Real-Life Sims Game

By Shane | August 14, 2006

Katherine Isbister and Rainey Straus created a project titled SIMVeillance where real people show up in a real-time version of The Sims. It’s stationed at the Fairmont Plaza in downtown San Jose where there’s two screens. The first screen represents The Sims game and the people in this game are actually the people walking past the security camera in the Plaza displayed on the second screen. So whatever the camera picks up in the real-time camera mirrors the people in The Sims. In an interview, Rainey Straus mentioned that there’s “…potential for people to feel invaded…” When they see themselves in The Sims? With that comment I think to myself, haven’t they ever played an MMO or The Sims online? The only mimmicking going on in this iteration of The Sims is the people’s movements, not how they look. So there’s no real difference then playing an MMO. The whole idea though, as was noted, is that you get some pretty interesting unexpected results in The Sims as you’ll never know what could happen.

There is a video and more information on the SIMVeillance website
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