The Alphaville Herald

History of the Sims Shadow Government, part 1: the prehistory of ssg.

by Alphaville Herald on 14/12/03 at 4:34 pm

In this post I begin recording a series of interviews with the typists of Mia Wallace, founder of the Sims Shadow Government. In this interview I speak with Mia’s female typist, and ask her about her first days in alpha, her previous life as Roller Girl, and the life and times of the Sims Sorority House.

Urizenus: well, I thought we could start doing some historical
Mia: ok
Urizenus: You were in beta right?
Mia: yup
Urizenus: were you mia wallace from the beginning?
Mia: No, started October *unintelligable* of 2002 as Roller Girl.
Urizenus: oooh, roller girl (from boogie nights?)
Mia: Ha, the same… the only regret is that Maxis wouldn’t let me have roller skates heh
Urizenus: very unfair
Mia: agreed!
Urizenus: so how did you find tso? (by that I mean, how did you find out about it)
Mia: While I was in my 2nd year of college, my good girlfriend called me into her dorm. She was sitting at her computer and playing some sort of video game I’d not seen before… she told me that it was called the Sims and from then on, I’d hear her talking to our mutal friends about this “family” she’d set up in this game, how they were interacting with each other and that her “gay couple finally fell in love.” Intrigued, I asked her to let me play a bit, then asked for a copy for Christmas. Had been addicted to the Sims ever since. When my husband found that an online version was coming out thru AOL, well… we HAD to jump on it. Esp since it was the beta test.
Urizenus: ok, and then you and your husband shared an account from the beginning?
Mia: Oh yes… we didn’t see a point in having a second account in the very beginning when we could have 3 different characters to work at in 3 different cities. But when we found out that Alphaville was pretty much the place to be and that it was easy to work/grind one character instead of two, we decided that we were going to stay in Alphaville, work the top 100 house list and skill there.
Urizenus: and that was the roller girl avatar?
Mia: yup
Mia: We found out that it was easier in the first week. HAHAHA
Urizenus: did you move into a house or start one
Mia: If you’d played the sims, you had a good idea what to expect from the Sims Online so it only took us a day to learn some of the ins and outs of the game. We met a character named “Go Go Girl” and assumed that she was “Roller Girls” long lost sister and decided to build a property together. Since we were “sisters” we decided to call the place “Sim Sorority House.”
Urizenus: sweet, now lemme just back up a bit. how does this avatar time sharing thing work out? I mean (i) who gets to play when, and (ii) how do you keep track of who you’ve spoken too etc.
Mia: When we first started, I worked nights. So when I was at work, he’d be playing while he conducted business from out of our home. When I got home from work, I’d jump on and play till it was time for me to go to bed. Between the two of us, we’d be churning 12 to 16 hours a day in Alphaville.
Mia: I’d often call him from work on my lunch break or whenever I had a spare moment to check in on him and ask what was going on in game… I (we) were both that addicted.
Mia: While I played, he’d be close by watching me and throwing in a comment or two here and there letting me know “oh I talked to him before and yeah, he’s pretty cool” or “oh gawd, don’t talk to her… she’s just an idiot”
Urizenus: lol
Urizenus: wow, ok, so you and go go girl built the SSH. Was it in romance category right away?
Mia: No, in the very beginning of the game, there was no category list… just an overall list.
Mia: SSH was the BEST of the one stop shops.
Mia: It had EVERYTHING and more importantly, good hostesses in the sisters that lived there. We were great chatters. LOL
Urizenus: btw, did most people know there were two of you?
Mia: In the beginning, no… not everyone knew. We thought that it might “hurt” our relationships with some characters that were a little more…. delicate… for lack of a better word. Some people get *really* weirded out when they find out that this girl that they have a secret crush on is really a guy… or that the girl that they thought was the girl next door sometimes has a penis. LOL And then they would go overboard and think that I never existed. ROFL
Urizenus: you mean they thought that only your husband was running the avatar
Mia: Some of the more imaginative ones, yes… because they didn’t believe that a girl would ever tell another girl, online or not, that they wanted to fondle her breasts or swap spit in the back room. I can see their point but hey… this is the liberated world here. HAHA Honestly, its a virtual world, and I didn’t care who “my husband” was kissing or who I was kissing when the “kiss” was only a pixelated interaction in an online game.
Mia: He always looked at it like he was playing Tomb Raider all over again… its better for guys to get to look at a nice rack then not, right?
Urizenus: did roller girl like men or women or both?
Mia: both
Mia: lol
Urizenus: free thinker!
Urizenus: ok…
Mia: when I played, I liked flirting with guys… when he played, he got a kick out of hitting on chicks… yeah, Roller Girl was a real slut.
Urizenus: back to SSH, you started as a store then, and how many other sims lived with you?
Mia: we weren’t a store… in beta there weren’t stores, but we had a full house of 8 roommates at all times usually. With the more popularity that the house got, the more roommate requests I would get with each passing day.
Urizenus: well, what did you mean by a “one stop shop”?
