The Sims 4 has a lot to teach us about the absurdity of life and how to live it. My friends and I over at Human Echoes have spent a lot of time fooling around with the Humane Choes and the Sims in Black. It’s been half a year of trials, triumph, and absolute disaster. We’ve fallen in love, watched an alien spread his seed on earth, and drowned in the pool. We’ve also seen how a Sim can change overtime with consistent work and effort.

The Humane Choes are our first family. They have problems. Some are insane authors who have a day job in the intelligence industry, others are failed stand-up comedians who could never quite get their act off the ground. Many more are just dead, like Horror Choes who had a fetish for garbage before suffering a massive heart attack trying to get in shape.

On top of this they have us: three overlords that control their behavior. One overlord is competent and pays the bills, one is a cackling madman, and one might try to seal you into the walls like a cheap Poe knock-off. This is taking a family that has issues with anger and schizophrenia and letting them be controlled by three sadists in the sky. Just by looking at the lot their home is on, you can tell the results aren’t pretty.

Even with all this chaos we at Human Echoes are starting to get the hang of things. The offspring of this baffling family are becoming decent members of society. They work out, they build rockets, and they go to work mentally prepared despite sleeping in tents and specifically designed “bang bungalows.” Puma Man, the second born, is overcoming his internal evils by learning how to bake. He is literally channeling his darkness away through pastries and cupcakes. Error 404, our first baby, explores the stars and manages to look hip while doing it. Her mother may have hated children, but she must be proud of what her daughter has accomplished.

All of this has combined to show me, in a way I hadn’t expected, that The Sims reflects our own lives. It might be a plucky reality simulator where the average person only lasts 100 days, but it’s a peek into lives well lived and tragic wastes. You can watch your Sim learn to box, perfect that jab and left hook, or you can watch them deteriorate in front of the TV. You get to see them create, destroy, love, and share based on their limited autonomy, and can force them to act better than their nature through effort and persistence.

It’s an illusion in real life that we have complete control. There are forces pulling us through our short lives even if we can’t see the strings. It might be responsibility, or the even more primal forces of hunger and sex, but those overlords are still determining our behavior. Even with all this opposition we as people can push back, hit that punching bag, pick up that guitar, sit our asses down in front of the computer and write a novel, or in a thousand other ways transcend the forces that would have us be meek. In an odd way, The Sims has clarified for me that that we all have the power to become more than a footnote in someone else’s story. That even an insane grandma in a swimsuit can become a renowned author and painter, or that we can break the chains of familial baggage and visit the stars. If we looked at our lives from above and really assessed our behavior, it would be much easier to make the right choice. All it takes is to be able to honestly look at yourself, and instead of sleeping in a pile of your own garbage and laundry, clean it up and go for a jog. Treat your life a little more like The Sims who follow your commands and less like a wandering monkey, and you might find you are leading a more satisfying life.

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Tony Southcotte: Tony hails from the Rocky Mountains somewhere around the state of Colorado. Possibly raised by grizzly bears, this gritty denizen of the arena now spends most of his time grappling with Java updates and dysfunctional RAM. With not much fiction under his belt, it might seem tempting to bet against Mister Southcotte, but an impressive knowledge of everything from PVC pipe to psychedelic drugs makes Tony a storehouse of fiction waiting to hit the paper. Plus, you know, there’s the possibility of him ripping you apart like a grizzly bear.