Game Fun

My Wonderful Job

Today I mentioned the latest incarnation of the SimCity family to my boss - John Davison. Apparently, the Sims developers have been working on it for some time. Named ‘The Sims Carnival‘, it allows players to create their own game from a set of templates. We chatted about it for a bit, and then we got to what we always do - how safe is it for kids, really. So John sent me off to do the testing. This testing is something I’ve become quite adept at, actually. Over the course of writing many computer game reviews for WhatTheyPlay.com, I have had to do it countless times, and love every moment of it. Let me explain!

I’ve spent much of the last decade as a webizen. Part of being a citizen of the web, at least in my world, is taking both the good and the bad, and enjoying it. That enjoyment tends to lend itself to the most base elements within the web, at least to outsiders. This is where the world of 4Chan was born. 4Chan is a website I will not link to since most of you don’t belong there - that means you should Google it either. Quite like Fight Club, it’s something you just don’t talk about with outsiders, a rule I’ve never cared for (as you can tell!). In this little corner of the net, anything disturbing you’ve seen on the net, anything depraved that’s hit you on youtube, or anything seemingly stupid that everyone else is laughing at - these things are born there.

And this is the world in which I reside - dark humor, in-jokes, and schadenfreude. This means I’ve spent many hours in Massively Multiplayer games, forums, blogs, and websites doing nothing other then causing headaches for the staff. Mind you, they deserved it each time - but this makes me specially suited for testing these games for parents. After all, if I can’t make something disturbing, nobody can!

So I head over to The Sims Carnival, to discover exactly what I can do. Essentially, it’s a very rudimentary game creator. You can pick a style of game, a few options, then replace the images with what you wish. Granted - it would be simple to create a game where the penis has to fight the vagina and the boos for the secret poop. That’s too simple, however. Things like that get taken down quite quickly, or are automatically filtered from the start. Plus, there is nothing clever about that. So - I give you:

Pedobears Pedo Panic!

EDIT:  As you may notice, there is no bit of depravity in the games below.  EA seems to actually monitor the games on the site, and have replaced my game with a random game selector.  Your imagination will be needed for more of this post…

Sorry Maxie.

You play the game as Pedobear. He’s just arrived at a house to chase down some jailbait he found on the internet. He arrives only to find Chris Hansen of ‘To Catch a Predator’.

Oh No! He wants you to sit down over there! Hurry - throw your magic Lollipops at him to turn him into the young girls you seek!

And you see, I’ve made something incredibly terrible that no child should be allowed near - but it’s on the net! Share my game with your friends! And yes - this is my job. Just awesome.