On Sim-ulations

I tried to be clever with the title- DID IT WORK?! No? Okay.

Let’s get psychological this morning, shall we?

 

Like most people, I’ve been dealing with Life Stuff in a rough way these last few months, and I’m starting to reach the top of that mountain I’ve been climbing for a while. I’ve become a far more introspective person over this period of time, and probably for the last couple years. Growing up does have some benefits apparently ^.^

 

My flavor of the month lately game-wise has been The Sims 4. I got the game when it first came out, then got distracted with other games, as it happens, and now my interest has moved back to this game. I almost imagine my games as a compass, or a dial, and there is a needle that spins around for no apparent reason.

 

Requisite cat picture

 

Okay that’s a dryer, and I’m not a cat, but-

NEVERMIND.

 

So, this happened.

 

These games are funny little creatures. Like most players, I create my Simself, then have them live a life either similar to mine, or vastly different. Usually, it’s the latter. I have them become super successful in their careers, friendships, relationships. They become fabulously wealthy, live in wonderful houses and have the best that Simoleons can buy. Why is this? If I’m creating ‘myself’, wouldn’t I have ‘myself’ be as similar to ‘me’ as possible? With all of my traits (sure there are limitations to how many traits you can pick at the start of the game, but there are enough to make your Simself similar to ‘you’), good and bad, make them look as similar to me as possible, etc? Instead, I glorify my Simself. I give her my best traits, and skip over the worst. I have her pick neatness, when in reality I’m less neat than most. Outgoing, when in real life I’m more of a loner. Maybe Outdoorsy, when in actuality I freak out when I see a spider.

 

Why do I do this? Is it a way for me to simulate what I want my life to be? I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, it’s honestly more fun to move your Simself up the corporate ladder, get all the fancy household goods, have them go on a dating streak through all available men in town until you pick one that you like, build the house of your dreams without any real life rules or laws stopping you.

 

In a way, this game is very freeing, and uninhibited. I can make ‘myself’ anyone I want her to be. I can create random sims, random names, and make them as successful, or not, as I want them to be. I always want the best for myself in real life, as all of us do, and maybe this game helps me with that? Maybe through playing this, having the little group of pixels that I’ve styled after my own image, named after myself, it gives me hope that I can do the same. I can have a fancy house, share it with someone (although no kids quite yet =P), have a ton of friends, have a successful career, etc.

 

I’m kind of getting deep and off-track, whoops.

I’ve talked about it in the past at length, I’ll touch on it again here, I use gaming as an escape from real life. Less now than I did in the past, but I definitely still use it as a tool to work through things, and avoid things until I’m mentally ready for them. I think it all boils down to in this game, for the most part, I’m in control of my life. There aren’t that many outside influences to impact my Simself’s life, and if I get stuck, I can pause the game, Google a guide, find the answer, and get un-stuck.

Maybe the Sims, for me, is more of a simulation of the life I want to have for myself, rather than the one I have now. Sure it’s loosely based off of the real world, and I’m not saying I want to be exactly like my Simself, I’m not that crazy.  *shrug* Or maybe I am, haha.

On a lighter note, this game is also fun because I can do the things there which I would probably never do in real life, such as serial date, have a ton of kids, have a wonderful garden (Hi I have a black thumb and everything green dies), and light myself on fire while trying to make grilled cheese. I shouldn’t count that last one out though.. you never know….

This game continues to be amusing, and is also one of my favorites to play because I can kind of let my Sims do their thing while I putter around the house, pay bills, browse the internet, and then come back and check on them when they start yelling or catching fire.

That’s all I’ve got for today, have a lovely weekend, all ❤

New Home Time

Not for me, for my Sims!

When we last left the poor unfortunate pixel people, the family was whole, albeit chaotic due to so many Sims in the household for me to try to manage everyone properly. I did get to the point where I just let them be, let the free will of the game take over and sit back and watch what happened.

In not too long of a time, my Simself’s husband died of old age (surprisingly sad, as I didn’t get that into playing him) and the eldest son fell in love with some random townie, and I decided that was a good opportunity, so I quickly had him get engaged to her, threw a giant wedding party, then kicked his arse out of the house. Now it’s my Simself, still hanging in there even though she is about 50 days older than her departed husband, and her four daughters.

I have decided they need a new house.

