Hi. My name is Alice and I kill tiny virtual people.

There are a lot of computer and video games on the market today.  People say they lead to violence.  You know, games like Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto, or Virtual Families.  Yeah, you heard right.  Virtual Families.  Here’s a screen shot of this so-called family game.

Sure it LOOKS innocent

But is it?  I’ll let you decide.  See, this game is basically a computer dollhouse.  If you’ve ever played the game The Sims, it is similar in nature, only with a twist.  In both games, you have a virtual dollhouse and tiny families you can manipulate to your every whim.  But Virtual Families works a bit differently.

First off, you have to “adopt” a little person, which is kind of weird.  I mean this is like a grown tiny person.  I think it’s more like, hello Goddess, here is your first subject, er, human creation.   Here is a shot of the “adoption” screen.

Far out. This guy’s for me.

Notice your little person – in this case a teeny punk rocker – is given a profession.  They are almost always bizarre made up professions, like ketchup bottler or soap inventor, or lawyer.  I am not sure how one is a mail-order butcher.  Do you chop up meat and then send it UPS?  Weird.  Note that my little man likes peanut butter and crickets.  Interesting diet there.  I am your goddess, tiny man, and I shall call you Squirrel!

Now when you begin the game, you are given a house, which is pretty sweet, but there’s a reason this thing is free.  No normal human would ever live in it.  It’s less like “fixer upper” and more like “Chernobyl.”  Not only that, the thing is littered with what they call wrappers, or giant wads of stuff as big as their heads.  What the heck do these guys eat anyway?

He looks a little irritated with me.  See how his head turns 360 degrees.

Yes, one of the rooms in his house is holding nuclear waste.  But nevermind that, look at those nasty wrappers on the floor!  Better pick those up, man.  You want to impress the new wife when you get that email proposal.

That is how marriage is normally done, right?  An example of a virtual people marriage proposal.

Brave girl. Good thing one of her likes is drinking. She’ll need it.

Wow, you cannot turn down that kind of proposal.  The girl makes a good salary as a glue mixer and likes to drink (I swear I did not alter anything here).  You don’t find chicks like that everyday.  Best not tell her about the nuclear waste in the house before the deal is signed.

Once you’re married, it’s time for a family.  See, this game moves along in real time, only speeded up, so while you’re away they’ll keep aging and doing – whatever it is they do when you’re not there to guide them.  But in order to keep the game going, you have to have multiple generations, which means the girl’s gonna have to pop out a baby.

Now this is a family game.  How is she gonna do this?  The way it’s always done, of course.  Jump up and down on the couch whilst throwing rose petals.  Duh.

Note that it actually says “trying to make a baby” and that our lady is “not feeling fresh”.

Once the kid is born, the lady won’t work at her job (lazy) but you can get her to do almost anything else.  See as soon as they do their couch dance, she skips past that annoying pregnancy.  Immediately she’s got this swaddled baby she carries around for two years.  Apparently they are really into attachment parenting.  Kid doesn’t slow her down much, though.  She can still cook and stuff.  She just carries the things over the baby.

Hey, baby, hold these hot red things for sec here, okay?

By now you’re probably wondering why I titled my post the way I did.  Because this game, while cute and peaceful, can get kind of boring.  And naturally, when one is bored, they think about killing things.  At least I do.  Stop looking at me like that.  I did a Google search for “how do I kill my virtual people” and got like a dozen hits.  So there.  I think it’d be better to put them out of their misery.  Check out another room in “this old house”.

Should you have the baby around the massive bee hive?

Anyway, as their goddess, I get to do whatever I want with these people.  They depend on me for everything.  Like groceries.  I buy them and put them on the table.   You know, if I feel like it.  Manna from cyber-heaven!

If you don’t feed them, they starve to death.  But that takes way too long.  I mean, it’s so cruel.  But there are other ways of making their tiny lives miserable.  I think of it rather like that part of the Bible where God and Satan are making bets on just how much misfortune Job needs to face before he cracks.  See, these experiments date back to the Bible, you guys.

Not only that, this game seems to encourage this sort of thing.  You are given two gloves in order to “train” your people.  There’s the green one that pats them on the head and makes rainbows. Bo-ring.  Then there’s the RED GLOVE.

Imagine a giant red hand coming out of the sky and smacking you silly.

Yeah, creepy huh?  Once you smack ’em, you see this red cloud and they run for their lives.  But it’s kind of hard to run from the GODDESS, bwahahahahaha.

You will never escape me, tiny man.

After you smack them enough times, they start to get depressed.  I guess I would too if some giant hand kept hitting me.  Not only that, you can pick the people up and drop them anywhere.  Like say, into the room with the nuclear waste.  They don’t like this very much.

Here I am dropping him into this happy place. He’ll be radioactive in no time.

Sadly, this doesn’t even affect him, save grossing him out a bit.  So how to get rid of this little guy?  Well, sometimes they get sick, I mean without your help, and there are medicines offered for you to cure them.  On the other hand, you could just inject them with the medicine and see what happens.

The giant needle one works pretty well. Or so I hear.

Shoot him up with enough of that stuff, and he’ll be pretty weak.  Then it’s just a waiting game.  Now why would I want to torture some tiny person like this?  I mean, shouldn’t I do something productive, like say shooting at squirrels?  Nah.  Too much trouble.

This isn’t the only tiny person game I play.  As I mentioned before, I play the Sims.  I will tell more about that in another entry.  You wouldn’t believe the number of ways you can kill, er, um, have fun with those guys!  So, um, that’s my story.  Maybe there is a support group for me.

Hi.  My name is Alice and I kill tiny virtual people.

Hiii, Alice!