Pregnancy in Video Games

I read an interesting article on kotaku.com by AJ Glasser called "Knocked up: A Look at Pregnancy in Video Games". It presents different takes on pregnancy in a variety of games and how they differ from one another. Pregnancies vary from the very realistic presentation in Sims, where the belly grows and the mother-to-be shows the usual symptoms most pregnant women do, to the comical take in Harvest Moon where the baby one day just appears out of nowhere in the mother's arms.

Glasser says that Sims has the most accurate version of pregnancy. And I agree. The whole game is designed to emulate life in the virtual world. Even sex is designated into the two categories of "safe" sex aka "whoo hoo" and "try for baby" which will get the female character pregnant. And after the pregnancy has been successfully achieved, the little woman goes through the usual 9 months, which get compacted into mere days, of a series of morning sicknesses, constant fatigue and other wonderful byproducts of pregnancy.

Harvest Moon doesn't display pregnancy in such detail. Glasser argues that it is "bizarre that when playing as the girl character you're pretty much farming, fishing and horseback riding all the way up until the point of labor." I certainly agree with that. But then again, Harvest Moon is not designed to replicate life. It's more of a fun farming simulation where you have an option of courting and marrying the locals, but you don't really have to. Although, the female in Tree of Tranquility definitely does look strange running around with farming tools in her last trimester. The designers probably decided not to pay too much attention to pregnancy since realistic life is not the point of the game.

I think that the realistic view of pregnancy is essential to games like Sims. The whole game revolves around copying life as realistically as possible, save for a few ghosts. If it wasn't the case, then how would the game look if little Sims could go to the bathroom but couldn't have the morning sickness? And as far as Harvest Moon goes, I don't think the pregnancy theme fits into the game even though family life is a part of it. Maintaining the farm is the most vital component. And if you don't water your crops and feed your animals everyday, they will eventually die. However, if the main character is female, it wouldn't hurt for the game designers to make it a little more realistic. Why not switch responsibilities from the main female character to her NPC husband or at least share some of them? Or better yet, dump all of them on the man while she is hormonal. Hubby seems somewhat of a dead beat, doesn't he?

While the Sims games stay faithful to reality and have their Sim parents pass on their virtual genes to the Sim babies, Sims 3 is taking procreation to a whole new level. I almost fell off my chair when the end of Glasser's article said that ghosts will be able to have babies too!

"Ghost babies? GHOST BABIES!"


Works cited:

Glasser AJ. "Knocked up: A Look at Pregnancy in Video Games". Kotaku.com. Feb 9, 2009.
www.kotaku.com