The Sims 3: Making Me

Being able to reconstruct yourself in a videogame is not exactly a new thing. For some time now, gamers have twiddled with knobs and dials to change hair color and pick a favorite shirt color for an in-game character. Previous The Sims games have let you recreate yourself with a greater degree of accuracy, too. However, after experimenting with the Create-a-Sim area of The Sims 3, I assure you this is the most advanced cloning lab you can buy without raising some serious ethics concerns with the FDA.

I was able to pick out my hairstyle and eye color as well as select a few choice outfits, like some pre-faded jeans that would have set me back some serious coin in the real world. That was good. But what I like about the Create-a-Sim toolkit is the meter you don’t actually see on the screen: honesty. There’s making the idealized version of yourself that has the frame of somebody that gets up at 7AM every morning to run three miles, and then there’s crafting the real you that batters your alarm clock with a wild fist and rolls over for another hour of sleep because you stayed up way too late the night before watching episodes of BSG you’ve already seen. With the number of tweaks and adjustments possible in The Sims 3, something in me felt inclined to put away vanity and really try to make a Sim in my own image.

That meant that while I got to keep the jeans, I had to admit the size I would buy them in. That meant pulling my ears a little outward to where they really are when I step out of the shower, before I hide them behind my hair. That meant the start of some grooves on my face that I’ve been told are the onset of looking distinguished, but to me look like somebody who spent way too much of her life feigning mock surprise at friends who were just behaving in ways I wish I had. (Instinctively furrowing my brow while reading books doesn’t help much either.)

After tugging and tucking, I dug into the traits selection. You can select five traits that flesh out your Sim’s personality. At first, I loaded myself up with honestly, industriousness, a sense of humor, kitchen skills and luck. Oh, I was a real extrovert that was the life of the party and the kind of employee that rockets up the career ladder on the wings of spunk and vivaciousness. But then I took the same kind of honesty I applied to my Sim’s physical appearance and used it to work on her personality. I kept the sense of humor and luck because those are real. But in remaining slots, my clicks turned into confessions. I am at times lazy. The stack of dishes in my sink sometimes reveals my week’s eating habits much like strata in rocks tells a geologist about the fossil record and volcanic activity. Those kitchen skills? Gone. Mama Browne makes mac-and-cheese from scratch. I struggle with the boxed kind.

When it was all over and I saved my Sim, the one chiseled out of pixels with honesty instead of idealism, I felt proud. What kind of growth comes with just making perfect little princesses?

I don’t think anybody’s had as much fun making me since my parents.

Categories: Projects
Tags: EA, prima games, Prima Guide, Sims 3, strategy guide
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