I could always buy them a house, between my Simself being a bestselling author and raking in about 12,000 in royalties, plus her husband’s income from being a superstar athlete,  and all the money their kids have earned, there is quite a cushion of funds. But that’s far too easy. Instead I shall build them a home! I’m going to build it on the existing lot, the location is good, kind of mid-distance between the town center and the outlying areas (I’m in Sunset Valley, for those readers who also play TS3)

I’m going to build them a castle. It is going to be three floors, the top floor will act as the deck, with a grill, hot tub, telescope, and other random outdoorsy activities. I will include a greenhouse, as I have The Seasons expansion, which makes… seasons… and causes the plants and such to grow dormant during fall and winter. I might even add in a basement (dungeon) for the inventing table, alchemy lab, and other things of that nature. The first floor will house the library, the kitchen and dining room, and the living room, bedrooms and bathrooms will be on the second floor, but I’ll have a half bath on the first floor!

I’m going to also get them a butler, I’ll give him a little cottage to the back of the property.

I am excited to start building. Building and designing the houses, as well as messing with the clothing and hairstyles of my Sims is quite fun for me, and I spend more of my time than I should doing that instead of playing through their lives ^.^

I’m off for my day, I CANNOT WAIT for the long weekend. I have stuff to get organized for school still, and have to clean up around my house, and might even have friends over and try to be slightly social, in between gaming sessions XD

Have a great weekend all, and enjoy the long one if applicable!

Creating Things

I was going to use a writing prompt this morning, but I’m going to try to go for it and ramble and see what happens.

Yesterday I played a bit of catch-up on that multiplayer Minecraft server I mentioned previously. After I had a little tour of what my friend and built and done in my absence (a freaking lot, because I was gone forever), and picked my jaw up off the floor, I was ready to help! I’m not that creative when it comes to building, I can build a big house or fort but it’s never the detail or creativity that she can do, but ask me to gather materials and I’m all over it! My friend is obsessed with dragons, which isn’t a bad thing as they are super awesome, so she named the little town she’s building Dragon City. I helped her collect snow for the bank, built a couple walls, plummeted almost to my death a couple times (the shift/crouch key is really useful, but only if you use it). The server we are on doesn’t have the best host apparently, as there are frequent crashes and disconnects when too many people are online. I agree with my friend though, we’ve (especially she has) put too much time into it to switch somewhere else. So we will make do!

After the 8th time I was booted offline in a couple minutes though, I was starting to get frustrated. I decided I should move on to another thing before I got grumpy. I was doing my usual back and forth about which game to play, which happens when there are a lot of options at your disposal, a feeling I’m sure afflicts a few, if not most, of us.

Then I remembered I had the Create a Sim Demo for The Sims 4 . WELP.

Meet my Simself!

 

So I got that out of my system. I still haven’t pre-ordered The Sims 4, although I probably should, since we all know I’ll be playing the heck out of it. Also I want a tank top like that. The animations are fun, I like the expressiveness of their faces, plus the customization is much improved from TS3, which of course is an obvious statement. I didn’t mess too much with it, just enough to make my Simself and see what the traits looked like!

This put me in the mood to check in on my sim family in TS3, which was entertaining as always. My Simself has the age meter full, I’m half expecting her to just drop over dead due to old age at any moment. Her husband, whose age meter is also almost full, is still kicking butt and taking names as a superstar athlete, then comes home and immediately plays video games.  The eldest son, Benjamin, is working his way up the Stylist career, while working on his lifetime wish of maxing out three skills. Of the first set of twins, Dom and Elizabeth, I kicked Dom out because I chose evil traits for him to be a criminal mastermind, then got annoyed because he argued with the family constantly. Elizabeth’s lifetime wish is to create three monsters, so I have her working on her inventing skill, and having her be a self-employed inventor. She also created the mining machine, so of course I put her to work doing that. In a dress.

Minecraft in The Sims 3

The triplets, all girls, Lyra, Emma, and the other one’s name that I can’t remember so she must not be that important, are all in high school, and I’m still figuring out their lifetime wishes. Oh and I got a puppy, Piper. The excitement of the night was when Elizabeth incinerated herself trying to invent something, and I panicked because I thought she was about to die due to fire, until I clicked on the shower and had an option for her to put herself out.

It’s stop drop and roll, not stop and dance.

