The Sims 3 (2009)

This game consumed my teenage years. The first time I experienced it, I was around 11-12, sleeping over at a friend's house, and she had this game up on her computer. We stayed awake until the early hours of the morning just taking turns making Sims. I don't remember if we ever even progressed into the actual game part of it; I was just having the time of my life creating little people.

I went home the next day set on getting this game for myself so I would be able to play it more in-depth than waiting my turn to make a Sim, but all I remembered was that "it was a game with diamonds on the cover, and all of the diamonds had people in them". My sister, godsend that she is, tracked it down and found it for me, and I did NOT look back.

Sure, the loading times were so slow that I still remember the wait for them years later, but - cars! Interesting and engaging and varied career tracks (the criminal career!) Expansion packs that gave you actual value for money - cats and dogs and horses and foxes and rodents all coming with Pets, and vampires, werewolves, witches, and fairies all coming with Supernatural! More than 3 traits per Sim!

It pains me that it's difficult to go back to graphically now, because compared to Sims 3, Sims 4 is just so soulless and hollow. Maybe I'll give this another try with some immense modding and CC-ing and see if I can bring the Sims' appearance a little up to modern standards. If I can manage that, I doubt I'll ever open Sims 4 again.

I'm going to state something right from the get go...this isn't a review of The Sims 3. It's just a generalized view of The Sims in general, as a franchise, and since 3 is the once I've played most, it's the one I decided to tack this "review" onto.

Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss how I'm actually a Sim.

For most of my life, I've had an extremely hard time relating to humanity, and not just people themselves, but the concept of humanity as a conscious thing in and of itself. What I mean by that is that I have absolutely no idea how to survive, or even really how to do much of anything for myself, and, as a result, I am incredibly codependent. My only real issues are those of a Sim; I get hungry, I need to use the bathroom and sometimes I want to do something creative and I want to sleep. That's it. Those are the only concerns I ever truly have. I barely register real world issues, and I certainly have to be told to do things that are "important" or they never get done. I am, for all intents and purposes, a Sim.

Outside of having that little green jewel over my head and speaking downright gibberish, I'm just a Sim, plain and simple.

On one hand, this makes my life extremely simple, because when you have nothing to truly worry you, your life remains unextraordinary and uneventful, even if horrible things happen to you constantly, as they do often to Sims. My normal day is I wake up, I use the restroom, I eat, and then I pass the day with a flurry of activities that range from creative to passive, and I never leave the home. This is what my life has been like since getting out of school. For what it's worth, I essentially don't even really exist. I have no bank account, I have nothing to my name, I have an outdated ID, no drivers license despite being 32. Again, I do not exist.

Then very first time I played the Sims, it was on the Gamecube, and it was the first Sims title. I didn't find it super enthralling, and I never played the juggernaut that was the Sims 2, but I played Sims 3 to hell and back and I found it incredibly relatable because, surprise surprise, I was basically living out my day to day life in a video game. Sims is also nice in that it allows me - and most people of my generation would agree with this I bet - to achieve things I will never be capable of achieving in my actual life, such as having a successful career, owning a home or raising a family. All my hopes and dreams are digitized and acted out via pixels.

But Sims has always been a franchise I've played relentlessly, just not THE Sims proper. As a little girl I played SimCity 2000 to death because I find the idea of creating worlds where I am in control enticing, likely because in the real world, especially as a child, I never had control. I also played SimTower, and SimAnt to death for the very same reasons. SimTower (feel free to read my write up of that right here if you're so curious) was about coexisting within a small ecosystem, something that I again will never manage to do for real, and SimAnt allowed me to connect with insects, a species I've always felt more in line with than my own likely because everyone considers them insignificant just as they considered me such.

But there's something else, something I've never really talked about, and that is the fact that I am literally two degrees of separation from Sims Creator Will Wright.

See, my girlfriend's cousin got married to Will Wright, and despite them no longer being together, the fact that I'm with my girlfriend means I am that much closer to the only person who's ever really seemed to understand the simplicity that encapsulates my brain. The fact that my girlfriend does everything for me, or helps me to survive on a day to day basis - seeing as I can't cook, can't remember to bathe, can't even be bothered to take my medications - only further proves the fact that I am in actuality a Sim of some kind. Besides, that's all life has ever felt like anyway. A simulation of one kind or another. Nothing has ever felt real, or that it mattered in any grand scheme, and I recognize that eventually I will die and that'll be it, game over. Did I get a high score?

And you know what?

I'm fine with this. I am so far removed from everything in the world, that it makes my life that much easier in reality. I don't worry about anything "normal" people worry about, and I feel kind of grateful for that. Some of this can be chocked up to being autistic and some of it can be registered to the brain damage, but really, I just think I'm not a fully formed person on the whole, and I'm okay with that. It allows me to focus on the few things I am passionate about, the things I dumped all my skill points into as such, like art, and really, for all I dislike about myself, I am happy about this.

So sure, I guess I'm a Sim.

Nobody understands me and I don't understand anything, but in the end, that's probably for the best. God knows how fucked up I'd be if I were a functional person. So please, give me some a new wardrobe and maybe a new special interest and I promise not to set my spaghetti on fire in my newborns crib.

My name is Maggie. I write & make art for a living. If you like this post, you might also like my newest novel here and you can support me monthly on Patreon.

Why tf do they need to shower so much?? My sims needed to shower four damn times every day and I spent the whole "24 hours" just making them shower, eat food, and sleep - all of which had nothing to do with their personality traits.

Why do people actually like Sims? I cannot understand. Also, the goals to work towards make no sense. 20 minutes into the game, some senior sim wandered into my young adult sim's house, commented about how boring she was, then asked her out on a date. It would have been funny if it weren't for the fact that the whole game is legit that wack

Generically speaking, I have a very deep attachment to TS3: I've started modding thanks to it and thanks to the community behind it (more prolific than ever), grasping Blender and such enough to make my own couch or make my own little accessories.

It wasn't the most... functional game of the series: it had many bugs that ranged from excruciatingly long loading times even running with a good rig to game breaking bugs that were later fixed with small patch fixes.

Still, it's a love-hate relationship that I've come to love and understand as TS3 was probably the most customizable Sims experience, due to how big and extended the Modders community was and how detailed the character creation screen cas.