Stuck Inside With is a new series where, since we’re all stuck inside, we venture off the beaten path to explore other parts of the gaming world. This week we’re looking at The Sims 4 through the eyes of a person who is bad at The Sims
The trouble started at the character creation screen.
For this edition of Stuck Inside With, I decided to step out of my usual role-playing game and first-person shooter comfort zone to try something different. My wife, who is far too optimistic about my visual creativity, suggested I give The Sims 4 another try.
It was a mistake.
I am perhaps the only person in the world who is bad at The Sims. Put me in an open-world RPG and I’ll dive right in; give me a virtual plot of land and the ability to build a mansion, and my mind goes blank. I completed 100% of Skyrim — all the quests, locations and side content — and then played it again for new character builds, new looks and new challenges, but give me the blank canvas of The Sims and I get overwhelmed.
Even when provided with the tools to succeed by others, I stumble through any Sims playthrough. Once, while playing The Sims 2 on the PlayStation 2, my wife managed to be promoted five times and make it to the head of the CIA or something before I even sniffed a promotion as a police officer. When the time came for children (in-game, to be clear), I became the stay-at-home dad and managed to flub caring for the baby so badly that she had to take over my character to make sure the child didn’t die.
I am bad at a game it is impossible to be bad at. This is not hyperbole. This is a fact. But that didn’t stop me from trying, one last time, to figure it all out. Along the way, I learned about a die-hard community of Sims players who do things like have 100 babies in one playthrough.
Let’s begin.
Enter the Simulation
I’m an avid Animal Crossing player, so you’d think I would be able to draw some joy from the whole build-your-life-as-you-want-to-live-it thing that Sims has going on. You’d be wrong. The myriad options for customizing your character’s look are overwhelming for me, the guy whose most creative character creation idea is to make the avatar look kind of like I do.
In short, the game’s “powerful customization features to bring your imagination to life” are wasted on me. I hit the randomizer button. Then, it’s time to pick out a lot and throw together a hovel for my Sim to begin his career as an esports pro (banefully titled “eSport Gamer” in the game). In order to do this, the internet tells me, I need to get my Sim to Career Level 6 in the Tech Guru career track.
Written guides for The Sims are plentiful, but YouTube is where the game really lives. Some, like BuzzFeed’s Kelsey Impicciche, have created essential video series around Sims playthroughs like the 100 Baby Challenge, which, as you might imagine, involves having 100 children in The Sims, with a twist that each child must come from a different partner. There are more detailed rules, but that’s the gist of it.
As someone who couldn’t take care of one child in a session of the PlayStation 2 version of this series, I can’t fathom caring for a handful at a time, over and over, until 100 kids have come and gone from what I’d imagine has to be a pretty elaborate home. Impicciche is on Part 55 (fifty five!) of her 100 Baby Challenge video series; in all, there’s more than a day of footage out there of her slogging through it, with hundreds of thousands of viewers for each edition of the saga.
Meanwhile, I struggle to juggle energy and question how it takes a Sim about an hour to make bacon and eggs, with my wife and two dogs mocking me along the way. On my first day as a Live Chat Support Agent, the entry-level job that leads to being a pro gamer, I narrowly dodge being late. On my second day, I leave my house 40 minutes after the start time for the new gig. Somehow, this results in me being promoted. Meanwhile, I ignore all the neighbors who knock on my door except for some dude named Johnny, who becomes the guy I invite over when my social bar is running low.
Then, on the third day, about three hours before work, my Sim manages to start a massive fire while making pancakes. In his terror, he seems to forget that there is a cellphone in his pocket and that he can extinguish fires. The blaze spreads throughout the kitchen and the dining room before, finally, he is able to put it out. He is once again late for work. He is once again somehow promoted.
It was all so simple. Then, it wasn’t.
All about the Simoleons
Despite having what I think is a well-paying job, my Sim seems to be living on a shoestring budget. He doesn’t own a TV, nor does he have the money for one. I need to purchase 3,000 Simoleons’ worth of electronics for his next promotion, but that kind of money seems a ways off.
To speed it up, I enter my Sim in his first gaming tournament, a novice event with a prize pool that will become his first step toward esports glory. He loses and immediately becomes sad. I, too, am sad. Days of in-game preparation are wasted, and I am now afraid to cook or invite Johnny over, lest he once again walk in on my Sim in the bathroom.
My wife, rightly so, laughs all along the way. She spends her lunch break gleefully watching the disaster unfold. Finally I give up and hand her the Xbox controller, then turn back to YouTube and marvel at the seemingly impossible Sims creations of others.
The popularity of some of these players is remarkable. Impicciche has more than 500,000 subscribers to her YouTube page; Hatsy, another Sims-centric entertainer, is one of the most popular with more than 830,000 subscribers. Reactions to the latest Sims expansion, Eco Living, from Sims YouTubers Plumbella and lilsimsie drew nearly 1 million combined views, just about half of what last week’s reveal trailer pulled.
Learning about the passion of the Sims community has been an eye-opening experience, even with my own playthrough hitting a wall. It’s another example of how players can create their own social circles around the things they love and discover new ways to play a game.
For now, though, I’ll just keep watching the experts. I don’t want to be responsible for the life of this poor coder anymore.
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