Today’s Head Scratcher

What puzzles me most is that the Times reporter seems to have written it all down without batting an eyelid.

As for EA, though displaying such selective memory is perhaps par for the course for them, how could they not expect that some of their Sims Online subscribers would come forward and remind everyone of the existence of the previous game despite an awkward name change? Especially since those subscribers are all but putting the blame for the failure of The Sims Online on EA’s dropping the ball a few years ago?

Frankly I have never quite understood the appeal of that franchise. Though I loved the SimCity titles, The Sims always looked to me as little more than an unhealthy amount of Generation-X self-indulgence blended with a touch of nineteen-fifties middle-class consumerism (mostly evoked by the soundtrack of the original game), and with as little sociological depth as your average reality show, featuring vacuous, one-dimensional people living vacuous, one-dimensional lives. Based on that premise, the MMO version sounded like more of the same, just exponentially worse.

Until Second Life came about, I was convinced that the model of trying to replicate reality was doomed to failure for lack of escapism; no real-life Army private would want to join an MMO set in the army just to discover that his only task involves peeling virtual potatoes. As for socializing, there are probably better venues.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if EA failed a second time?