If you’ve ever experienced the U.S. version of the Office, you’ve experienced the sheer joy and face-palmery that is Dwight K. Schrute. He’s a real unique character, if you will.
One of my favourite mini-scenes of Dwight is his obsession with Second Life, where you can literally be anything and he chooses to be exactly as he is now, plus flying. It’s just such a perfect example of his personality.
Strangely, I never really made the connection between Second Life and playing a game like it until I discovered the Sims.
A Sim-ply wonderful discovery
Like many of the games I discover, the Sims was one of those fortuitous and accidental discoveries. Sure, I’d seen people wearing Plumbobs for Halloween, but it never really clicked until one of my friends showed me how you could build your own house. Also it was on sale, so…
That was the end of my Sim-less life.
I ran right home, and got the game for myself. I then promptly spent a solid eight hours immersed in helping my Sim (who, much like Dwight’s Second Life person, rather strongly resembled its creator) achieve her dreams.
From there, it was a spiral into caring more about my Sim’s life than my own for a time. That game is seriously addictive.
Living out the write life
Naturally, I wanted my Sim to fast-forward herself through her career. I set her up with the Bestselling Author ambition, got her a job at the bookstore, and got down to business.
It wasn’t long before she was writing several books a day (which, by the way, is one of the easiest ways to make money early on in the game), tending a garden of amazing plants (which, ironically, I am terrible at), and saving up for her dream house.
She flew through the entire writer career and aspiration in about the span of a real-world week.
Why it was so addictive
I think, much like Dwight and his second life, the reason I found the Sims so compelling was that in the game, you don’t run into the cliché that life just happens. Although you still have things like bills and broken toilets, most of the stuff in the game is completely under your control. You can pick what happens, and how your Sim does it.
To be entirely honest, that makes it much easier to adult in the game than in real life. I don’t like doing chores like dishes, but I can tell my Sim to do it, guilt-free.
It was also partially the ability to build my house however I liked it. The sheer number of possibilities were overwhelming for me, but given my love of Lego and Minecraft, I was willing to take on the challenge.
Unsurprisingly, my first house was, well, very square. I didn’t know what I could do with rooms, so I just built lots of square ones and put them together into a perfectly square house. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was nicer than Minecraft and I was so happy.
Now, my mission is to find the quickest way to earn money easily so I can build a huge, non-square, fairy-tale castle.
Challenge accepted.
One thought on “How I got hooked on the Sims”
This game is so addictive. It’s so easy to lose yourself in the world. I too have my Sims become writers and they make six-figure numbers and I’m just sitting here struggling to figure it out. I’ll admit, sometimes I do stop playing for a bit because I get jealous of my own Sim, lol.