This viewer-controlled IRL Sims stream on Twitch is an absolute rollercoaster and I can't stop watching. Streamer Jerma985 has had the stream in the pipeline for a while, calling it his "biggest project" earlier this month. It's easy to see why, because the entire thing is a bonkers yet fantastic experience that managed to make me forget I was watching this on Twitch, completely free of charge. Journo Nathan Grayson alerted people to the stream on Twitter, and I am grateful.
The entire thing takes place on a set that makes it feel like an old sitcom or MTV social experiment from the early 2000s. Absolutely everything Jerma does is controlled by the viewers thanks to an extension called Dollhouse, which the streamer had custom-made for this. They begin by picking his outfit, a beautiful combination of a duck-patterned shirt and shorts, sassy sunglasses and a beer hat in true ridiculous Sims townie fashion.
It's then up to chat to look after Jerma just how they would a Sims character. His bladder, hunger, energy, fun and hygiene levels slowly dip, with chat regularly making decisions on the actions he takes. When Jerma decides to take his beer hat off early on, chat proceeds to completely ignore his need to shower, spamming "no hat no hygiene" until he puts it back on.
A little later into the stream, viewers buy Jerma a mattress to sleep on. He's been passing out on the floor of his bathroom and kitchen until now, with no bedroom or bed to sleep in. They demand the mattress gets delivered right on top of his sleeping body, which would honestly be pretty terrifying in real life.
By this point, Jerma's fun stat has well and truly plummeted, so of course chat sends some clowns to entertain him, who then steal all his beer and cause an awful lot of trouble. One of the clowns eats peanut butter out of the jar with his fingers, which chat later forces Jerma to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with.
Things devolve surprisingly quickly—it takes less than an hour for the set to become an absolute mess of old food and trash. As Jerma sleeps each night, a new thing gets ordered to his house. He ends up with a toilet stool, a toilet phone, a kitchen mattress, a trash can popcorn maker and yet another bed right outside his house. The outside bed also blocks his front door, meaning he has to climb out the window just to get to it.
It's surprisingly entertaining, and I have to hand it to Jerma—his acting is charming and personable, and his daft Sims-like clapping at every inanimate object at the beginning had me cracking up. He kept it up for almost three hours, and I don't think I could've even managed ten minutes.
Yesterday's stream was only just the tutorial too—Jerma said he wanted to figure out how well the format could work and iron out some kinks before the full stream on August 20. I can't wait to see how much chaos chat will cause next time.
