![“Give your Sims’ home a makeover with new furniture and décor items based on stylish designs by IKEA!
Whether you want to create a trendy, spacious office, a chic living room, or a cozy and inviting bedroom, you can make your Sims’ dream house into something even better-a home. Design your Sims’ rooms to fit their personalities with all-new sofas, beds, tables, TV units, shelving, and more, in a variety of colors and patterns for a truly unique look. Add the finishing touches with popular IKEA wall art, mirrors, lighting, and vases. Be your Sims’ personal interior designer with inspiring, contemporary styles from IKEA!”[1]
“While there’s no doubt that postmodernism is symptomatic of a radical shift in the global deployment of capital, a new ‘mode of production’, Jameson’s model of expressive totality is far too monolithic to fully articulate the way changing patterns of international trade have altered the shape of the cultural landscape. Let there be no misunderstanding here. Jameson is not being criticized for homogenizing cultural difference under the aspect of ‘late capital’, still less so for implying that poststructuralism’s indeterminate play of signs has a quite determinate political referent. It is, after all, precisely the point of his text, as he makes clear in his 1989 follow-up essay, ‘Marxism and Postmodernism’, to establish ‘a unified theory of differentiation’. And in this he is perfectly correct. It’s only necessary to remember the multi-purpose cross-branding of the Levi’s ads, the multinational media events sponsored by Pepsi and the pop culture industries or the corporate multiculturalism of the United Colours of Benetton marketing campaigns to get his point.”[2]
“So Sims have straightforward and measurable needs, namely Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social and Room. All these needs are satisfied by interacting with objects, be they televisions, bathroom fixtures or neighbors. In the Sims’ world, everything is an object that yields a measurable benefit when some action is performed upon it. A roommate (a conversational object that bumps up the Social bar graph) is more or less analogous to the couch he’s sitting on. (The couch yields Comfort if you sit on it and Energy if you nap on it).
In a world with no intangibles, the only form of success is the acquisition of more and better objects. And in fact, that is formally engineered into the game play. Higher-quality (i.e., more expensive) objects more efficiently address Sim needs. The bar graph labeled Fun goes up faster if you are watching a high-definition television than if you are watching a black-and-white television.”[3]
IMAGES VIA THESIMS2.COM; TEXT TAKEN FROM THESIMS2.COM[1], “AFTERSHOCKS: THE END OF STYLE CULTURE” BY STEVE BEARD, AND “GAME THEORY: THE SIMS WHO DIE WITH THE MOST TOYS WIN” BY J.C. HERZ.](http://media.tumblr.com/4tO9nkkJLb41c3svH6u0LeOW_500.jpg)
“Give your Sims’ home a makeover with new furniture and décor items based on stylish designs by IKEA!
Whether you want to create a trendy, spacious office, a chic living room, or a cozy and inviting bedroom, you can make your Sims’ dream house into something even better-a home. Design your Sims’ rooms to fit their personalities with all-new sofas, beds, tables, TV units, shelving, and more, in a variety of colors and patterns for a truly unique look. Add the finishing touches with popular IKEA wall art, mirrors, lighting, and vases. Be your Sims’ personal interior designer with inspiring, contemporary styles from IKEA!”[1]
“While there’s no doubt that postmodernism is symptomatic of a radical shift in the global deployment of capital, a new ‘mode of production’, Jameson’s model of expressive totality is far too monolithic to fully articulate the way changing patterns of international trade have altered the shape of the cultural landscape. Let there be no misunderstanding here. Jameson is not being criticized for homogenizing cultural difference under the aspect of ‘late capital’, still less so for implying that poststructuralism’s indeterminate play of signs has a quite determinate political referent. It is, after all, precisely the point of his text, as he makes clear in his 1989 follow-up essay, ‘Marxism and Postmodernism’, to establish ‘a unified theory of differentiation’. And in this he is perfectly correct. It’s only necessary to remember the multi-purpose cross-branding of the Levi’s ads, the multinational media events sponsored by Pepsi and the pop culture industries or the corporate multiculturalism of the United Colours of Benetton marketing campaigns to get his point.”[2]
“So Sims have straightforward and measurable needs, namely Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social and Room. All these needs are satisfied by interacting with objects, be they televisions, bathroom fixtures or neighbors. In the Sims’ world, everything is an object that yields a measurable benefit when some action is performed upon it. A roommate (a conversational object that bumps up the Social bar graph) is more or less analogous to the couch he’s sitting on. (The couch yields Comfort if you sit on it and Energy if you nap on it).
In a world with no intangibles, the only form of success is the acquisition of more and better objects. And in fact, that is formally engineered into the game play. Higher-quality (i.e., more expensive) objects more efficiently address Sim needs. The bar graph labeled Fun goes up faster if you are watching a high-definition television than if you are watching a black-and-white television.”[3]
IMAGES VIA THESIMS2.COM; TEXT TAKEN FROM THESIMS2.COM[1], “AFTERSHOCKS: THE END OF STYLE CULTURE” BY STEVE BEARD, AND “GAME THEORY: THE SIMS WHO DIE WITH THE MOST TOYS WIN” BY J.C. HERZ.