#I promise I will someday deliver well-thought-out posts on trigger warnings and original fiction but for now... happy eats.

[yvesdot]

PLEASE tell me about social media in the Sims

Oh my God thank you all I got these within MINUTES of that post. Sure!

INTRO

The Sims 2 was released in 2004. Because of that, there is no social media in that game. There aren't even cell phones or laptops-- Sims have big clunky desktop computers that they use for things like playing video games and looking for jobs.

The first expansion pack, University (released 2005), added cell phones, which in my experience players rarely use. You have to sit through 2004 game loading time to get to a community lot (public/commercial, as opposed to private, lot) which sells them-- you need to have a cell phone store somewhere in your neighborhood-- and after all that it provides little utility. The base game (TS2 without expansion packs/DLC) includes (free to use) phone booths on every community lot by default, and landlines are pretty cheap. In the game, you just don't need it.

Obviously, in real life I love having a personal phone and would never have a landline. I can check the time, browse various sites, research any question I might have, and chat with my friends who aren't around. I like always having my phone on me-- but I do not live in The Sims 2.

The Sims 4 does have phones. It also has a pack called Get Famous, which-- and I'm not saying I understand this at all-- allows your Sim to get some kind of quirk that defines them as a celebrity. My Sim's quirk was phone addiction.

I'm never going to play this stupid evil game again. ('ω')

But, okay, why is that my reaction to my Sim being addicted to their phone? Why does it bother me that they pull it out and browse, or whatever? Why do I never use TVs in my Sims' homes, and why don't I get them cell phones? Do I just hate realistic gameplay, or the modernization of the games? Am I a hypocrite for having pink CC laptops in half of my TS2 builds?

Turns out no I was right about everything obviously as always.

SOME REASONINGS

The basic answer is obvious: not everything realistic is something I want in my game. I wish mindless social media scrolling and binge-watching and capitalism didn't exist. I don't want to add CC Starbucks cups to my game because I don't need Starbucks to be in more places than it already is. Abortion mods personally make me sad, because abortion is a solution to a number of problems I wish we didn't have. In a game with distinct WooHoo (protected sex) and Try for Baby (what it sounds like) options which both make Sims just as happy, why can't every pregnancy be wanted and healthy?

Obviously, there are a lot of Real Life Things in TS2 basegame, like the fact that the central mechanic hinges on time and resource management: you have to figure out when to put your Sim to bed and when to take them to the bathroom to optimize everything else (fulfilling their Wants, making them money, causing chaos, etc.). I find myself much more entertained by planning my Sim's day around their varied needs than I would be trying to figure out TS2 tax mods. Then, too, everyone has a different threshhold for what they consider a good or bad realistic addition, including additions to gameplay. I can't play with the mod ACR (Autonomous Casual Romance), for example, because I am a control freak and if my Sims jump into bed with random people I explode. I'm not against any given mod, particularly because I know that it's just my personal taste to play so carefully. That being said, TS2 is in many ways a game about control: using all your power to help your Sims reach the goals you and the game set for them.

More importantly, though, I play the Sims character-focused. While I love building houses and towns, I don't think about the game as gameplay- or worldbuilding-first; all elements to me are a scaffold for the characters, or the Sims! I play The Sims because I love my Sims the way I love the characters I write and read about and the people I hang out with. This is actually the same thing people are doing with, say, ACR, because they like to feel like their Sims are more 'real' and have their own preferences. By default, for example, the game doesn't set gender preference-- you do, when you instruct your Sim to check out or flirt with or smooch another one. I do occasionally indulge in using ACR (with the main function turned firmly OFF) to randomize sexual preferences in my neighborhood so that I can be surprised. Of course, the latest version allows you to make everyone default bisexual if you'd like...

(I do, for the record, LOVE the people who make tax and abortion and death by illness and welfare mods. I find their ability to handle chaos and ride the wave hands-free admirable, and I especially love watching them play and reading their stories, because everything can hit the fan in an instant. That kind of adaptability and dedication is insane! I think individual players should be able to do and add whatever the crap they want to their games. Have no fear; I am not against the pregnancy-enabled Orgy Rug.)

