequality which have accompanied COVID-19, this probably isn’t particularly surprising. It makes sense that a cute, low-stress video game would be a valuable form of escapism.

Mobility is a particularly fraught discourse in this context: on the one hand, concerns surrounding containment/immobility are heightened in the context of neoliberalism and within colonial societies, which depend upon discourses of individualism and independence to demarcate the “freedom” which comes from capitalist economies. At the same time, the desire for things like connection/community, movement, and spatial autonomy/sovereignty are not inherently colonial, even as colonialist logics frequently position colonial/capitalist/neoliberal expansion as the solution. Animal Crossing is heavily situated within this entanglement, simultaneously offering a very real form of connection (and even protest) for many people while also implicitly speaking to latent beliefs that colonization is a legitimate form of mobility and escapism. To say that AC:NH is the universe we’ve always wanted but can’t get is to refuse to engage with the inherent contradictions of neoliberalism and reafirm the notion that colonial capitalist worlds are worth wanting; that the fantasy of individual wealth and success through destructive extraction and market freedom, when obtainable, is good.

None of this is to say that playing AC:NH is the same as colonization, because of course it isn't. However, the colonial undertones of the game reflect the pervasiveness of colonial logics and desires in our daily lives, subsequently further normalizing them. Journalist Kazuma Hashimoto, for example, emphasizes the importance of contextualizing AC:NH's colonial undertones within Japanese Colonialism in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Japanese Colonialism". As Hashimoto argues, "I am only asking that people familiarize themselves with Japanese colonialism and why something as innocuous as discovering a deserted island can be read as colonialism — especially within the context of a Japanese game".

Inattentiveness to the more subdued, invisibilized manifestations of violence facilitates their internalization and acceptance; educating ourselves and paying attention to and challenging places where we feel comfortable with these kinds of escapist fantasies is an important exercise in critical thinking which can help us to continue to refuse their real life manifestations. 

[06nummerkopen1]

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[vroenis]

When The Best You Can Do Is Shoot A Gun

The Animal Crossing / Doom Eternal Covid19 launch coincidentally seems to be related to this discussion, even tho I’d say Doom Eternal has an excellent combat system and isn’t really relevant to what I’m going to bring up. I don’t have a problem with shooty-shooty, I have purchased, played and will continue to purchase and play plenty of video games that engage with firearm violence. There are plenty of discussions about how intelligent, consenting adults can do this without any problems and I won’t retread them here. Doom is simple game themed vaguely around demons; demons bad, player protagonist good, good player shoot bad demons - OK you got it, apply an incredible movement system into that and enjoy.

What I want to discuss involves of-course that pesky word and idea nuance, which annoys the shit out of more people these days, for its applications and misapplications - fingers-crossed I don’t fuck it up, but first I want to bring up Ubisoft and systems, so now’s as good a place as any for a stolen picture from the internet.

As far as concept art goes, that’s actually very representative of the final product in-game.

Ubisoft appear to have a long-term open-world tech development objective. I believe at some point very soon, these individual objectives will converge into one single middleware product with a mandate to producce retail licenses that combine what each of these individual franchises have been testing and achieving in isolation, those being;

Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint: 3rd person Load-On-Demand

The Division: 3rd Person Cover and interactivity

Assassin’s Creed: Environmental mapping and interactivity

Starlink: Scaling Load-On-Demand

Far Cry: First Person implementation of various combinations of above

I’ll put it another way;

Ghost Recon: Load everything

The Division: stick to everything

Assassin’s Creed: climb everything

Starlink: scale everything

Far Cry: do it in first person perspective

It looks like all of these games are running in Ubisoft in-house proprietary engines. Ghost Recon and Assassin’s Creed are running in Anvil, developed for the very first Assassin’s game and in which the Prince of Persia 2008 and Forgotten Sands also ran in. Oddly, (Rainbow Six) Seige, Steep (lol) and For Honor are also running in Anvil.

Both Division games and Starlink are running in Snowdrop and this appears to be due to The Division having come from Massive Entertainment. I’ll be honest, from the perspective of a consumer (read: punter) and someone with extremely minimal 3rd-hand development experience, The Division looks far more impressive than both the Ghost Recon and Assasin’s games, and former Massive brand and art director Rodrigo Cortes has said of the engine that it was design to “do things  better not bigger” and I think it shows. Anyway, it was still developed with Ubisoft so as I understand it, they own it. Massive is a Ubisoft subsidiary, their studio based in Sweden.

