Jogos de simulação de vida e subjetividade: a experiência de poder/controle entre jovens jogadores de The Sims.

Abstract

At the present time, great part of our actions and relationships are mediated by electronic objects. In a special way, children and adolescents begin in the "technological adventure" saw electronic games, which start to intervene directly in the production in new ways of subjectivities. The high investments in the industry of electronic games show that, far away from an idiom, that is an activity that settled down in practically everyone, what allows us and he/she demands to think her as a relevant subject for the Humanities and, especially, for the Social Psychology. This research is accomplished with intention of contemplating concerning the uses of the new technologies in the production of the contemporary subjectivity, investigating, especially, the expressions of power raised by the game of life simulation "The Sims" and other implications for their users’ sociability. He/she intends to examine, through interviews on line and personal, that it forms the feelings of power, possibly raised by the referred game, they affect the adolescents’ relationships with their pairs, as well as their perceptions and capacity of discernment concerning the virtual world and of the real world. This use the theoretical-critical referencial of the School of Frankfurt and contemporary authors, to example of Turkle, Lasch and Severiano. The methodological strategies used in the empiric research involved three stages, to know: collects of initials data in forums on the game; application of questionnaires, sent by e-mail to the users, and accomplishment of interviews on line. The data were analyzed initially quantitatively, with the software EPInfo, and later we proceeded to a qualitative analysis of the most relevant positionings, in articulation with the first ones. Our data confirm attributable elements to the that Lasch (1983) denominated of "Culture of the narcissism", in the measure in that the category "power/control" received a strong adhesion of the researched youths. They also reveal nuances different from this culture type, especially in what it concerns to the category "sociability", once those young ones still demonstrate the need of the other in his/her concrete reality, preferring it to those of the virtual world.