10 Video Games With Little Hope For Humanity
9. The Sims
The Sims is perhaps the perfect embodiment of the idea that human beings just can't resist picking the wings off flies or burning ants with a magnifying glass.
In theory, The Sims allows players to virtually live out their most exorbitant domestic fantasies, buying a huge house, stocking it with a massive TV and swimming pool, starting a family, and you know, living the good life.
In reality, though, The Sims more often provides an opportunity for players to indulge their inner psychopaths, because why let your Sims enjoy happy, peaceful, prosperous lives when you can torture and murder them instead?
Who among us hasn't trapped Sims in a swimming pool until they've drowned, left them to burn to death in the kitchen, starved them, electrocuted them, or otherwise deprived them of a comfy death in old age?
It speaks to the notion that "this is why we can't have nice things."
Seeing others with more than we've got eventually becomes an irritation, and while in real life there's little you can legally do about that, in the world of The Sims you can vent your frustrations in a way that few psychiatrists would ever deem healthy.
The fact that developers Maxis suffered blowback from fans when The Sims 3 allowed Sims to climb out of the swimming pool even if you deleted the ladder - the traditional method for killing them - says it all, really.