Far Cry is going to be a little different, being a little older and having its roots slightly before... what shall we call this mess... the cynical age? The microtransaciton age? Anyway. The first game used the CryEngine developed by Crytek. At some point, Ubisoft seemed to develop an offshoot of the engine called Dunia because the CryEngine was licensed and clearly lucrative, I think. I’m not entirely sure, but Dunia does appear to remain in-house and under the auspices of Ubisoft Montreal. Where am I going with all this?

Starlink was “toys to life” a-la Skylanders but way too late, combined with No Man’s Sky-lite, but the game itself other than being overstuffed with Ubisoft copy-and-paste template-quests is an excellent proof of concept.

I do need to say that in general, I don’t have any particular affinity for Ubisoft. So I am yes, absolutely fascinated with something I do think is happening as far as tech goes and now I’m writing about it in this piece, and yes you can tell I’ve played and even enjoyed some of the games they’ve produced and published, but there’s a lot not to like about many of their practices, the least of which is the overbearing sense of cynicism pervasive in many of their games.

I played Far Cry 3 long after it released and got perhaps 20% thru the campaign before giving up entirely. For starters, nothing about how it controlled felt right and I appreciate that’s purely a personal preference. Being a Battlefield player, there’s something about DICE’s sense of locomotion that is perfect to me, even tho it varies from title to title from Bad Company 2 all the way to V most recently. Other things about Far Cry bother me tho - if there’s wildlife around, it always attacks the player, guaranteed. Everything about this game seems to be designed to force the player into engagement, to provide you with materials to collect, craft or sell, but also to run you short of ammunition to either scrounge for more or have to buy it because *surprise* - it prompts you to purchase ammunition for real-world money. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Fuck off. I uninstalled the game immediately. I can deal with ridiculous AI with magical aim and irrational scripting. I can deal with absurd narrative for the sake of reading (and roasting later), but the entire package culminating in purchasing more ammunition was otherworldly, it was truly bizarre. To this day, I don’t understand what world Ubisoft inhabits that this is something that makes sense to anyone in management or marketing, and yet there it is and there are consumers that not only accept it but embrace it. No doubt there are metrics from the mobile industry that support it and dear lord the capitalist apocalypse is upon us.

What will Ubisoft do when they can merge these technologies? They definitely want to and likely already have in-house, they just need the engine to run client-side for the Consumer. You and I and Inside Gaming are all laughing it up at Stadia right now, but we’re at the wrong end of the business. For Ubisoft, they can ignore the faltering at the start, it’s the long-term they focus on. The pittance Google are losing now, even if they end-up shuttering the project will be meaningless if they end-up getting the hardware to work, even if the end-result is the hardware sitting in a box in the consumer’s home in 10 years. Sure, that’s a long loop, but the journey still doesn’t matter, only the eventual ROI.

If this piece hasn’t gotten boring for you yet, it’s about to because you’re probably excited for what Ubisoft will do with this impending technological power and development and I rally am not. What will Ubisoft do with it? Probably just more Assassin’s Creed, except you’ll be able to snap to cover and have a fully mapped country. Probably more The Division, but you’ll have a fully mapped city that you can also climb on the outside of buildings and then enter them without any loading. Probably more Far Cry but with bigger maps and more interactivity and less loading. The next generation of consumer hardware consoles from Microsoft and Sony are upon us and as much as PC enthusiasts hate to admit it, the consumer market is largely gated by the generational hardware stepping of these platforms. That may change after this era depending on how Google, Amazon and indeed Microsoft and Sony go with cloud computing, but for the moment the status-quo will remain as alternative products develop. Bear in mind with Covid19, climate change and the general sustainability and ethical standards of working and living being under growing scrutiny the world over, things are changing more each day, our technology development may change in ways we don’t expect so who even knows what’s in store for the future.

So What Do I Actually Want?

