I am enthralled by the reddit thread on “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done in The Sims series?”
One time I killed a sim by drowning. Then I made everyone show up to his funeral in swimwear.
*
It’s not too sadistic per-se, but it involved a lot of deaths.
I wanted to make a church with a full, complete graveyard. So I built a small, simple structure moved in a family of 8, get them all inside, remove the door, fill with fire. Yay, 8 new tombstones!
Repeat like 9 times, and you’ve got a full graveyard of tombstones. Then I built the church and moved in a priest to live there and tend to the grounds.
*
So, in my most recent Sims playthrough, I found this girl that I really wanted my Sim to marry. Problem is she already had a husband, so rather than just doing the (relatively) normal thing and just increasing the relationship and convincing her to break up with him, I instead became best friends with her husband, convinced him to move in with me, and then drowned him in a pool so I could marry his wife.
And much more.
Theoretically, it ties to some of my arguments in my Without a Goal chapter about open and expressive games: anything truly expressive can also express things we find offensive and/or transgressive.
… the reason why goal-less games can easily become steeped in controversy. The wide range of player actions – what makes the game expressive – also makes it likely that the player can express something that offends someone.