Nick Woika Soc 035- Term Paper: Option 1

When people look at aging as a whole in the United States, it would not be considered an unfair assumption to say that there are a large number of different aspects of our culture that help to shape our general opinions about older Americans, as well as older and aging people in general. Out of all the different possible factors, the media probably leaves one of the larger footprints in peoples mind. There are a large number of movies and television shows that bring up these thoughts and feelings, but for my paper, I decided to look at a less explored medium; Video Games. While there are a massive amount of various games that look at aging, I decided to focus on a single game, The Sims 3, which dubs itself as a life simulator, allowing you to control a family of Sims (the games terminology for human characters) from birth to death. Before I get too involved in comparing and contrasting the various aspects of aging to this game, I would like to provide some background information on it. The original The Sims was released in 2001, and has seen a large number of spinoffs, sequels, and imitations since then. The Sims 3 is a PC and Mac game that was released in June 2009, and has regularly been releasing new content and expansion packs since the initial release (the most recent expansion was released in March of this year). The game allows you to control up to eight Sims at the same time in a household, and the game is known for having a very open-ended nature, with no right or wrong way to play. The game is fully aware of aging, as your Sims age in real time (although you can optionally adjust the aging speed in the games settings or even disable it altogether). In general, the game seems to relate to the Continuity Theory of aging, where aging is a naturally occurring event that happens in everyones lives, and aging is both an internal and external aging process.

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The game supports this theory by having Sims always classified in one of seven age groups: baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult, and elder. The amount of time a Sim has left in one age group is always visible in their status menus in the game. What is notable about the aging in this game is that while the age groups are clearly noted, Sims do not slowly change their appearance over time as in normal aging. Instead, as soon as a Sim is ready to move on, they instantly transition into the next age group, their body literally changing in a flash of light. What makes the aging in this game even more interesting is that even though an age is clearly visible in the status menus for every Sim, the elder age group is the only one that does not show the amount of time remaining, despite Sims aging as the game continues. As such, there is always a sense of uncertainty when playing with an elder Sim because even though they continue aging, there is no way of knowing exactly how much longer they will live, as a number of lifestyle factors can cause the games elder stage to be shorter or longer. For example, elder Sims with the Vegetarian trait will live slightly longer than other elder Sims, and Sims that complete Marathon Runner (a challenge more athletic sims will sometimes be offered) will also receive a slight boost to their lifespan. On the default game speed settings, elders are usually estimated to live between 17 and 90 (in-game) days, resulting in the elder stage lasting for a minimum of 16 days before death by old age becomes a possibility. However, an elder could still theoretically still die from more unnatural causes like a house fire. When controlling an elder Sim, the game puts very few limitations on what the elder is allowed to do, meaning that an elder is still allowed to participate in almost all of the activities adult sims could do, with the exception of not allowing female elders to become pregnant (however, male elders can still impregnate young adult and adult female Sims). Elders are still allowed to work at their current job, but they are also offered the option to retire from work and

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receive a pension, much like real life. This option, however, can put the Sim at a noticeable financial disadvantage to Sims that continue to work. For example, a Sim at the highest level in the political career will be paid approximately 582 (the games currency) per hour and only work three days per week, averaging about 2620 every workday. However, if the Sim were to retire, they would only receive a daily pension of about 280. As a result, retirement may not always be the best choice, though this is entirely dependent on the player's opinion, as if the player does not manually instruct the elder to retire, they will always continue working at their current position until they are fired or they die.. Since so much of the Sims life is in control of the player, it makes it very difficult to pinpoint the exact stage most sims are on the life course perspective. While one player could have their elder Sim an active member of the community, another player could have their elder living by themselves with little to no interaction with other characters, and another could still be working at their job they had when they were an adult sim. If anything, I believe that because of how much the player shapes the Sims lifestyles and decisions, this game could provide a great example of people across the spectrum of the life course perspective. As previously stated, I believe that this game is a good example of the Continuity Theory of aging. not only does it demonstrate normal aging, but it also demonstrates that there are both internal factors as well as external factors. The internal continuity is primarily focused on the physical aging, but the external continuity is connected to past role performance and can be observed in the continuity in skills, activities, environments, roles, and relationships between middle and old age (Quadagno, 2011), all of which can be seen in some form in the game. A good example of a player-controlled external factor entirely under the players discretion would be the walking cane implemented in one of the expansion packs. By default,

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any elder Sim can walk fine on their own, but at any point, a player could optionally buy them a cane for their personal use. The only way to obtain a cane is if the player actually buys one for an elder. When equipped by the elder, the cane has two walking animation choices, both of which can be selected by the player. The first style, The Southern Gentleman, is a more confident walking animation, causing the the Sim to strut around with no apparent difficulties. The second choice, on the other hand, is called The Geriatric Gait and has more of a stereotypical "elderly" appearance. This choice causes the elder Sim to limp around with what openly looks like a walking disability. However, when the Sim doesn't use the cane they will lose the walking limp, so the effect is an entirely superficial element that is added for player choice. While some people enjoy using the Sims as a way to see what the game has to offer, the games are also offering a potential helpful boost to elders in the real world. There are a large amount of studies that demonstrate that games in general improve memory and attention in elderly people (Miller, 2005). The Sims 3 is by no means a remotely accurate simulation of an aging person, a matter which is increasingly more obvious by some of the more unusual items and features that were added in later expansion packs. What makes it an interesting subject for research, however, is the large attention to detail in each individual age group, and the large and varied audience of people who actively play this game. In general, there are more female players than male players who regularly play this game, and there are a surprising amount of older adults who happen to enjoy the game as well. Surprisingly, this game has a large user base consisting of people in their 40s and older. The rationale for this could be based off a study done in 2004 where Senior-citizen gamers will often seek electronic pastimes that mirror offline interests. (Ojeda-Zapata, 2004). In this case, a lot of the older gamers often use The Sims as a way to experiment and see what sort

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of crazy situations they can come up with, something that very few games with a major release can currently do.

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Bibliography Quadagno, J. (2011). Aging and the life course, an introduction to social gerontology. McGrawHill Humanities/Social Sciences/Language. Ojeda-Zapata, J. (2004, May 14). Video game companies respond to aging demographic. Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. Miller, G. (2005). Computer game sharpens aging minds. Science, 310(5752), 1261-1261. The Sims Wiki. (2013). Retrieved from http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims_Wiki

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