Good question. NB: before you ask, Animal Crossing isn’t my thing. I played it years ago on Gamecube. It’s cute, it’s fine. I’ve no interest in it. I’m writing this note in retrospect because I realise you may say “Just play Animal Crossing or The Sims but hopefully I can illustrate by neither of those games is what I’m after, nor do I just want to build a house in something like No Man’s Sky and fill it with crap. Let’s see if I get there... A few weeks ago I wrote about how the best thing Naughty Dog did with Uncharted 4 was Elena and Nathan’s domestic spaces. I did purchase The Division 2 on the cheap a couple of weeks ago and I’ll be honest, there’s a lot about it that I’m enjoying quite a bit. For a start, visually it’s stunning. The art team have done an excellent job of both filling the world with immense detail, but also making every area of Washington unique and distinct which is a huge feat given the total space covered. Thus far, I’ve spent a whole lot of time just walking around and gathering resources, in part just to sightsee and explore without any particular objective in mind. After a while, I got the impression that the map was a bit flat, but the more you explore, the more you find places where you get verticality, and then doing missions always adds verticality and variety in environmental and art design, it’s a marvel to see.

Apologies to James and Thomas (above) for ripping these images, but I’m glad your names are in frame so you have direct credit - outstanding work. The art in this game is without question its strongest element.

And that’s just the thing - The Division is an interesting game in that what I enjoy most is the sense of walking around exploring, gather resources and helping people. I’m not here on an anti-violence kick - I play Battlefield, I actually don’t mind the shooting in The Division, it’s fine, whatever, I’m not going to justify that. What I’m saying is that it gets boring.

THERE ARE A LOT OF GAMES ABOUT SHOOTING.

Like... a lot. More than enough. There will always be a lot of games about shooting and that’s fine. I think I’ll always play them. Hey, I even play games about shooting *in very specific ways* - it’s not like I don’t care about the shooting, I’m playing The Division with only a bullpup DMR and shotgun combo, plus I’m trying to use my sidearm when traversing the streets as much as possible so don’t at me, I’m in the game.

But we seem to mostly get high detail assets in games with guns because shooty games get all the money. I get it - shooty games get all the sales because we as gamers like to play them - sure, I’m one of them, but I didn’t buy The Division until it was under AUD$30 because gotdam the shooting is so boring and even now yes, it really do be just more boring shooting, just like it’s boring in Uncharted, just like it’s boring in Ghost Recon (my goooooood so boring), just like it is in Destiny, and the umpteenth shooty mcshooty game. I’m getting too old for this.

Uncharted 4 had an opportunity to do something more and it almost did. For many players, it probably achieved enough of what I was after by those two visits to the Fisher and North residences but I wanted so much more of that. I want to see Sully’s house or houses, more of his life. I want to know where Chloe’s life is at. I want to know of their lives and emotional engagements outside of the frankly stupid narrative I have no interest in because it’s clearly stupid and an excuse for running and jumping that other games have since done better. If Uncharted as a whole was a subtext for character, then by the fourth game, the focus should have been the characters that carried the series thru to the end - no disrespect to Tom Baker - not the heretofore unrevealed older brother.

For Years I Didn’t Know “Walking Simulator” Was A Pejorative

I think this is why I replayed and continue to replay Dear Ester so much. I remember laughing my ass off at YouTubers making videos about how it wasn’t a game and that it didn’t have objectives. Yet there were still threads and might still be on reddit or Discord wherever gamers congregate these days - about “virtual tourism” and “just chillin’ in place x because it’s so awesome” etc. It’s fine, each generation will rediscover virtual tourism again and again and we can’t denigrate anyone for doing so, it’s certainly nothing we invented given it comes from literature and oral tradition before that, but it’s remarkable that there’s this resistance to experiences crafted purely for the purposes of being immersed in them.

I adore Dear Ester and Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. Absolutely loved What Remains Of Edith Finch and only if you have already played Edith Finch, because it’s full of spoilers but also its own spoiler warnings, I heartily recommend Joseph Anderson’s outstanding video The Villain of Edith Finch. It’s a 53 minute watch so I won’t embed it, and he has a certain style of presentation that won’t gel with everyone, nor do I always agree with everything he says which should go without saying but at some point folks, you have to stop pursuing art, criticism and media that just wholly aligns with your own views. That said, I generally do find most of what he says agreeable, innit. Anyway he’s great and the video is great.

While Dear Esther is more surreal and Rapture and Edith Finch are in part slightly more fantastical than the real-life settings of Uncharted 4′s home and Division’s post-apocalyptic cities, they all visually represent dense, very human object-rich spaces that to me are quite interesting to explore. Dear Esther might be a little more rooted in nature but its human elements tie-in to its narrative in an extremely interesting way. Each game offers different levels of interaction, some that serve the narrative directly, some as subtexts and others quite mildly in the periphery.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself but I remember seeing a promo for Battlefield Hardline coming off the back of Battlefield 4 and the ridiculous marketing phrase “levolution” - the term they coined for large-scale environmental destruction (please take the keys away from the marketing department). I remember seeing video footage of a large construction crane falling in a level and thinking

“All this intelligence, all this tech, and this is what we do with it? Is this all we can achieve? This is it?”

