He’s far from alone. While many in the Sims streaming community focus their content on cutesy legacy-style playthroughs or intricate design challenges, there’s an increasing interest in more boundary-pushing content. RTGame credits the popularity of his bizarre Sims series for helping him jump into streaming as a full-time career, while other YouTubers such as CallMeKevin and Plumbella count speed runs where they kill entire neighbourhoods among some of their most viewed content.
In 2017, Netherlands-based Twitch gamer and former YouTuber Mousie (real name Hannah) recorded a 13 episode Serial Killer challenge on The Sims 4, choosing to use exploits to see her character ‘Penny Dreadful’ murder as many Sims as possible. Her final total was 51 kills.
“When I was younger, The Sims was an escape,” the 26-year-old explains over Zoom. “I would make a lot of Sims that basically resembled me and they all lived the life I wanted. But as a YouTuber, doing the same type of content again and again gets boring to watch, so I went looking for challenges that forced me to play differently.”
The Serial Killer challenge was posted on The Sims Forums by user ‘liliths’, who explained the rules: your Sim has to lure as many Sims inside their homes as possible and kill them in the space of three weeks. Bonus points are rewarded for having children with your victims and certain methods of killing, while points are deducted for using cheats. “It was completely psychotic,” Mousie laughs. “I was sat there setting it up, and it was really uncomfortable because I was like, so many Sims are going to die – I’m going to end up on a list somewhere!
“But as you get into it, you start to register you’re playing a game. And you get analytical about killing your Sims. What’s the best and most efficient way to kill lots of Sims? In that point in the game, I figured out it was drowning and pufferfish. Starving took too long, and fire was too unruly.”
Death has always been a fundamental game mechanic in The Sims. Even casual players can be seasoned killers. A 2018 YouGov poll found that nearly half (41 per cent) of all British players of The Sims have let a Sim die while playing, while 32 per cent have gone on a killing spree in their neighbourhoods.
After her ‘serial killer challenge’, Mousie was left stunned at the number of comments she found from her mostly younger fanbase encouraging her to download mods that allow Sims to genuinely become mass murderers. The Extreme Violence mod, created by a Jordan-based Sims player known as ‘Dramatic Gamer’ can see Sims slit each other’s throats, fire bullets at each other – even disembowel one another with chainsaws – was a frequent recommendation.
Despite the popularity of these mods, Lyndsay Pearson – the game’s executive producer and general manager, sees them as being at odds with the values the developers team want to promote. While a life simulator, The Sims is also meant to represent an idealised version of the world we live in – a sanitised and bloodless world where gun crime, gang violence and murder aren’t tangible concepts. “It’s not a ratings decision to not include extreme or graphic violence – it’s counter to what we believe The Sims is about,” she says. “Sims can get into comical dust cloud fights; make a show of sword fighting on a movie set or freeze another Sim with a freeze ray but there is no place for graphic, physical violence in the universe we’ve created. Instead, we’re taking the ‘heaviness’ of death and tried to bring a humorous twist; this is most obvious in some of those ‘sillier’ ways to die.”
