# Sims playing style **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 11, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836 "2016-01-11T18:34:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/1 "2016-01-11T18:34:10Z")
A general question for Sims 3 and 4 players. I’m curious how many here have spent much effort in playing the game “wrong”. By wrong I mean intentionally screwing up Sims’ lives, causing misfortunes, disasters, deaths, etc. I gather quite a few players must do this because the game designers seem to recognize this and have incorporated funny features into the game such as being able to develop a rapport with the Grim Reaper, created an ‘evil’ Sims option, and other hijynx. Have you ever made your sims suffer and/or engage in strange antics? how do you generally play the game? ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/2 "2016-01-11T19:05:08Z")
I sometimes do - but not usually. Generally I try to encourage (read: micromanage) them to have the most fulfilling lives possible. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/3 "2016-01-12T00:23:49Z")
I don’t at all. I don’t know if it’s the “right” way, but I try to make my Sims happy and successful. With my main family I try to complete as many aspirations as possible. The parents each have over 80,000 spare satisfaction points (I use them on potions of youth, as needed). The household has money to burn; they earn interest faster than they can spend it, so they’re perpetually at or near the money cap. In TS4, I’ve only had one Sim die (of laughter, from having too many playful and happy moodlets at once); when I “saved” him with a death flower, some of his reward traits seemed broken, so I reloaded. I imagine that many Simmers would consider this a boring way to play, but I’m a little attached to my Sims. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/4 "2016-01-12T07:44:48Z")
I’m a Sims 2 player, but yeah… I try to give my Sims happy and fulfilling lives. Except for those with the Romantic aspiration, like Don Lothario; seriously, fuck that guy. I had him die in a house fire. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/5 "2016-01-12T14:24:22Z")
I played one character and kept him forever young. I would get him rich and happy. I wouldn’t really torture people. Man, I really want to play Sims 3 again. But I have my own family/career/bills/house to take care of. I shouldn’t be doing fake dishes when there are real ones that I have. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/6 "2016-01-12T14:31:03Z")
I’m playing Fallout 4, which is a oddly like _Sims: Post-apocalypse!_ wrt settlements and settlers. In general, I try to keep the settlers happy, rather than simply alive. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/7 "2016-01-12T14:32:10Z")
FWIW I typically drive my sims hard to succeed and get downright obsessive about skill building and achieving all the aspirations they can. Once they ‘have everything’ I will sometimes torch their lives before deleting the family and starting a new one… get 'em fired, make them eat all day and get as fat as possible, get into fights and lose every friend they’ve got, turn them into werewolves, try to start fires in the home…you get the idea. An enjoyable recent scenario was to start a family out with zero cash and a self-imposed rule that no one could take a job and no furniture could be sold to buy food. You know, depend on food grown from seeds picked up in the park and earn money from collecting/selling rocks and bugs or selling paintings. Then I micromanaged the heck out of their lives and pulled them up from the brink of starvation & poverty into eventual affluence. > [@RandMcnally](#): > > I shouldn’t be doing fake dishes when there are real ones that I have. Been there. Done that. Got the tee shirt. How true. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/8 "2016-01-12T15:44:51Z")
I would usually make a vaguley “Johnny Bravo-ish” sim and then try and make him happy and successful. Once I’d done that, I’d mess around with the rest of the neighborhood until my interest waned. I always loved reading about the various experiments folks did with their Sims, though. Here is [my favorite](https://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/). The author tracked two “homeless” Sims, and the results were funny and at times even poignant. ---
**Author:** ![piepiepie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@piepiepie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/piepiepie)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/9 "2016-01-13T00:29:45Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > I’m a Sims 2 player, but yeah… I try to give my Sims happy and fulfilling lives. Except for those with the Romantic aspiration, like Don Lothario; seriously, fuck that guy. I had him die in a house fire. Worse are the Pleasure sims. Such an annoying aspiration. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/10 "2016-01-15T02:38:15Z")
> [@Cardigan](#): > > Have you ever made your sims suffer and/or engage in strange antics? how do you generally play the game? For the most part, I want mine to live happy, well run lives. I have played “challenge” type games (e.g., one family started on a vacant lot with no money. They had to sleep outside until they’d earned enough to afford walls and a roof. Others have had weirder restrictions.) but my goal is generally to beat the challenges and not to leave them wallowing in misery. > [@Cardigan](#): > > such as being able to develop a rapport with the Grim Reaper In one of my games, the Grim Reaper was around a lot. (They were celebrities and paparazzi and swimming pools do not mix) One of my sims grew up seeing him all the time and ended up in a relationship with him. ---
**Author:** ![Carryon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Carryon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carryon)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/11 "2016-01-15T19:02:19Z")
I think all Simmers at some point deliberately kill some Sims off. I always screw my Sims over. It’s fun that way. In Sims 3 it’s way too easy to earn money so I never worry about that in game. I haven’t played Sims 4 enough to judge that, but in Sims 1 it was fun but a real grind to achieve anything with those needs constantly running out. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/12 "2016-01-18T21:54:18Z")
> [@Carryon](#): > > in Sims 1 it was fun but a real grind to achieve anything with those needs constantly running out. That was my biggest beef with Sims 1. It took considerable effort to simply ‘tread water.’ Most of your sims’ time was spent in an endless loop of running between the refrigerator, toilet, tv, bed, and shower. Later versions made simple survival an easier task. The addition of aspirations to the game really opened up a multitude of game play possibilities. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/13 "2016-01-19T02:22:18Z")
In The Sims 4 you can buy reward traits for your Sims in exchange for satisfaction points. Some of these reward traits slow the rate at which a Sim’s motives decrease, giving them more time for other endeavors. With “Hardly Hungry”, they only need to eat about once per day, and with “Steel Bladder” their bladder motive only decreases when they drink something. “Never Weary” lets them get by on a few hours of sleep per night (or every other night); for a while after release it conferred unlimited energy, but this was later patched on account of it being too good. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sims-playing-style/742836/14 "2016-01-21T21:28:12Z")
[This one always amused me with its evilness (small-size NSFW words on screenshot)](https://i.imgur.com/iA7oHpf.jpg). Build a huge maze from the front door to the street. > [@](#): > > “The carpool will arrive in one hour.” > > Sim takes 7 hours to reach the street, running > Sim passes out twice, pisses himself once along the way > finishes last hour of shift, heads home > walks the whole way back (~14 hr trip) > walks through front door. > > “The carpool will arrive in one hour.” It’s a special kind of hell.