That’s how I feel about this emerging technology. Somewhere out there (on YouTube, to be fair), there’s all this footage buried of the Beyond Good And Evil sequel that to everyone’s knowledge is still in development. I’d put my money on that being the first project built in Ubisoft’s convergence engine that they hope successfully implements everything that each of these games executes individually. I know the BG&E fans are frothing for it and when I saw those early demos, what I interpret of the tech did blow me away, but from an experience perspective, I did still think the same thing...

“Is this it?”

Because of-course, a huge part of the new game is going to be combat. I just - don’t - care. When I think about what was lacking in Uncharted 4, what I wanted more of, it was intimacy. What didn’t I like about the conversation and resolution between Elena and Nathan? About the tours of their homes, the little time spent playing as Cassie, the few insights into Sully as a character, the absence of Chloe who was such a great contrast to Nathan, Elena and Sully all-together... it was intimacy. Yea oroight, so I don’t exactly mean the type of real-life intimacy between lovers, do I - that much is clear. But if I don’t mean shooty because there’s enough of that, and I’m leaning into domestic detail and emotional exploration and reflections of that in objects, spaces and interactivity, then that’s what I mean.

Tho I’m loath to bring it up, I feel like in the worst possible way, David Cage is right on the periphery of this discussion (and for that reason, I ain’t tagging him or his games in this entry, get fucked). He has the most vague notion of trying to ground his games in the intimacy of human experience, so he tries to tie human locomotion and objects to the digital representations of interactivity. If we take those as perhaps the worst possible examples and then come back to some really good examples in Uncharted 4 so I can stop whipping it - I maintain that the house tours are strengths and the high-points of the game, and then look at something like The Division and consider opportunities for more complex interactivity centred around helping people and emotional engagement, I feel like that’s what I’m after.

Which is impossible, right? No-one’s going to make a game even a quarter of the scope of The Division, with all that amazing dynamic lighting, with all those awesome textures and mapped objects, animations, rigged character models, complex scripting and AI, interactivity, load-on-demand tech and full voice-talented support, just to be a game about exploring, sightseeing, meeting and learning about people and helping them? Because who would play that?

I would, for a start.

[mitigatedchaos]

Banished

(1,400 words, ~ 6 mins)

Banished, Colonial Charter, The North, and the 4 gigabyte Megamod

I purchased the game Banished (2014) some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to actually playing it until recently. (I also replayed the excellent Populous: The Beginning, a game released back in 1998, and thus presumably older than some of the people that read this blog. Both are or were going for around $5-7 lately.)

Reviews described death waves, crop infestations, entire towns lost due to starvation, families killed by frostbite, and fires wiping out house, smithy, and storage barn alike. And sure, I could micro-manage a hundred tiny medieval villagers in a never-ending fight against the crushing poverty of the era, slowly grinding away surplus on meagre human and animal power, always one harsh winter away from ruin in an unforgiving wild landscape... or, having bought it on sale, I could wait and test it out when the mood struck me.

After playing vanilla Banished, I wasn't sure who wrote those reviews.

(The old way would have been to attribute this to console gamers, but this is a forward-thinking blog and we embrace inter-system solidarity.)

Build the hut to gather some berries, then plunk down some houses and a woodcutter before the winter hits and you, too, will soon be waiting impatiently for the randomly-determined traders to bring the specific variety of seed or animal you were hoping for and finally give your villagers the nutritionally-balanced breakfast they deserve. Yields will vary with the climate and seasons (and you'll lose some yields when winter comes early), but stored food in Banished doesn't rot and only about a quarter of your villagers will need to be assigned to food production.

If you're used to these kinds of games - say you racked up some hours in Anno 2070 - vanilla Banished will seem light on content. The production chains are short, the variety of goods is low, and there are only two kinds of houses. If it seems as it were made with a development budget of "just one guy," well it more or less was.

Once getting a grasp on vanilla, it was time to get some mods. More specifically, mod compilation packs, something I've learned to appreciate from industrial minecraft.

