The Gaming Granny

It may come as a surprise to those who think computer games are for kids but I don’t think I am alone when I say my passion for playing The Sims is as great as any young person! Is there a 50+ year old in your family who would get immersed in a game as I did?

I never would have thought of it myself. If you’d asked me I would have said computer games held no interest for me at all. I thought they were all kill kill or little blobs that jumped over each other, totally boring except to kids (or kids at heart). As a child I never was into dolls, they were too dumb (except one, Polly, but that’s another story) and I only wanted a dollhouse if there were real tiny people in it. The Sims is just that and more!

It was my son, knowing I have a very active imagination, who surprised me about 5 years ago with The Sims for my Mac. That Xmas my niece also got the game, with all the expansion kits. We set up our computers side by side, installed our Sims …. and the whole school holidays sped by in a blur of virtual activity! I haven’t been that immersed in anything for years. I loved building houses and doing the interior decorating. Poppi, who was 11, was more into creating crazy looking characters and throwing wild parties in crazily decorated houses. What fun we had! We shared on a level that had nothing to do with age. It could have been me that was 11 and Poppi 50.

Eventually I had built houses and characters based on just about everyone I knew, right down to the finest details like the plants growing in their gardens. With the cheat code for endless money anything is possible and ‘shopping’ on the web reveals a vast treasure trove of Sim products by very talented people.

Then I got a PC so had to buy the original Sims again plus every expansion kit. Being able to do magic and go to the pet shop to buy pets made the game even more intense. The people lived in luxury, shopped on endless credit, had spas and massage tables at home and went clubbing. They went on holidays all over the world in luxury resorts, had maids, gardeners and masseurs and never had to work! What wonderful wish fulfilment!

After a while the PC was running pretty slow with so much Sim stuff and I was madly keen to get The Sims 2 which took the game to new heights of reality where it was hard to tell if it was an animated figure or real person. And they had emotions and made love to produce offspring with both parents characteristics.

So with a bit of regret I removed the original Sims and installed the Sims 2 with the couple of expansion packs then available.. It was beyond my dreams, little people I made, in mansions I found (time to build them later), living in real towns, doing real things. You can set the game to give the people as much autonomy as you want so they really do have minds of their own. I was loving it, having 3 story townhouses filled with the most amazing décor, gardens with streams flowing perched on mountain tops or nestled in hillsides. And the towns can be linked up with Sim City 4, like a play version of Google Earth but better because you’re the god of the universe you create!

However just as I was getting more ideas of expanding further the computer started doing weird things and slowed to a crawl. It isn’t fun if you have to wait 10 minutes for the game to even start up and then go through crashes when you’ve done heaps of work and not saved yet. It became too frustrating so regretfully I have to stop and wait until I can get a computer with a faster speed and a fantastic graphics card, totally dedicated the The Sims 2. Then watch me as this little granny disappears into a cyber world where everyone is happy, rich, healthy and has endless fun!

How about your granny? Got her a Xmas present yet?