Sim Sunday

So a dear friend of mine has a blog, and every Friday is Dinosaur Friday.

I need to get in a routine for writing again, and I will be ensuring (at least attempting to) I write at least once a week with an installment I am dubbing "Sim Sunday". Here is the introduction to this installment.

I love the Sims. Sims 2 was a favorite, and many a late night was lost in a fog to having a virtual me mop the floor, and take out the garbage. Never mind that I wasn't mopping my real floor. I understand how sick this sounds, and I can't even rationalize why this game is fun for me. I equate it to electronic Barbies and doll houses.

In any case I bought the Sims 3 the moment it came out. Made myself a slutty rocker chick who was just trying to become a super star. I played for all of one marathon session, and never went back. I don't know why - it's not that it sucked, it was actually the best incarnation of the sims to date, you could wander your neighborhood and do more than ever with the build modes, character creations, and personality builder. But I got sidetracked. (If my blog was a person, he'd be rolling his eyes right now. Blog knows me and my sidetracked nature.)

So this past week facebook and EA games launched the Sims Social. Hooray - another worthless facebook game to become addicted to. Playing it reminded me I have the Sims 3, and I should totally start playing it properly.

But I wanted a gimmick. Some new way to play the game. Something I hadn't tried before. My last adventure in Sims 2 was to create all of the Fluffers, throw them all in a pool and remove the ladder until we all drowned.

Since the only people who read this blog, are the Fluffers you're all probably sitting there open mouthed. Shut your gobs -- I did it so we could be together...forever. And because I thought it would be funny to have a house haunted by nothing but Fluffers. It was funny, and effective. Because there were so many of us the poor bastard who lived in the house was scared all the time because every night at least one of us would wake him up and drip water all over his floor.

I was stumped for a new gimmick. I asked Gabe what he thought I should do. I thought of doing a Lady Gaga sim. Gabe suggested a big bang theory cast, which made me think of doing a Mad Men house. So I made Don, Betty, Sally, and Bobby Draper. I played for an hour and was bored though.

This made Gabe google "Sims 3 Experiment" and he sent me this link to the story of Alice and Kev. It's really creative and I highly recommend giving it a read if you've got an hour to kill. Because of the highest level of autonomy available in a Sims game to date, this stuff is totally possible. (In previous versions if you didn't watch them like a hawk they would pee on your floor and set the kitchen on fire while making a poptart.)

So with that in mind, I am going to something not nearly as heartfelt or awesome.

I am going to make Gabe and I as Sims and intervene as little as possible, and just watch the tableau unfold. I know - this isn't really "new" but I've never done it before. Sure, I've made a girl who looked a little like me, but she was always a better, smarter, thinner version of me. I also always previously held to the belief it's not good to make a Sim of you and people you know, (unless it's to make them all ghosts haunting some poor bastard), because even though it's just a game when your best friend Sim pees on your floor, sets your kitchen on fire while making a poptart, and then hits on the maid - it's hard not to look at them in a new light in the real world. You just take the poptarts out of their hand when they come over and give them a long hard stare, that says 'we both know this is too difficult for you.'

So - yeah - I am going to fly in the face of that anyway and do it. And document it all here. Every Sunday. Because it's Sim Sunday. And I am a sucker for alliteration.