Played a bunch of Paralives

As soon as I got home from Santa Fe, I played quite a few hours of Paralives, a very direct Sims competitor which just came out in Early Access. One of the things which interested me most about this game was watching Sims fans discuss it online. A lot of these people have never played an early access game before... the Paralives team actually had to explain the concept of early access to their audience. I love looking at corners of the industry where Gamer Shit isn't widely accepted or understood. The game is extremely early access. The team very clearly focused on person-building and house-building gameplay, and the bit I enjoyed most as a kid myself - making the characters actually run around and do stuff - definitely took the back seat here. I have a two-year-old computer with relatively nice hardware, and it's lagging every second or two in some situations. Scrolling my camera around the town is difficult because the game will hang and then update my camera position a few seconds…