Have you ever thought that the ability to play with life in The Sims would be ridiculous if you control actual people?
Twitch streamer Jerma985 seems to think so and has made an elaborate series of streams where Twitch chat gets to dictate his life in a fake house of a fake neighbourhood loosely inspired by The Sims. In other words, IRL Sims.
The Jerma985 Dollhouse streams is a series of live streams over the course of the past week and it’s part The Sims, part The Truman Show, part improv comedy skits and absolutely bonkers, especially for newcomers who aren’t accustomed to the madness of this content creator (who you may recognise as the cursed face of the “when the imposter is sus” meme).
The three live streams all begin with a character creation, where chat gets to vote on what Jerma’s costume for the day is via a Twitch extension. The scene is very much non-branded The Sims 3- even the main theme has the same saccharine, American suburbia vibe to it.
From there on, Jerma is left to live in his dollhouse exerting some free will to interact with the objects and address the fourth wall (either to the production staff or directly to chat) occasionally. He also has a needs meter that chat supposedly has to take care of. Though it’s more fun it seems to torture Jerma and see his reactions when his needs are improperly fulfilled. He will regularly be upset and laugh-crying when the fun meter is low, and keep reminding his neighbours if he’s sweaty and smelly.
On day 1, instead of putting him to sleep when on low energy, chat insists on him to work out, where he passed out mid-way through push-ups.
When Jerma falls asleep, the stream transitions into a buy mode of sorts, where chat gets to pick what object to buy, and where to place it. With the day 1 house bedless, chat decided to buy a dirty mattress for Jerma and places it on top of him, in the middle of a kitchen, still passed out from working out.
Questionable purchase of furniture and its placement choices continues to be chaotic. The one you see in the image above is a streaming setup… in front of a toilet seat.
The madness doesn’t come from just chat being chat, however. Occasionally, Jerma is visited by guests around the neighbourhood (played by various streamers) which turns the day to be a sitcom, with a lot of improv as chat gets to determine how Jerma should react during the guest visits. Though it usually boils down to flirting or fighting, with hilarious results.
Day 1 is considered a “tutorial”, with Day 2 and Day 3 streams being longer (clocking at around five hours each) are more elaborate with more guests and more wacky situations.
But most importantly, the streams are a nice homage to the quirky, silly bits we have grown to associate with The Sims- without being branded as one. The cast may have not spoken Simlish or plain gibberish (it was an intentional decision not to), but you can see in Jerma’s wild mannerisms and swings in moods when his needs bars are low that the spirit of a Sim being in despair is well realised.
On Day 3, a pool is added to the house. It goes exactly where you expect it to go.
If you think reading all of this it sounds like a fever dream, guess what, there’s an actual fever dream bit.
All three days of the Jerma985 Dollhouse stream archive is available as VODs on the Jerma985 Twitch channel, the unofficial Jerma Archive Stream YouTube channel. Plus, edited highlights of the stream are being released on the official 2ndJerma YouTube channel.