Mia: one stop shop… back in the ole days, you didn’t have to go to a particular house to skill and then another to make money and then another to just mess around and have fun… you could skill, make money and talk all at the same time by doing a chalkboard at Sim Sorority House because Maxis hadn’t nerfed the boards to disallow skilling while you made money. There were TONS of items like that and SSH had at least 6 of each of them–not that it mattered then, because you didn’t have to get a group to make good money.
Mia: then, maxis nerfed it and all the beta testers were sad. lol
Urizenus: “nerfed it”?
Mia: As put by the Star Wars Galaxies player guide, a nerf is a “class, item, ability, etc that is programmed to be less effective for game-balancing purposes.”
Mia: so basically they took something that was REALLY great and screwed it up.
Urizenus: ic, so they’ve been doing that from the beginning
Mia: lol yeah
Mia: it BLEW
Urizenus: hmmm yah I’ll bet. now were all of your roomies grrrls
Mia: *nod* its a SORORITY, I can see where a guy would *want* to live in a Sorority but realistic? No, methinks not… so I had a guy start Sim Fraternity House at the neighboring property.
Urizenus: makes sense
Urizenus: alright and the SSH sisters lived happily until…?
Mia: …until the wipe? LOL
Urizenus: ah the big wipe
Mia: I never thought anyone was unhappy at SSH
Urizenus: so Maxis wiped everything, and then you had to start over?
Mia: yup… Roller Girl had gained so much popularity in the beginning of Beta that someone stole her name for the wipe. It was really a sad, sad day. LOL So we renamed the avatar “Mia Wallace” from my favorite movie Pulp Fiction and proceeded to start setting up Sim Sorority House again. I think I called in sick to work that day. My husband and I worked in shifts to get that house back up… almost 28 hours straight; god we were sick. LOL
Urizenus: really, non stop?
Mia: Oh that was nothing really… I know of other people know that during that time were playing 72 hours straight to get their act together after that wipe.
Urizenus: Evangeline said this was around Nov. 26 or 27 (the wipe) does that sound right?
Mia: about that… it was 2 weeks prior to the release of the game which was approximately a month before Christmas because Maxis/EA made no secret of wanting to get the game out to the public for the holiday season.
Urizenus: ic, let’s back up again. Before the wipe did you know Roxy Merrill?
Mia: Never heard of her.
Mia: I think Roxy started in Interhogan, but I might be wrong about that.
Urizenus: Were you aware of any cyberbrothels in alpha?
Mia: In beta? Nooo…
Mia: Beta was pretty griefer free… the people were nice, willing to help and you could trust players to not screw you out of a simolean.
Urizenus: but this was Raphael’s pre-griefer days I think
Mia: I wouldn’t know… I didn’t hear the name Merrill until approximately Mid January of this year.
Mia:… it wasn’t until I started getting ingame messages from some Franki Merrill saying “Hey Miss Susie Homemaker, can I get a recipe” or “Hi there Martha Stewart, got any tips for basting a turkey?” And I’d be like, “who the hell is this and why are they mocking me?” because that’s clearly what it was. But when I’d ask I’d get a response like “Oh I’m your biggest fan” or “I’m just in AWE of the #1 Most Liked Sim” something to that extent… stuff that didn’t make sense at all, but was obviously trying to push buttons.
Urizenus: so you hadn’t heard of a Hotel Erotica before the wipe?
Mia: Not in the least.
Urizenus: Or after the wipe?
Mia: Mid January is when I first heard it.
Mia: In Alphaville, like I said, I think Roxy was in Interhogan… but I could be mistaken.
Urizenus: Raphael says he became Tori Merrill after the wipe. Did you know her?
Mia: The first Merrill I knew was Franki.
Mia: Tori followed.
Mia: Then Dorian.
Mia: oh wait…
Mia: Franki, Tori… Auntie Jemima and then Dorian.
Mia: Sorry.
Mia:
Urizenus: He also said that “Hotel Erotica” zoomed to number one after the wipe.
Mia: *shrug* can I go on record saying that I’m the Queen of Sheba? lol
Urizenus: *flew to number one
Mia: zoomed or flew… it wasn’t there… I assume he was playing Roxy in Interhogan because Hotel Erotica started in Interhogan.
Urizenus: ok, you rebuilt SSH, now as Mia Wallace. Did it now have a category?
Mia: It used to say so on the AV Hotel Erotica house profile..
Mia: Yes, after the wipe they introduced the romance category… SSH was a romance property.
Urizenus: and what did that mean?
Mia: For us, it meant that it was a place to come flirt and hang out and get away from the “hubbub of skilling and money making.”
Mia: A lot of simCouples met at SSH.
Mia: Hell, I met Moe Wallace there too. LOL
Urizenus: did you have the love beds then? (and tubs)
Mia: Around that time… I can’t totally remember but it was around November something to January something…
Mia: I’m pretty sure they weren’t there for Christmas because I *do* remember thinking that the game wasn’t ready for release.
Mia: ie the game was missing some of the promised objects
Urizenus: k, so people ask me, and maybe you can help explain, what on earth does it mean for sims to become couples?
Mia: ROFLMFAO
Mia: well for me and Moe Wallace, I think it was different from what everyone else thinks… I don’t really know. LOL I’m married in real life and Moe lives in Florida. So, when I first met him in game, something just clicked and for my husband too where we both said “you know what? This guy is pretty damn cool, lets get married!”
