I know there have been several Sims threads, but when I read them I feel like I’m the lone outsider at a Moonies convention. Can somebody explain the theory, fun, and reason for addiction to Sims?
The only experiece I have is my nephew’s Sims game for his PS2. I tried to play, but my character kept pissing herself and missing the bus to work. I couldn’t seem to get past the very first stage.
It’s like owning a fish tank, but with more work to look after the ‘fish’.
It takes a while to get into it. Once you’ve mastered all the mundane stuff (keeping the needs bars up. Make sure the needs screen is on view at all times) it can be fun to increase your sim’s intelligence, skill, strength, posessions, loved ones, kids.
I guess it’s like being in control of a soap opera.
You don’t have to dress them. And they usually feed themselves (unless they are a kid)
WHat you do is coerce them into learning to cook better meals, make sure they are ready for work, don’t stink, don’t do inappropriate things to new sims.
It’s a management game.
Having played it for a good few hours so far (Sims 2. I lost interest in Sims 1) it does feel like work, but it draws you back the next day. It’s addictive just like watching 10 strangers do nothing live (Big Brother) is addictive to many people.
I guess it’s like marmite (you either love it or you hate it) You either see the fun, or don’t.
I don’t see the appeal either but my friend, who usually makes fun of me for being an FPS geek, goes gaga over this game. He even scheduled a four day weekend the week the game was released so he could play it non-stop. His favorite thing to do is to build a Sim to his specs and put it into situations he might encounter in everyday life and see what the outcome is. Ideas that don’t work get dumped, ideas that do get incorporated into his life. Basically he uses it as a life simulator. I don’t know if he was joking or not but if he isn’t then I’ve got to get the game too. He is the resident young office stud all the women and girls drool over.
I bought the first Sims game a few years ago and got frustrated with building the house, so I quit. I’ve been reading the recent Sims 2 threads and decided to dig out the old game.
I picked a family of four and a house that was too small and I didn’t have the money to build and furnish it very well. They only had a couch, chair, dining set, kitchen appliances and one bed…but no toilet. Hilarity then ensued when they all started doing the pee-pee dance and peed on the floor at various times. They also kept looking for the non-existant shower. Flies were all over the house because I didn’t keep up with the cleaning. Whoever didn’t get to the bed or the couch first got so tired, they just passed out on the floor. They started arguing with each other and any neighbor that happened by. Then they ran out of money and had no food, there was a fire in the kitchen, which caused the father to miss the carpool to his pickpocketing job and then when I told the parents to look for a job, they refused and said they were too depressed. It was great!
But, needless to say, I didn’t save that game. Without the will to look for a job, there’s no money coming in. I suppose I should have waited until they all died of starvation or burned to death in another kitchen fire.
And I want to have children? I can’t even care for pixels, much less a human!
I have to agree. I love the Sims because of the cheats. Which is also why I didn’t like the PS2 version. You can’t cheat, and you can’t download cool furniture.
When I first heard about it, and when I first played it, I thought it was one of the stupidest things I’d ever heard of. Then I played it for a couple of hours and got totally sucked into it, and was unable to stop playing. So I still think that it’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of, but it’s compelling.
Once you get the hang of the system and how the different objectives work together (or, you use the cheat codes and get all the money you need), it’s relatively easy to let the Sims take care of the mundane stuff themselves and you can focus on manipulating them to do more interesting stuff. So you’re not as focused on peeing and eating as you are on breaking up marriages, offending people, making the moves on strangers, seducing the maid, getting in fights, etc. etc.
No, it just takes a while…
I haven’t used a single cheat with my current family, it just took a very long while to build up enough skills, time, money to build the (now very cool) house. I consider building the house of my dreams (except for the inconveniently placed phones and the bad wallpaper) my reward for going through the mindnumbingness of dealing with their early low paying jobs and rat-trap of a home.
The annoying thing I found is if you foolishly give them a low ‘social’ rating, its challenging to get your sim to make friends, and many jobs require X friends to get up the higher levels of the job tree…then again, low ‘social’ ratings mean your sim doesn’t get lonely as easy, so your sim won’t spontaneously start bawling into his/her cornflakes because nobody’s in the kitchen at the moment