I myself, like my sim, is unlikely to do things like this without being clicked on.

On The Hungersite (which does not actually try to promote hunger, but alleviate it) you may sometimes notice the text “Thank you for clicking.” But to me this has a different meaning as well. It is for my guardian angel, or whoever it is who is watching over me.

When I play The Sims 3, my small electronic people have a will of their own, but it is pretty basic. They can keep themselves alive and employed, usually. If they are hungry, they make food and eat it. If they are sleepy, they go to sleep (especially in the night) or take a nap. If they are lonely, they speak to someone in the house. If they don’t have anything else to do, they seek fun. Computer games, musical instruments, books or painting. (If made in my image, usually computer games.)

But by themselves, they don’t achieve their wants, except by accident. Perhaps they wake up with a want to make a meal, and eventually at some time during the day they get hungry and make a meal. But more advanced goals, not to mention their lifetime aspiration, is beyond them. They need me to click on them or on some object they can use to work toward their goals. And often they need me to click on their action queue to cancel something useless they intend to do.

It’s much the same way with me. I have this tendency too, to just live in the moment and do whatever seems pressing at the time. Which may be fine if it is the bladder that seems pressing, but not if I spend the whole day playing The Sims 3. There are other things I want to do with my life while it lasts. So that is where my player clicks on me to remind me to change my plans.

It could be very subtle, just an impulse in my mind. If I am not too absorbed in something, that can be enough. Like a reminder really. I am sure all people have this, they suddenly remember that there was something else they were supposed to do, even without anyone saying it. I have grown used to this, so that I do very little planning and very little to remind myself. To-do lists are alien to me, and even post-it notes are rare and only at work.

But sometimes I need a stronger push. Sometimes a sudden physical sense experience, like a jolt of pain or a moment of dizziness, makes me wake up and reset my action queue. That’s usually if I am playing a game or watching a movie, and there is something else that needs to take priority.

I am sure many people experience something like this, but they don’t frame it in the same way. Because they haven’t played those particular games (Sims 2 and Sims 3), they don’t imagine it as if someone one dimension up is clicking on them. But strangely, this image is not so different from what religious people through the ages have imagined, that a guardian angel or guiding spirit living is keeping watch over us from outside the limited realm where we live, and occasionally nudges us (or pushes us, in an emergency) to lead us to the good stuff.

It may be that it is this ancient imagery that eventually caused Will Wright to create The Sims that way. I am not even sure whether he was aware of that or not, but it is a strange correlation. But in any case, thanks to him there are now millions of people who will be familiar with being on the clicking end, and perhaps at least some of them will recognize this feeling when they are on the receiving end of the click. Or, occasionally, the kick, when needed…