Digital Allegories (on The Sims)

Ever get the feeling you are playing some vast and useless game to which you don't know the goal, and can't remember the rules? Ever get the fierce desire to quit, to resign, to forfeit, only to discover there's no umpire, no referee, no regulator, to whom to announce your capitulation? Ever get the vague dread that while you have no choice but to play the game, you can't win it, can't even know the score, or who keeps it? Ever suspect that you don't even know who your real opponent might be? Ever get mad over the obvious fact that the dice are loaded, the deck stacked, the table rigged, and the fix - in? Welcome to gamespace. You are a gamer whether you like it or not, now that we all live in this gamespace that is everywhere and nowhere. You can go anywhere you want in gamespace but never leave it. No wonder digital games are the emergent cultural form of the times. The times have themselves become just a series of less and less perfect games. A new historical persona stalks the earth. The gamer. And it is us, whether we like it or not.