Time for a bit of context; Time to meet Selina Rose. Whenever I play games where I need to make a character (I play a lot of RPG’s) I usually make a girl. I like to tell people that it’s because I find it easier to make an emotional attachment to a character when they are female; I often cite Jennifer Hale’s superior Shepard from the Mass Effect series as proof of my point. It's kind of true but if I'm honest the real reason is… if I have to stare at someone’s arse for thirty or forty hours it may as well be a female one. So when I wanted to play Sims again I made Selina Rose. Now I know there are one or two people out there who think they recognise the name. Well I have always used it, since I was about 11, for my female characters. She is definitely not named after the porn star, her name is spelt Selena Rose, I googled it.
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| She is a gamer and a hacker lads... because life is just that fair! |
Selina is Athletic, A hopeless romantic, and has a good sense of humour. She has been gaming a long time and has become a bit of a computer whizz but she is also shy and a bit of a loner (I don’t know why but I really like that trait, I use it a lot for some reason!).
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| Selina is a dedicated athlete and makes me feel slightly inadequate. |
After 31 days in sunset valley she has climbed a good few rungs of the athletics career ladder and has built herself a nice home. She has also written a book, but spends most of her time gaming into the small hours, after which, with lights down low, she dabbles in a bit of hacking… ethical hacking… kind of.
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| Selina's modest house, in a beautiful location. This screenshot amply demonstrates why I am not a photographer. |
But here is the important bit, after 31 days her happiness score was 27,296. Selina is my control. So when scientists pump rats full of the Ebola Virus to test a new drug, one group of rats gets the drug, the other doomed group don’t… and probably die. Selina is like the doomed group, there solely to give something to measure against, to test whether Joe is successful. At the end of each day, I record Joe’s current happiness. But it is just a number, without context its hard to see whether I am on target or not. So what I need is a graph. Graphs make everything better. It’s a good one too! With lines of best fit and everything! I promised a graph before and now I’m delivering!*
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| WOW, it just doesn't get any more fascinating than this! Click to enlarge. |
As you can see from the graph my predicted outcome is slightly too low, so, if I'm going to ‘win’ (really? does anyone really ‘win’ with this experiment? I definitely don't.) I need to help Joe reach his lifetime goal and I need to start now because as you have seen, I am really crap at this game! I only have 29 days left, its a difficult task, especially for me! Now, if only I can stop making Joe fish…
*Notes on this graph. For Selina I only had one measurement, 27,296. So I assumed a linear progression to this number starting from 0. I realise some days are better than others in the Sims so it was unlikely to be so straightforward. Also I know you can not use two points to chart a line of best fit but I am going to update it with more results as this blog continues (rejoice, MORE GRAPHS!), but I don’t want to spoil the story now! Not when everyone is so desperate to find out what happens to Joe!
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