“How do you find your PUGs?” he asked. I pondered this for a moment. Some are awful and some are great; they’re really a hit-or-miss situation. I’ve been in groups that got wiped out completely in five minutes and groups that took hours to finish one dungeon and groups that took ten minutes to do the same dungeon I just spent hours doing.

“Well,” I replied, “Sometimes  they go smoothly and sometimes they don’t. I guess it’s luck, really…”

Pete looked at me, the look on his face a mixture of incredulousness and confusion. Then the understanding clicked. “No, I mean how do you find them, now how you like them. If I wanted to know if you liked them, I would have asked you ‘How do you like them?’ not ‘How do you find them?’ I’m not British.”

I’m not British, either, so I”m not entirely sure what he was going for there, but…ah, journey to self discovery.

*PUG is an acronym for pick-up group. This means that you’re running with people you don’t know; you just fill out a spot for whatever’s needed.

I love The Sims.

I can’t help myself. I love creating a Sim-me and decorating my house. I can get a little job in the field I’d like to be in, or one I could never get in real life (read: surgeon/criminal) and live my little Sim-life.

The Sim-world has come a long way from just creating Sims that just look like people I know, then capturing them in doorless rooms to watch them starve–in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, I can actually give my Sims personalities to match their human counterparts, so I can watch someone who looks and acts like my ex-fiancé drown in a swimming pool with no ladder. 

Muah ha ha. Mine is an evil laugh.

Most of the time, I admit, I micro-manage my Sims and line up their actions into infinity, so this personality tweaking ends up being almost cosmetic because Sim-me is going to write that goddamn novel whether she wants to or not and then she’s going to take a goddamn shower and go to goddamn bed and THEN SHE’S GOING TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THIS SIM, DAMMIT AND…

Sorry. Got a little carried away again…

So, in the interest of a social experiment conducted with state-of-the-art personality technology, I decided to make a Sim-me and a Sim-John and mostly leave them to their own devices in their Sim-World. I say “mostly” because it is still a game for me to play and left to their own devices, the Sims have a tendancy to watch television all day.

In the interest of fairness, after I designed how our Sims looked (”And for you, red hair!” “Auburn. My hair is auburn.” “[monstrous sigh] Fine. Auburn. It just looks red.”), I let John pick my personality traits and life goal then I chose his. For me, he chose

• Bookworm
• Neurotic
• Flirty
• Couch Potato
• Good Sense of Humour

“Neurotic?” I asked.

“Well, I wasn’t sure about that one, but ‘depressed’ wasn’t on the list.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is my best friend. So, we looked up the Sim-definition of neurotic:

Neurotic Sims will freak out at the most minor of provocations. They become stressed easly and can be difficult to mellow. Luckily, they take solace in sharing their worries with others.

“Ah, well, nevermind then. Carry on.” I hate it when I lose a battle. The life goal he chose for me is to be an Illustrious Authour, which means Sim-me has to get her writing skill and her painting skill maxed out.

For him, I chose

• Bookworm (we are predictable folk)
• Grumpy
• Good Sense of Humour
• Neat
• Absent-minded

He proved the last one completely correct by getting up and wandering away from his computer at some point during the Sim-John creation process, so I sat there typing “Pay attention to meee!!” messages across the Internet to either an empty room or to a John-playing-XBox-and-not-paying-attention-to-the-damn-computer. But, I digress…

I made his life goal be to become a Professional Authour which entails making $4,000 in royalty checks per week. Er, well, I guess it’s not dollars, but unfortunately I’m not sure how to make the little Simolean symbol. I can, however, make the Dutch Florin symbol (ƒ) although I’m not sure what practical purpose that would serve in my life.

Sim-creation complete, I bought us a nice two-bedroom house (graciously giving myself the smaller bedroom because I’m such a good friend) in Riverview, one of the free towns you can download. Usually, upon entering a lot, the Sims spend some time talking to each other, then admiring all their new things before I swoop in and begin orchestrating their lives.

Not so for Sim-me and Sim-John. We talked for about five seconds, then he sat down at the computer desk and started reading a book. I sat down on the couch with the TV off and started reading a book. The doorbell rang and a little thought bubble about answering the door popped up over both of our heads, but neither of us made any move toward the door.

I had to cancel Sim-me’s book reading to get the door. Three new Sims came in, and Sim-John continued to sit at the computer reading his book.

The tragically funny part is that this is exactly what would happen in real life if John and I were given a fully furnished house in which to life. My personality has been boiled down to five components and one life goal.