Adapting the sims: strategies of reading and writing in new narratives

In new narrative forms, such as videogames and online environments, the writer’s job is not to create a complete and final narrative, but to provide the player with an adaptable construction kit, out of which to build a world and/or a story. Adaptation as a creative mode is thus built into the structure of the game narrative. One example of this creative mode can be found in the blog Alice and Kev (2009), written by games design student, Robert Burkinshaw, in which he recounted the story of two characters he created within the online game The Sims 3 (2009). Going against the grain of the games’ core values,which construct characters as driven by aspiration towards greater wealth and career success, Burkinshaw created a homeless family who slept on benches in a park and wandered around knocking on the doors of other Sims players, looking for food and somewhere to sleep. This paper investigates the ways in which Burkinshaw adapts the gameplay of the Sims to tell his own particular story, and its implications for both writer and player in videogames.