Colonial Charter

Colonial Charter is a mod pack with a relatively unified aesthetic and theme (although less unified on either count than The North, which we'll discuss later). You're (implicitly) a colonial governor working on behalf of some European power perhaps in the 1600s or 1700s. If you were hoping to engage in the true violence of the colonial era, setting out to conquer a continent with only muskets of iron and a will of steel, you will be disappointed - Banished does not feature combat. With one fierce touch, hunters transmute a deer into venison and leather without even the pretense of a bow and arrow, and so Colonial Charter represents your colony's entirely-optional military adventures as just another production building, this time masquerading as a rocky outcrop. (It does dutifully note your soldiers will require snazzy uniforms, the 'full livery' itself the result of a production chain.) If you want to build the rest of the fort, though, with cannons and wooden palisades and the like, you're in luck. Vanilla Banished has certain rustic charm to the art, and that's still on display here, so you may well find yourself taking a picture of your snow-covered frontier fortress with canons that don't do anything.

Both vanilla Banished and Colonial Charter lack a capstone building, like Anno 2070's 'monuments,' as well as, it seems, specific victory conditions. Disasters, when activated, seem relatively rare. In one game two wooden houses burned down, hardly a major setback for the Mitigated East Pensachussets Company. In another, a tornado tore through an uninhabited part of the map, and in another, a disease outbreak resulted in the (ordered) slaughter of about 75% of my supply of beef cows - a herd which was itself only one third of my supply of farm animals. In fact, with traders taking food in trade, I was often swimming in supplies, the only real constraints being the slow rate of production for Building Supplies or Fancy Homewares and waiting for traders to bring the right kinds of seeds (either for specific industrial purposes, for diet balance, or for a diversity of crops to resist blight).

But buildings don't require maintenance, so even a relatively slow production of Building Supplies is just a cap on the rate of expansion (while in real life, if you don't continuously produce the same, your building stock will gradually decrease in number and condition). Banished could use some elements from Anno 2070 - the combat or the missions help to liven things up and create breaks in the periods of building and stringing up production chains, and present a bit of risk/reward in how you allocate your resources. Alternatively, a genius aspect of The Sims 3 was the "wishes" system, both the "lifetime wish" and the more ephemeral ones that came up in response to immedate context, which could be "promised," creating a stream of game-seeded player-directed mini-goals that implicitly create a narrative around the relatively empty vessels of the sims themselves.

Story aspects presented in either way might be interesting - and a good resource sink.

The North

The North is a mod best acquired from its website. The Steam Workshop edition is out of date.

The North is more-or-less everything I thought Banished would be, but Norse, and still without unpreserved food rotting. Starting with only a chapel, one man's worth of rye, and around 20 nomads, none of whom were in the posession of tools, I subsequently struggled to reap enough surplus production to afford a charcoal pile in the hopes of maybe one day using it to fuel a blacksmith, as often even if the grain were planted early, winter would arrive early, and despite throwing every villager in the village at the fields, not enough grain could be collected to survive the year before it succumbed to bitter cold. In one village an entire population froze to death. In another, they starved. It was, in a word, brutal.

But the difficulty of The North depends a lot on the starting conditions. In the Shepard start with three families for a total of nine villagers (six adults), each with tools and the village starting with a herd of sheep, the situation was much easier. The North requires a lot of micro-management. It extends the idea of the game's developer of a more personal style of city-builder, where each villager and each family matters. In this case fewer villagers was better - while rotating one or two through the production chain to replace the tools, there were fewer mouths to feed, and thus less overhead needed for manual hunting and gathering.

The buildings are nicely-made, but while in vanilla and Colonial Charter child villagers reach age 18 after about 4 game years, in The North it appears villagers age one year per game year. This makes the situation easier to handle (as The North is tough!), but growth takes longer. Ultimately I didn't want to micro-manage the village for 100 years to get it up to size, though it might be worthwhile to visit it every now and again for the gentle gardening feel of the shepard's hamlet.

Megamod

The problem with the 4.67-gigabyte (once uncompressed; it's 1.5 GB compressed) Megamod is that it has too many mods. This makes it in some ways reminiscent of Minecraft modpacks like Feed the Beast (long live Industrialcraft). If you want to build the perfect-looking little village, Megamod is probably the best - especially if you want to stretch across the whole map, rigging up canals, moats, ponds and castles. But it's unfocused, with too many concepts and too many buildings. Some of the buildings are great, while others are clearly novice efforts. With so many options for everything, it would likely be easy to min-max and lose the element that makes Banished a game. Had all the effort that went into these mods been, instead, applied as one project with a relatively coherent vision of gameplay, it would have been able to produce a game that is 'complete' in a way that vanilla Banished is not.