Mia: And all that meant was that Mia now had a partner in crime… a Number 2 (or Number 1 if you’re a Star Trek fan).
Urizenus: lol
Mia: And someone I could gLove and heart-pull.
Urizenus: well, ok, but does that mean that you and moe went on dates or something?
Mia: On occasion we were known to drop into the random store lot (when they finally came out) and argue over what sort of lights to put in the Sorority House.
Mia: but Mia was pretty religious on keeping the Sorority open for her visitors, so Moe usually came by and poked her in the eye.
Urizenus: never went to a sim restaurant?
Mia: no, I’m the woman, I was supposed to cook and he often bitched that I didn’t.
Urizenus: now when you say you got married, was that like in a sim church?
Mia: Jengie, a good simfriend of mine, owned a Wedding Chapel. So we threw a party at her place and Jengie married us there.
Urizenus: awww
Urizenus: honeymoon?
Mia: yeah, the groom peed himself and then passed out in his puddle
Urizenus: ewwwww
Mia: Then I pulled his heart out a few times
Mia: and he passed out again
Urizenus: hmmm
Mia: Young love, so pure… so true…
Urizenus: yah, sounds more like divorce to me…
Mia: lol
Mia: the nature of Mia and Moe, I guess… hehe
Urizenus: so I see a lot of married sims in the game. How long do these things tend to last?
Mia: Some lasted quite a while… some lasted about an hour. I heard a lot of talk from girls saying that they married a guy and then never saw him online again. LOL
Mia: Me, I play Star Wars Galaxies with Moe Wallace now.
Urizenus: Yah I married two vampires once and it lasted one day
Mia: Just got off the phone with him a few minutes ago, actually…
Urizenus: awww true love
Mia: hahaha
Mia: My husband called him
Mia: ROFL
Urizenus: so when sims get married are they expected to cyber each other or is that a whole ‘nuther thing
Mia: I would think that’s relationship specific…
Urizenus: so there are unconsummated sim marriages
Mia: My husband and I don’t like to cyber very much… we just like the shock value… besides Moe knows that my husband played and that might make them both… uncomfortable. LOL Moe will blow my husband kisses from time to time and my husband says “Stop being queer.”
Mia: But yeah, I’d guess so… I never really bothered to ask anyone. LOL
Urizenus: got it.
Mia: A lot of people let their RL emotions get caught up in the game… fortunately/unfortunately we don’t get into that…
Mia: although…
Mia: I will say that when Moe got interested in another character, we both got a bit jealous (for TOTAL LACK OF A BETTER WORD) LOL
Mia: My husband was like “Oh my god, he’s not hanging out with ME because he’s hanging out with HER again?! No way!”
Urizenus: lol
Urizenus: k, back to SSH everything is back in motion. and you were ranked well?
Mia: we were number 1 from day one of the category feature.
Urizenus: and you had a house full of sisters…
Mia: yup
Urizenus: any names stand out?
Mia: ROFL
Mia: Aangell, Shakina, Go Go Girl, Bama Babydoll, Kelly Summers, Michigan, HaLLowKwEEn, Wabbs but she doesn’t count because she stabbed me in the back on the day of the wipe, Snow White, DeeDee (then CeeCee) Davenport, RobynDajos, Eva Marie (aka -Thunder). Gypsy, Chyna…
Mia: There was a lot…
Mia: I’m not picking favorites, but just reminiscing.
Urizenus: some of those names are familiar…
Urizenus: still in the game
Mia: Most of them are.
Urizenus: ok, what’s the next big event?
Urizenus: i.e. what happened next
Mia: well…
Mia: LOL
Mia: so I started getting messages from Franki Merrill and at the same time, I had a big rival in game, named HaLLowKwEEn.
Urizenus: I thought HaLLowKwEEn was your roomie
Mia: Long story short, under the guise of a second account, HaLLowKwEEn tore down the Sim Sorority House.
Mia: KwEEnie and Mia have a history.
Urizenus: oooh
Urizenus: do tell
Mia: not much more to tell… there was a sim named Naturelle. Naturelle had been living with HaLLowKwEEn for a few days and then suddenly moved out and wanted to be my roommate. I was a little weary of it but wrote it off to paranoia and then invited her into the house as a roommate. I went to bed and when I woke up for work the next day, the house was gone with SLUT spelled in red letters on the property.
Mia: Naturelle was booted immediately.
Urizenus: this was before they had build permissions?
Mia: *nod* another nerf.
Urizenus: k
Mia: In any case, later that night, I ran into KwEEn irl on AOL and told her “look, you got me and it was funny!” and we just became friends from there on.
Mia: She even came to stay with my husband and I in Vegas for a weekend in May.
Urizenus: um, let’s pause here, and come back to more on Kweenie and then … Ms. Merrill.
Mia: KwEEn was actually a very pivotal part of the Wallace Family/SSG
Mia: probably more then she realizes.
Urizenus: ok, then we gotta hear more about that
Mia: LOL
Urizenus: to be continued tomorrow then?