The Sims: Digital Puppets and the Afterlife of a Dollhouse

Abstract

The Sims is a popular computer game developed as a digital version of a dollhouse inhabited by digital puppets (or Sims) which are similar to human beings. Being a mix of a common doll, such as Barbie, with a real human or, more precisely, with its representation in popular psychology and in modern theories of personality, a Sim not only illustrates the contemporary transformation of dolls into humanlike digital ‘creatures’ but also their role in building and transforming the player’s subjectivity as well as his/her image of the world. This paper discusses Sims as puppets and the image of a human they embody. The focus on the (inter)subjectivity of the Sims and on the resulting connection between their artificial world and the social world of the players can be seen as an invitation to engage in a kindly self-ironization of contemporary life contexts in digital puppetry.