Black 1 Haley Black Professor Bob Bednar COM 75-964-01 27

Black 1 Haley Black Professor Bob Bednar COM 75-964-01 27 February 2021 Prospectus Introduction Since their popularization in the 1980s, video games have become a dominant force in popular culture. Despite their cultural relevance, the body of critical and cultural communication scholarship on video games is relatively slim. This gap in communication studies is important to address as video games continue to take on a central role in popular culture and the messages they communicate become widely disseminated and shared among players. Rather than a passive leisure activity, I argue that the act of playing video games is a communicative interaction between player and popular culture. Just as other cultural texts and artifacts communicate value- laden, ideological messages, so too do video games. Gamers and communication scholars alike can benefit from examining the value-laden, ideological messages inherent in gameplay so as to better understand how video games function as media of communication, as well as their impact on popular culture. The historical success and continued popularity of The Sims 3 not only points to its uniqueness as a video game, but also posits The Sims 3 as a productive site of analysis for communication scholars. The characteristics of The Sims 3 gameplay necessarily communicate a hierarchical value system within The Sims 3 since the ultimate goals of the game are achieving Lifetime Wishes and obtaining Lifetime Happiness points, yet the means and likelihood of achieving those wishes and obtaining those points vary from Sim to Sim depending on their Black 2 unique personalities and circumstances. Through my research, I seek to answer the following questions: Which goals, aspirations, and wishes does The Sims 3 gameplay deem worthy of pursuit? How does intersectionality operate in The Sims 3 gameplay to shape and confine the objectives of the game, as well the likelihood of achieving those objectives? And lastly, how do the gameplay dynamics of The Sims 3, situated within the life-simulation genre, work to communicate and reinforce certain societal values at the expense of others? Literature Review Speaking Simlish: Life Simulation as Communication Given the undeniable popularity of The Sims, some scholars have engaged directly with the game, seeking to understand the reasons for its popularity and intensely loyal fan-base. Noticing the relatively large number of female players engaging with The Sims, video game scholar Sara Mosberg Iversen (2013) used a netnographic approach to investigate simmers’ experiences with The Sims gameplay. Iversen found that The Sims offers a sort of escapism from everyday life while also providing “a space of one’s own” which allows the player to “work with the self and its place in everyday life” (13). In this way, The Sims gameplay could be interpreted as a sort of equipment for living. Importantly, Iversen believes that The Sims gameplay does “not automatically enforce either acceptance of dominant values or subversion of the same” (13). Rather, Iversen believes simmers engage in a self-directed meaning-making process through the act of playing. This will be an important perspective to address as my research unfolds. Building upon her 2013 research with qualitative player interviews, Iversen (2014) suggests that simmers experience a “paradox of pleasure” in which The Sims offers players escapism from everyday life, despite being a game that is somewhat centered around managing Black 3 the mundane tasks of daily life. While The Sims, indeed, requires players to complete mundane tasks like scrubbing toilets and taking out the trash, Iversen found that simmers care much more about “relations and special moments in [the Sim’s] life,” than they do about completing such routine tasks (113). Iversen views this paradox from a perspective of duality in realism and fantasy, concluding that these “realistic elements in the games can be seen as a bridge to fantasy, dreaming of and imagining better worlds” (114). In other words, simmers engage in imaginative gameplay (“fantasy”) through the constraints of “realistic” elements such as interpersonal relationships, thereby allowing the player to use The Sims gameplay as a sort of channel for expressing and navigating their real-life wishes, goals, and values. Both of Iversen’s studies point to a similar conclusion: the medium is the message. Whether the simmer plays The Sims in an attempt to escape the drudgery of daily life or to explore and express their real-life wishes, goals, and values, the “content” that The Sims communicates is its gameplay experience. This assertion follows Iversen’s notion that simmers engage in a self-directed meaning-making process through the act of playing; however, The Sims gameplay is necessarily structured toward the achievement of certain tasks and goals. While individual players can certainly opt to ignore their Sim’s wishes and deviate from their goals, Marshall McLuhan asserts that “any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary” (134). Indeed, a player who rejects their Sim’s wishes and ignores their goals will be reminded of these overriding, value-laden objectives and penalized for their incompletion. The values upheld and reinforced through The Sims are thus always at play, regardless of how individual simmers engage with the game. Understanding The Sims as a medium of communication has led some scholars to investigate certain aspects of identity as they are represented in The Sims. Several scholars have Black 4 examined how gender and sexuality operate within The Sims (Albrechtslund, 2007; Beavis & Charles, 2005). Other scholars have investigated the phenomenon of “skinning,” or gameplay modification, and how these mods work to expand the game’s options for gender representation, a point that I will elaborate on later (Wirman, 2011; Sivohnen, 2011). Another branch of scholarship concerning The Sims focuses on the value-laden objectives that The Sims gameplay necessarily advocates. While some scholars have focused on the consumerist values prevalent in The Sims (Montes & Campbell, 2013), others have examined familial values reinforced through The Sims gameplay (Sicart, 2003). While the scholarly conversation surrounding The Sims gameplay has addressed important topics concerning identity construction and value reinforcement, there have been no attempts to address how identity characteristics such as gender, sexuality, race, status, and class converge in The Sims to reinforce particular societal values. Mia Consalvo’s 2003 publication is notable for its broad exploration of identity construction in The Sims, touching on gender, sexuality, and race, as well as certain values that are communicated through the operation of these characteristics within The Sims gameplay. However, Consalvo’s study nor any of the aforementioned studies address the ways in which these identity characteristics intersect to create a specific positionality for the Sim, which shapes and constrains their life-trajectory and necessarily communicates which goals, aspirations, and wishes are worthy of pursuit and thus laden with value. Structuring Gameplay: Affordances and Constraints In discussing the ways in which Sims’ identities are constructed and how their identity characteristics interact with one another to shape and confine their life-trajectories, it is useful to think of The Sims gameplay in terms of affordances and constraints. Majchrzak, Faraj, Kane, & Black 5 Azad (2013) define an affordance as the “mutuality of actor intentions and technology capabilities that provide the potential for a particular action” (39). As such, affordances “set limits,” called constraints, “on what it’s possible to do with, around, or via [an] artefact” (Hutchby, 453). In the context of The Sims 3 gameplay structure, affordances represent the abilities, tools, and resources the player is able to use in navigating the game; for example, the information panels located at the bottom of the gameplay screen are a gameplay affordance because they allow the player to locate and monitor their Sim’s wishes, needs, and statistics. Conversely, an oft-cited gameplay constraint of The Sims 3 is the rabbit-hole structure of certain lots; in these buildings, the player cannot see or actively direct their Sim’s activities. In addition, Andrew Richard Schrock (2015) has noted that “affordances can be created by the designer or altered by a hacker” (1234). While The Sims 3 is not a network-based game and thus would be difficult to “hack” per se, the aforementioned community of “skinners” or “modders” has significantly expanded The Sims 3 gameplay affordances and eliminated gameplay constraints. With a few downloads from modthesims or The Sims Resource, simmers can virtually reconfigure the gameplay structure of The Sims 3, making it truly unique to their gameplay preferences. Create-a-Positionality: Identity and Intersectionality in The Sims 3 Pertinent to my project are existing theories surrounding gender and sexuality. I limit my discussion to these two characteristics of identity for the primary reason that these identity categories are unfixed and malleable in both The Sims 3 and the real world. To be clear, sex refers to “the biological, genetic, or phenotypical markers that are used to categorize us into female and male bodies,” whereas gender refers to “the roles, behaviors, and expectations our Black 6 culture assigns to those markers” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 38). In this sense, gender can be seen as a performative act

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