Do Sims Dream of Electric Llamas?

Project Abstract

In this Paper, I will consider ideas of virtual humanity, sympathy, and emotion in Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DADOES) and the now-classic video game The Sims (2000- ). DADOES explores the limits of humanity and what lifeforms are truly deserving of moral treatment. The novel plays with the emotions of Rick Deckard and the androids (if they have them) in order to demonstrate similarity in immoral behavior. With Deckard acting in a role similar to the godlike power The Sims offers, he consistently questions his role as the decider between “life” for the androids or “death”. In The Sims, the goals of the game are to maintain the needs of the simulated people. There are many ways to find catharsis in gameplay, but the primary method is to identify or project identity onto sim characters and live their lives to the fullest and happiest. Players often notoriously choose to do the opposite, to drown sims in pools or trap them in kitchen fires in order to follow an imagined narrative. Both the novel and the game pose important questions about the “reality” of emotion. The sims and androids are both incapable of human emotion, but simulate it to the point of sympathy or confusion in the human observers. Sims players feel for their sims’ emotions and tend to them, making that simulated emotion feel similar to the real alternative, but in DADOES, Deckard is driven by his confusion about the “feelings” of the androids. He consistently questions his hesitation to kill certain “andys” and realizes that he may not be the bounty hunter he once believed he was. The Sims simulates emotion in simplistic and easy to sympathize with ways, where DADOES consistently blurs the line between simulated and real feeling. These two forms of unreal beings are capable only of unreal emotion, but that does not mean their simulated emotion is any less impactful. In this paper, I will compare Dick’s novel and its characters to The Sims in how sympathy and identity is attached or withheld based on the emotions of the “player”.

Conference

2025 Popular Culture/American Culture Association in the South Conference

Dates: October 9th- 11th

Sponsoring Body: Popular Culture/American Culture Association in the South

Conference Website: https://pcasacas.org/pcasdir/the-conference/

Funding Type

Travel Grant

Academic College

College of Humanities and Fine Arts

Area/Major/Minor

Creative Writing

Degree

Bachelor of Arts

Classification

Senior

Name

Andrew Black, PhD.

Academic College

College of Humanities and Fine Arts

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