Love them, nurture them or destroy their little cyber-lives

Minimum system requirements

PC running Windows 95/98 Intel Pentium 233MHz processor 32MB free system RAM 300MB hard drive space 4x CD-ROM drive 2MB graphics card DirectX 7.0 compatible sound card (DirectX 7.0 supplied) Recommended PC Intel Pentium II 350MHz processor 64MB free system RAM 8x CD-ROM drive What does it say about me, I wonder, that I let my first child - sweet, helpless Bobby Boozington - suffer so miserably that he slipped into a catatonic funk, flunked his classes and had to be sent off to military school? Why did I torture Michael Bachelor, taking away his refrigerator and replacing it with expensive stereo equipment so he eventually died of starvation? And just why did I make Susie Boozington attack Bella Goth?

I must be a sick, sick woman.

The Sims is the kind of computer game that makes you question the workings of your own psyche. Maxis, the company behind the popular SimCity series, has long been the master of games that let you play God by building and destroying cities and their civic culture. But its latest adventure in virtual living takes the God complex one step further. This time you're actually playing with people's heads.

Maxis calls The Sims a "people simulator" - a game where you build people and try to turn them into healthy, balanced, happy individuals or, if you so desire, torture them. And I will bet the odds are quite good that most people will use The Sims to fulfil their twisted fantasies about human relationships. The dark side of human nature, after all, is far more interesting than normality. Let chaos reign!

The Sims plunks you down in the middle of a half-built neighbourhood, and your job is to create and manage the families that will live in the homes. The game comes with one pre-programmed family, the affluent and well-adjusted (if you disregard the fact that dad is a human guinea pig at the local laboratory) Goths. You can mess with their lives if you like - but the most fun comes from building your own Sims from scratch.

Sims come in one of 12 personalities, based on the signs of the zodiac (those who follow astrology will get devious pleasure in watching an Aries lock horns with a bullish Taurus). Design a few Sims, plonk them into a home and set them to work buying furniture, household appliances, flowerpots and paintings - and, of course, finding a job through the local paper. They can end up becoming anything from a pickpocket to a military recruit.

You, as their God, must teach and prod them to take care of themselves: to cook, get in shape and work their way up the corporate ladder so they can make more money. Although the Sims have some autonomy, they need to be meticulously trained - a slothlike Sim, for example, won't use the toilet if you don't prod it first.

Making more money is critical. The cheap furniture and household items that impoverished Sims can afford will bring them only meagre happiness, while wealthy Sims derive great pleasure from their fancy gym equipment, colonnaded homes and "Dolce Tutti Frutti" sofas.

All Sims begin with entry-level jobs, and have to gain the right skills to advance in their professions. Social interaction is also critical, which means you will have to introduce your families to the neighbours, set them up with dates and have them make firm and lasting friends and perhaps a few mortal enemies.

All of this makes for a complex game. The creators of The Sims have thought of absolutely everything, from clogged toilets to burglars to nursery-style wallpaper you can purchase for the kids' room. It's sometimes quite mind-boggling to think of all the things you can do.

But it's also slightly tedious: nothing happens quickly, as your Sims develop relationships and advance their careers in methodical, building-block fashion. Indeed, it takes days of repeating mundane tasks to train your Sims enough that they can navigate solo through even the smallest duties of their lives. Yet simulating a person is no easy task - and while the Sims are far from human, Maxis has nevertheless created an impressive engine for building unique personalities.

Take, for example, my first family, the Boozingtons. I thought Dirk and Susie Boozington would automatically get cuddly if I simply kept them close to each other; instead, they didn't seem to share the same interests at all.

The characters talk in gibberish, but you can read their "thoughts" by the icons that appear in little balloons above their heads. Playful Susie's attentions seemed more readily caught by balding Bob Newbie across the street. Just for the hell of it, I had her attack Bella Goth - but one slap and Bella never visited again.

What is most fascinating, however, is seeing what happens when you give up trying to make your Sims happy and begin to torture them instead. That's what I did to poor Michael, a recent college graduate who I fixed up with a zebra-striped couch and a fancy computer. I refused to let him use the toilet, just to see what would happen, and he eventually peed on the floor.

When flies began buzzing around the filth on the carpet, I decided not to let him play on the computer until he'd cleaned up the mess he'd made. And, as a final indignity, I removed his refrigerator and waited to see how long it would take him to starve to death. The answer? Two days.

This, I suspect, will be the fate of many, many Sims on many computers around the world. Maxis, in fact, condones this kind of behaviour. "We know it's hard to resist tormenting them," the game guide explains, "but do give them a decent meal now and then."

Games like this will ultimately bring out the twisted side of human nature. We want to see tiny humans attacking each other, having sex, feeling sick and neglecting their children - living out the malicious fantasies that we ourselves must repress every day. If everything runs smoothly, after all, there's no fun at all in playing God.

So, as a final, self-indicting coup de grce, I created a new family to move into the former home of poor Michael Bachelor. This little twosome is now living with Michael's funeral urn - they weep before it once a day - and learning how to endure each other's foibles.

The woman's name is Janelle, and she's a Virgo just like me. We'll have to see what happens with her new male buddy, Serge the Sagittarius. I wonder if I'll learn anything from the way they respond to being tortured by God?

Janelle Brown is technology writer for the internet magazine Salon.com

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