It's a time honored practice to torture and abuse sims. That's not going to change any time soon. It's easy to point and laugh. We're like boys who take delight from tormenting our little sister's dolls in front of our friends.

What's harder, and ultimately the key to what makes The Sims work, is expressing the game's profound sense of humanism. The Sims is an attempt to reconstruct, in videogame terms, the bits and pieces of our day-to-day lives. What we do. How we act and react. Who we love. What we eat. Where we go. Who we are.

Take, for instance, Robin Burkinshaw's Sims 3 story of Alice and Kev, documented here.

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It's based on the old 'poverty challenge' idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3's living neighborhood features.

Burkinshaw's game began as a simple experiment on a gaming forum. But it turned into an affecting story about a young girl growing up and unable to find her place in the world. It's the closest thing I've seen in videogaming to a coming-of-age story with a female character who wasn't some sort of anime chick with scarily enormous eyes battling demons.

There's real pathos in Burkinshaw's descriptions of Alice trying to cope with her father's erratic behavior. The story is in progress, so there's no telling how it will turn out. I trust Alice is in good hands. I've previously linked to the work of Burkinshaw, a student of game development. But that's not all he is. From his blog:

Before this I spent several years as a childcare professional, particularly enjoying my work with children with autism and special needs.

This is the kind of guy who should be telling stories in videogames. We've got enough comic book readers, Aliens fans, and fantasy fetishists. When videogames grow up, it will be when guys like Mr. Burkinshaw start making games instead of just playing them.