Alas, with normal Banished food yields in Megamod, I set my villagers off to gathering up food and farming and wandered off to look through the piles and piles of buildings. I'd say that maybe somewhere in Megamod is a tornado shelter, but I doubt the base game code supports it. In the Early Summer season, a tornado ripped through what very little existed of the whole town, destroying every building and carrying off all the villagers to the great beyond.

[cornyregans]

Adapting Shakespeare to Sims: A Midsummer Night’s Resolution

Essay Word Count: 1,520 Thank You Word Count: 97 Total Word Count: 1,617

  Now that I have addressed how the scenarios at the Capp Manor and Monty Ranch parallel key scenes from Romeo & Juliet, I believe now is a good time to take a look at what goes down when you first play the Summerdream family. The Summerdreams are a family of four in Veronaville consisting of lovers Titania and Oberon, and their adopted children, Puck and Bottom. By looking at these four names you can deduce that all of these sims draw inspiration from characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in fact, their last name pretty much spells it out. As a result, we can easily deduce which Shakespeare play we should look at in order to dissect the scenario presented to us at the Summerdream home.

Shakespeare’s Original Play

  Like other comedies of the time, both by Shakespeare and by his contemporaries, A Midsummer Night’s Dream implements tropes such as love triangles, mistaken identities, use of stock characters, family tensions without deaths, and a group of interwoven plot-lines that manage to fit together by the play’s conclusion. That being said, arguably the most important aspect in identifying a comedy is whether or not it ends happily. In this particular case, A Midsummer Night’s Dream not only manages to deliver on what could be seen as a “feel-good” ending, but Shakespeare goes the extra mile by including a triple wedding for good measure.

  Now that we’ve gotten the genre of A Midsummer Night’s Dream out of the way, let’s take a look at the relevant characters. First, we’ll go over the four characters who lend their names to the Summerdream family. Oberon and Titania are the King and Queen of the Fairies, Puck is Oberon’s servant, and Bottom is a weaver who ends up as Titania’s lover due to a magical love drug. 

  The fairy plot kicks into gear because Titania refuses to let Oberon make her newly adopted changeling child into either a servant or soldier. This disagreement leads to a quarrel between the two, and eventually, Oberon calls on Puck in order to help him in both acquiring the changeling child and humiliating Titania. To achieve both of these goals, Oberon has Puck acquire a particular flower that, when its nectar applied to a person’s eyelids, causes them to fall in love with the first living thing they see. In Titania’s case, the first thing she sees after being exposed to the nectar is Nick Bottom with the head of an ass (the donkey kind).

  In addition to the fairy plot, there is also a bit of a love quadrangle surrounding four young Athenian nobles: Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena. Basically, Lysander and Hermia are in love with one another, yet Hermia also has a suitor in the form of Demetrius, who is in turn loved by Hermia’s best friend Helena. The two plots are intertwined when Puck is ordered by Oberon to sprinkle the flower’s nectar onto Demetrius’ eyelids so he’ll fall in love with Helena. However, Oberon’s instructions only specify to Puck that he is meant to sprinkle the nectar on the eyelids of a “young Athenian man,” this results in Puck mistakenly believing Lysander to be the man Oberon mentioned. After Puck sprinkles the nectar on Lysander’s eyelids, he ends up falling in love with Helena, while Helena in love with Demetrius, Demetrius in love with Hermia, and Hermia in love with Lysander. 

  Later on in the play, Oberon sees that Demetrius is still following Hermia around. As a result, he personally sprinkles the nectar on Demetrius’ eyes and has Puck fetch Helena so Demetrius will fall in love with her. This results in Demetrius falling in love with Helena upon waking up. Now both men are in love with Helena, Helena only loves Demetrius, and Hermia is still in love with Lysander.

  The plotline of the Athenian lovers is ultimately resolved when Puck sprinkles the nectar on Lysander’s eyelids causing him to fall in love with Hermia again; however, he does not do the same to Demetrius, who ends the play still in love with Helena. As for the fairy plot, Oberon does end up reversing the spell on Titania once he gets the changeling child he wanted. 

