Gender is a social construct—but how is it constructed in-game? Why can't you pick an option outside of "male"  or "female" in The Sims? And what would Judith Butler think about the game? All these questions and more are answered in this new video from PBS Idea Channel.

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This was not on the list of pre-selected disasters; I don't know how to deal with it.

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The Sims franchise has certainly changed a lot since its first game was released in late 2000. But according to EA, some of the latest innovations to Sims 4 are going to come at the expense of some of players' favorite past features, as well as an architectural staple that's been with the games since their inception.

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Say goodbye to pesky menus and limited choices when it comes to creating Sim characters. The Sims 4 allows so much customizable freedom that players will likely spend more time creating a Sim than actually playing the game.

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Several games in The Sims series are the best selling PC games of all time. Game/Show is curious about why, and they think it might have something to do with the reason people love reality TV. Do people just love setting up a fake reality and seeing it play out with more drama than our real reality?

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EA, oft-called the worst company in the world, has just done something really cool: They've teamed up with Humble Bundle to release some of their best games this generation for however much you want. Finally, a reason to actually use Origin!

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Technobabble -- the scientific-sounding gibberish that scientist characters spew in every episode of Star Trek -- is the dilithium crystal in the warp engine that makes science fiction run. It can get to ridiculous levels. Ron Moore steered clear of it in Battlestar Galactica because his Trek scripts filled up with [INSERT TECH HERE], but ultimately it's hard to get by without it. Technobabble generally does make sense on a superficial level, since there's so much speculative science out there that there's bound to be a field related to whatever the story requires. For better or for worse, take a look at the greatest ways technobabble has been put to use.

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Electronic Arts has been on a losing streak lately. Their launch of SimCity 5 was a nightmare. They just won their second Consumerist Golden Poo Award in a row for being the worst company in America, and now they're closing down what were once popular Facebook games. The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society all posted goodbye statuses to their Facebook pages informing players they have until June 14th before the games are gone for good. Considering the drop off in play, this probably won't upset that many people.

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Here's a teenage fad we're 100% behind. (Blastr)

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Prince's Purple Rain album cover with less Prince, more Batgirl. By Cliff Chiang, via ScreenRant.

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...for cookies. Obviously. (via Felicia Day) 

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Science may, at long last, have devised a way to answer the question posed by timeless philsopher Freddie Mercury: "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" A team of physicists at the University of Bonn believe they have a way to test whether or not we're all living in a computer simulation by seeking out the edges of the lattice work that would underlie such a simluation. Which is pretty interesting work except for one thing. If we are living in a simulation, we definitely don't want to know it. Just let us live the lie.

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Mehmet Gozetlik has designed a series of posters riffing on a theme that today's techies have all thought about at one point or another: Today's software is very, very big when compared to the standards in place not too many years ago. (See: Moore's Law.) To hammer the point home, Gozetlik has calculated how many 3.5" high-density floppy disks it would take to hold the contemporary likes of Firefox and The Sims. (Formatted 3.5" floppies hold up to 1.44 MB.) His findings: It'd take 12 disks to hold Firefox, 36 disks for Firefox Add-Ons; 46 disks for notorious piece of bloatware iTunes; 358 disks for Adobe Photoshop CS4; 1760 disks for The Sims 3. Can you believe that all of Windows 3.1 fit on six floppies? (Behance via NOTCOT)

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The Sims franchise has always been about simulating everyday life. Sure, expansions have gotten more and more exciting with nightclubs, pets, vacations, expeditions, and a whole lot more, but the core gameplay has always centered around a mostly plausible modern day lifestyle. You have your house, your job, your friends, your cozy little neighborhood, and you grow up and live life to the fullest. That's what the franchise is about. Well, now The Sims is branching out in a major way, with the announcement of The Sims Medieval, a game set to come out for the PC and Mac in spring of 2011.

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I recently wrote a little essay about what video game trailers should aspire to. Admittedly, The Sims 3 is not the sort of game I was talking about and so it couldn't really conform to my demands even if it wanted to. But still, couldn't it have done, you know, anything but this? Not to spoil the whole trailer for you, but basically it's just a bunch of annoying brats ranting about all the crazy shit they did in the game. A nun recounts stealing cars and stereos, a Sarah Silverman wannabe talks about all the bling she buys with all her cash. An incredibly creepy British man about whom I will have nightmares tonight talks about burning down his sister's house, insults her in the most crass way possible, then later expresses a desire to be electrocuted. You just have to watch.

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IGN has uncovered Will Wright's next project, and it's not a game. The king of procedurally generated content and creator of Spore and the Sim games (including Sim City, Sim Ant, and The Sims) is instead working with the former president of Nickelodeon and Spike TV to create a television series.

Well, "create" implies a certain level of completion. Wright prefers to give his audience the tools to create their own fun rather than creating a single experience. Or, in the words of Penny Arcade, this.

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