Don't get me wrong, this isn't about to be one of those "video games encourage violence" articles. They don't. Full stop.
What open choice games do, though, is allow us to explore some of the darker aspects of our minds. Games that allow us to choose good or evil, right or wrong, light or dark - those kinds of games let us take a walk on the wild side. It's part of why people love games like The Elder Scrolls series, Dragon Age, Fable etc.
There is no game that lets you play God more than the Sims, though. And it's in this seemingly-simple and innocent little game that we truly get to the darkness of humanity. It's funny, in a way. It's a game without dragons, without demons, without the evil monsters that so many people cite as their reasons for not allowing certain games...
but that's because the monster in the Sims is you, dear player, and you are way scarier and more twisted than anything the game developers could have thought of.
Reddit user Sliced_alt asked:
What was the cruelest thing you have done to a Sim in the Sims?
... and yeah. Thank you to everyone who answered for proving my point. Given some power and no real consequences, the whole thing devolves into madness. Utter despicable madness.
Torture For Entertainment
I had an actual torture dungeon in my house. Stone walls, no chairs or beds, no toilet, no door. One wall was entirely window, and the nice posh room it faced had comfy chairs for the rest of the family to watch as the prisoner repeatedly soiled themselves and lived in squalor.
- Edymnion
Social Services
I put a baby in a crib and built 4-5 layers of fences and walls around it, then set it on fire. This was to see if the social worker would get stuck. Turns out the social workers in Sims can walk through walls and babies can't die.
Black Widow
GiphyI made my Sim a sugar baby who turned into a black widow. She'd meet men at the club, bring them home and get it on. Then she'd visit their house later and (thanks to the kleptomania trait) just take a bunch of their stuff, then go home and sell it to make rent.
Eventually she moved in with a rich sugar daddy and made him break it off with his wife and kick her out, then the sugar daddy mysteriously died (someone walled over his bedroom door while he was sleeping and he starved to death) and she inherited all his property. She went from whore to socialite in like 2 in-game months.
"Eviction"
On the sims 4 I had a process of getting free houses: move in with someone then evict them
At first I didn't know I could evict them, so I decided to lock the inhabitants in a shed and leave them to starve to death
It was a husband and wife, I gave them one chair, no bathroom, and a radio that played the same song over and over again, then I let them starve to death while peeing the floor and crying.
- BigcatTV
Sim Survivor
The game is called: Sim Survivor.
You make a house of 8 individuals, build them a spacious house, truck them all in, delete the doors. Build fireplaces on every wall. Have the sims light them. Build plants all over the house (essentially every square foot where there isn't a sim). The place goes up like a tinder box. The sims then have to put out every fire. Usually you lose about 5 or 6 of them to the blaze. Then the final few must clean up the piles of ash around the house (here is where you lose a couple to exhaustion). The winner gets a beautiful house with a big graveyard in the backyard for them to go and mourn their buds.
Hot Dog Ghosts
I was addicted to the Sims and my husband occasionally plays the game, so he made a Sims family in my game. As a joke, I dressed them all up as hot dogs. He doesn't play often and I forgot about his Sims in the game. I turned the aging on in the game and all but 1 of his sims had died of old age. She was still living in the same house he had put her in and was being mercilessly haunted by the hot dog ghosts of her dead family members.
It was actually really sad. Picture one sad elderly sim dressed as a hot dog sitting on the couch with an exhausted moodlet trying to eat a grilled cheese sandwich while the hot dog ghosts of her dead family continuously made the sink overflow, which she continued to clean up between bouts of crying and passing out.
The Basement
I had a normal suburban family, nice house, two kids, the works, except they also had a secret child they kept locked in a room in the basement with nothing but a sink. They only ever visited him to bring him a plate of old terrible food once in a while and to make fun of him and taunt him.
Eventually, the kid's sink broke and kept flooding the room. Since he was a kid, he couldn't repair the sink, so it just kept flooding. The kid spent all his time mopping up a never-ending spill and crying.
Gordon Ramsey
I decided to run a Masterchef-style challenge with a household of 7 sims and Gordon Ramsay. The sims would partake in various cooking challenges with Gordon presiding as the judge. However, whenever someone got "eliminated", I'd have Gordon lure the poor sim to the back of the lot and stab them to death (sims mods are great). It continued until only one chef was left alive, and then as victory I'd have them kill Gordon and then themselves. It was glorious.
The Sims Cult
Made a cult. I made a handsome sim and had him steal several woman who were locked in an underground facility. He would talk and have little dates to see which one he liked the most. The others were executed by either drowning, electrocution or starvation. They'd then take different children and repeat, on to teenagers then repeat.
This went on for several generations until none of the wives liked the newest head of the family.
Exhausted Potential
GiphyI locked the husband in a very small room with a bed and a lamp and kept him for breeding purposes. He was madly in love with my female sim and gladly impregnated her as many times as she wanted. He was always so happy to see my female sim. When he had exhausted his potential I took away the door and left him there die in a puddle of his own pee.