  The play ends with the triple wedding of Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and Duke Theseus and Amazon Queen Hippolyta. Bottom and his fellow workmen perform a so-bad-its-good version of Pyramus & Thisbe at the reception, and Oberon, Titania, and Puck hop from marriage bed to marriage bed to bless all three of the couples. Finally, Puck addresses the audience with a soliloquy before the curtain call, apologizing to anyone that may have been offended by the fairy magic.

The Veronaville Version

  While the core aspects of the storyline are largely left intact, there are quite a few differences between Shakespeare’s original play and the version presented to us in The Sims 2. 

  In terms of the love quadrangle formed by the Athenian youths, only Hermia’s name and role remain relatively unchanged. Veronaville’s Hermia Capp has reciprocated crushes on both Puck Summerdream and Mercutio Monty; however, a look at her wants and relationship panel should you play the Capp Manor before the Summerdream family will show she’s more interested in the former. Hermia’s cousin Miranda Capp also has a crush on Mercutio, but unlike Hermia’s case, Miranda’s feelings are unrequited.

  The scene that is set up at the Summerdream house is meant to mirror the play’s romantic resolution. Puck and Hermia are situated next to each other upon entering the lot, with the tutorial pushing you to initiate their first kiss. Should you comply, the two will have their first kiss and subsequently be caught “cheating” by a jealous Mercutio. 

  Given Miranda’s absence at the party, this scenario doesn’t end up placing Mercutio and Miranda together à la Demetrius and Helena. That being said, a look at either sim’s relationship panel upon first playing their households shows that they already have a good rapport with one another. As a result, should you decide to pair them together, it’s very easy for Mercutio to reciprocate Miranda’s affections with minimal effort.

  Oberon and Titania’s role in this specific scenario is more akin to that of Theseus and Hippolyta than that of the characters they’re named after. Much like Lysander/Hermia and Demetrius/Helena, Theseus and Hippolyta also marry at the end of the play. However, since the other two couples are paralleled by teenagers, Theseus/Hippolyta (or in this case, Oberon/Titania) are the only ones who can end up tying the knot at this party. Though they are unable to marry without mods, you can also have Puck and Hermia go steady during the party as well should you choose to do so, which is basically the teenage equivalent in The Sims 2.

  A look at Titania’s wants panel upon first playing the Summerdream family shows that she wants to get engaged to Oberon, while Oberon wants to marry Titania. Their wants, combined with the wedding arch outside of the house, implies that the player should have them marry during the party. In fact, complying with these wants should raise the party’s score exponentially, which will, in turn, fulfill Puck’s want to have a great party.

  Finally, the party’s ultimate resolution may serve as a parallel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s play-within-a-play. As I mentioned while going over the plot, Bottom and his fellow workmen end up performing a so-bad-its-good version of Pyramus & Thisbe to celebrate the marriages of all three couples. By taking the in-universe reactions of Pyramus & Thisbe into account, the festivities at the Summerdream house could be bad, like the overall quality of the play, or good, like the unintentional humor the characters get out of watching it.

Final Thoughts

  As I stated the companion piece about the scenes from Romeo & Juliet, Veronaville contains many shout-outs to the works of William Shakespeare. While the names of the premade sims are the most obvious examples, the scenarios in place when first playing the Capp Manor, Monty Ranch, and the Summerdream household also fit into this category despite being more subtle. For the record, I first read A Midsummer Night’s Dream during my freshman year of high school for fun, and then in my sophomore year, it was required reading for my English class; That being said, much like with Romeo & Juliet, the similarities between A Midsummer Night’s Dream and tutorial at the Summerdream party weren’t made clear to me until last year while I was thinking about potential essay topics.

  While I’ve finished going over the Maxis-made scenarios in each of Veronaville’s occupied lots, there is still much I haven’t had the chance to cover yet. All of the sims inhabiting these lots, along with those in the sim bin, manage to parallel Shakespeare in a variety of other areas. Of course, some of these instances might be more obvious to you than others depending on your knowledge of Shakespeare canon, but I hope this essay was informative to you either way.

  Thank you so much for reading this piece on the events at Puck Summerdream’s party. While both of this weekend’s entries are on the shorter side, I do plan on posting some longer pieces soon (though I can’t say when due to my indecisiveness).

  I’m still debating on next weekend’s essay. I may post the essay I mentioned in a previous post about Capp family inheritance, but I haven’t made a final decision yet. But regardless of what I end up putting up here next, I sincerely hope you enjoyed what I had to offer this weekend.