My last post started was about how it’s easier to weather down economic times if you live on cash and eschew credit and it was all good-for-me and smug and preachy and whatnot and then I got to thinking. Let’s be honest. What helps me get through a lot of down economic times isn’t the fact that I don’t have a credit card and isn’t the fact that I am 40 years from retirement and isn’t the fact that I just think I’m so wonderful.
It’s that I play the Sims. 
It’s an expensive game because the company that puts it out realised they could make a lot more money by releasing parts of the whole game piecemeal. The game I’ve assembled now with the base and expansion packs could honestly be sold as one game for $50 instead of the $350 over 3 years dribble, but it’s worth it.
Any time I want designer clothes, I can get them for my sims. Instead of spending thousands of dollars remodelling my kitchen, I just satisfy my travertine-envy by pimping out a sim domicile. I’ve wanted a wall-mount plasma screen for years, but it just hasn’t been in the cards. A few of my sims have them, though.
The Sims is retail therapy on the cheap and I love it. It’s also a source for a lot of cute moments and a way to have kids you don’t have to send to college and dogs you don’t have to take to the vet.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Kat, when do you think the world wide web will be exactly like the Sims? When I first saw the sims, I immediately imagined information on the web with a sims skin. I’ve never played. I think the first time I saw it there was no way to interact with real people online and just thought I’d wait. I’m not sure if the new game is like that yet? I have tried second life once, but saw a yawning chasm before me threatening to suck me out of the real world in favor of creating my own.
The beauty of secondlife and perhaps sims, I have not tried Sims, is that you can do many things with it. I can be an escape from the real world when you need it. But it can also enhance your real world life in many ways. Of course secondlife is not very user friendly, ie easy to operate, so it does require a good amount of effort to get something out of it. But like all things, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. There are some very beautiful things to see and people to meet in secondlife, and I recommend it.
I found SecondLife to be boring. Seemed everybody in there was either brand new and just checking it out, trying to sell something, or looking for virtual sex.
The Sims by far beats out SecondLife for me because it’s an actual game. There’s a goal beyond just wandering around.
I’ve never really been tempted to try secondlife for the exact reason dolphin mentioned.
Christian, I think many peoples idea of that kind of web experience is/was influenced by Snow Crash. IMHO games luke SL and mmorpgs are steps to bringing that SC reality about. But we’re still a good ten years from the actuality.