It used to be that you knew your neighbors and maybe your coworkers - the people in your physical vicinity.

And every now and then people find the bugs, and they interpret those as cool failures in the Sims terms. For them it's like a treasure hunt, you know.

Television is a very different thing from video games. It's kind of hard for me to compare.

It used to be that you knew your neighbors and maybe your coworkers - the people in your physical vicinity.

I find it refreshing to unplug from it for a while. You kind of forget how deeply you get embedded in it.

Also, after people play these Sim games, it tends to change their perception of the world around them, so they see their city, house or family in a slightly different way after playing.

A lot of the interesting issues and dynamics within a city occur over things such as socio-economic issues or ethnic issues. But they require a much more elaborate model of human behavior.