I had her call the fire department anyways, and now she wants to romance the fireman that saw her with her butt on fire. I mean, whatever works for you.

I’m off to prepare myself for my day, I hope you all have a good one!

It’s a Hard Knock Life

When you’re a character in one of my god-mode games, I kind of feel bad for you….. As I snicker evilly and kill you off. By god-mode games I mean games like The Sims, or any other simulation game really, that gives you a lot of control over the little dudes you have at your disposal. I am slightly less ruthless in The Sims than the other games, usually I make my Simself (in various true or untrue forms) and continue on with her family. I will focus on the benevolent side of this today, and leave my evil warlock self buried for another day!

It’s a beautiful sunny day outside, I won’t ruin that for myself by talking death and dismemberment in video games ^.^

Meet my Simself and her family! She has a lot of children.

Welp. Also, dat pregnancy outfit.

She aged really quickly. I guess that’s what happens when you have 7 children, crazy.

This is one of those times that I tried to stay as true to myself as possible when creating my Simself, picking traits, hairstyle, clothing, etc that I would actually wear and do. She moved into a little house in Sunset Valley, and began exploring her new town. She quickly woo’d random bacherlor sim #3, because I didn’t do my normal thing and agonize over who she should fake marry. I just went with the first guy that started flirting back and figured that was a suitable mate.

And I wonder why I’m single IRL.

This game is fun. So fun. It’s actually running in the background now, because as is usually the case with me, when I start thinking about a game I haven’t played in a while, I want to play it. Too many games. The only stressful part is when the Sims decide to have triplets, and they are obviously all toddlers at pretty much the same time, even though I forced them to have staggering birthdays, and your Simself is a stay at home world-renowned novelist, but her husband is off being the Sim equivalent of David Beckham.  Then all of the diapers are dirty, everyone is screaming and crying, two of them are hungry, one of them is tired but wont’ sleep because the other two are crying, and your teenage son is making out with his girlfriend on the couch and complaining about the noise, but won’t do anything to help. Somewhat reminiscent of real life, although in real life you can’t save and quit the game out of frustration and go do something else.

Currently my Simself is probably going to die of old age never, and her husband is approaching the end of his life bubble as well. I might have to hasten their demise… I’m a horrible person… I’ve got the first son, the oldest son, then the twins, then the triplets.

Yer a wizard, Elizabeth.

My goal (as of right now) is to have them all move out of the horrible house I kept adding on to as my Simself kept procreating, because it’s ugly, laid out weird, and I just want to.  I don’t know if I want to keep all the kids, they are all teenagers and older by now, so I could move some out with an adult sibling and just keep the ones I want to. With six sims, once they start dating and getting married and all that nonsense, I’ll want to kill them all off, so I think I’m better off just controlling a household of two or three, and letting the others AI their way around life.

I have pretty much all the expansions, because I’m crazy and I like throwing my money at EA. I did get most of them on sale though, so that’s a plus. My favorite expansion packs have got to be Supernatural, I’ve always been a fan of that, and letting my Sims lead crazier lives as witches, vampires, werewolves, and fairies is quite fun. I recently picked up Seasons, Island Paradise, and University with the Steam Summer Sale, and those are quite fun too. Haven’t messed too much with the Island Paradise, maybe I’ll end up moving the whole family over there before I split them apart.  I could make some mermaids too. Now I’m brainstorming. See what you did?! It’s all YOUR FAULT.

Townie Sim died at a birthday party. That’s a buzzkill.

I am excited for The Sims 4, although some of the news I’m hearing makes it seem like it’s rushed, like there are essential parts that are going to be later released as expansion or DLC/expansion content, such as the toddler life stage (although annoying, it is kind of important, and seems odd to just skip over entirely) and pools (wtf, like seriously? Most efficient way to kill- I mean entertain- party guests). The new Create a Sim tool, plus all the videos I’m seeing about game play and how the Sims will now interact with each other, all looks very neat. I’m sure I’ll quickly get addicted to that one too, even with the missing parts to the puzzle. I’m hooked, what can I say? There are some games that you just love to play, even with their faults and bugs.

No words.

I leave you with that last, haunting image. I’m off to do fulfill some real life wishes (laundry, plan outfit, fix hair and face) and fill my energy meter (always need moar coffee) before I go off to the fair!

Happy Sunday =)