There’s nothing like the fear of knowing your paycheck, and extending your livelihoods almost exclusively involves growing debt that you may never pay in the course of your life. Now imagine that you have to take care of it in a video game.
The Sims 4 recently released the Discover University, a lively expansion where players can experience the fantasy of college life. There are things you would expect: schoolwork, parties and dorms. But because The Sims tries to simulate real life, the developers knew that they had to take out student loans, which are unfortunately often a pillar of university experience.
“Money management is a skill that most new university students learn as they go to school, so it’s a story and experience we wanted to share with our players as part of this package,” said Stephanie Tran, producer of The Sims 4, via e-mail , “We also wanted players who want to live at home or just started to attend university and loans make that possible.”
The question then became: how much pressure should student loans actually have on the player? At a very early stage, student loans were not particularly onerous, but the team realized that making them this way would not be difficult enough. So Maxis decided to give Spo-man a little spice. This character appears when players take too long to repay their student loans.
Maxis / Electronic Arts
“To add a fun element to a situation that would be quite stressful in real life, let players try their luck by bribing the repo person with a chance of success or failure,” Tran said. “If successful, your credit approval requirements will be delayed for a while, and nothing will be repossessed.”
It must be pretty bad, however, before the repo man interferes. To attend a university, a tuition fee is required, which players can pay out of pocket if they have the money. But if they do not have the funds, players can borrow at a very reasonable rate of 5% – and this does not have to be repaid while the Sim is enrolled at school. Once this is done, regular payments must be made, and if this is not the case, the collections start. At this point, the player risks to burden his Sim. It does not take long for Repo-man to turn up and take away household items for punishment.
If a Sim happens to die, the money is collected immediately . unless the Sim is too poor. Here, the game becomes solid for the player by simply forgiving the remaining debt. But in return, surviving Sims receive a moodlet marker “Poverty”, which, depending on the relationship to the dead Sim, has a negative effect on the disposition of the character.
Players can face extreme debt if they want to play that devastating experience in a role, but they must actively press for it.
“The intention with debt was not that student loans feel punishable and unavoidable,” said Tran. In most cases, student loans in The Sims 4 are much easier to handle than in reality.
“It has never been necessary to make loans for pleasure alone, but we wanted to involve them in the challenge of balancing school, careers, needs, and skill management,” Tran said. “It can sound very common, but we hope the challenge of the game is fun and exciting for the players.”