So, in short, I want my Sims to be happy and fulfilled in good relationships. In my opinion, social media does not provide any of this. I know you want this to be at least 5,000 words of a response, though, so let me prove it to you ^__^

THE SIMS 2 BLOGGING WANTS

TS2 actually does have a comparable feature to TS4's cell phones, which is blogging. If you have the expansion pack FreeTime, your Sims can have hobbies, and let me tell you those little bitches Want nothing more than to Blog About [Hobby]. I have a mod now that tanks the frequency of these Wants and it still comes up too often-- I'm talking every time the Wants rerolled (another Want fulfilled, Sim went to sleep and woke up, etc. You get about 4 Wants each time), I'd get a Blog About [Hobby] Want and it drove me nuts. Yes, it's repetitive, but it's also... unsocial.

In real life, if I'm blogging or scrolling through Tumblr or whatever, I know that every individual user is a human person. I'm experiencing social interaction by chatting and peeping. I am, right now, chatting to beloved friend lazarusemma, in addition to two anonymous persons whom I appreciate very much for showing their interest in my interests. It's similar (but not identical to) my being at a party where my friend says "oh please talk about The Sims 2" and then two people yell out from the crowd, "yeah, talk about The Sims 2!" There is a demonstrable social aspect to all of it.

In TS2, though, there's no way to convey that your Sim is doing that. The reason phone calls work so well is that they're essentially identical to having a Sim walk by, appear on the lot, and chat to your Sim (other than that, of course, you can't play ball over the phone). You see the Sims chatting about various topics, the relationship bars go up, your Sim's Social need fills, and of course on your end you see your Sim walking around and making hand gestures as they talk on the phone. It's really adorable! And, importantly, it's character- and relationship-based. You see your Sim making social connections.

The blogging is a mystery. Is my Sim expressing strong opinions on crafting? Are they making friends through their LiveJournal? Is there drama? Who's reading that blog? I have no idea. It makes no coherent difference to my Sim's life to blog, whatsoever, which is simply not accurate to the social aspects of blogging in real life. It's like if you integrated sewing but all your Sims could do was sit at a sewing machine for 5 hours and nothing would happen. (In practice, sewing increases the Sewing talent & interest in Arts and Crafts, allows Sims to craft and then sell or keep usable items, fulfills Fun needs, etc.)

I'M CREEPING UP ON A CONCLUSION NOW

It's also worth noting that you can't really replicate IRL dynamics in the Sims this way to begin with. IRL I do not have people walking by on the lawn who I can talk to, not just because people don't tend to walk by but also because we live in a world where you might not like someone for reasons beyond "they have Level 10 interest in Money and I have Level 0" or "they have 0 Nice Points." People are transphobic in real life. Furthermore, travel in The Sims 2 is either simple (call someone you know to come over, and they show up within the hour) or impossible (Sims in two different neighborhoods can't & won't ever interact). The Internet solves a problem (physical accessibility of a person or resource) that simply does not exist in these games.

All this is to say that I find some of these mechanics "unproductive," in the sense that I see no benefit to them for the Sim's fulfillment, relationships, etc. If they write a novel in TS2, it takes hours and hours and hours and then it sells and they can take it out of the bookshelf and read it. Blog post in TS2? Into the ether. Does not affect anything in the game. It takes less time for two Sims to have a landline phone call than to call one of them over to the other's house, but when you have those two options, you don't really need IMs (real thing in TS2!) or cell phones. I'm racking my brain to find a use for cell phones and I guess if another Sim was using the landline it'd be helpful....? But I don't play in big families, so, again, subjectively useless to me. What I really want as an answer to any gameplay mechanic is: what goal does this achieve better than any other current mechanic? Writing a novel, calling a Sim, and using a sewing machine all have a good answer, while I personally feel cell phones and social media do not. That doesn't mean you can't add them, just that I find them useless.

So, at the end of the day, I'm right about not everything realistic being an inherently good gameplay choice, particularly when it forces me to remember substantive real life issues (I wish I had more control over my phone! I wish companies weren't inventing new ways to keep me scrolling!), while adding nothing of value to gameplay and forcing my Sims to stop what they're doing to perform an animation which has no material significance to their lives, meaning, no significance to my gameplay or investment. We should also be asking ourselves why we want to imitate real life, and whether we can, before we start doing it. Yeah, sure, you could integrate credit card payments into The Sims 2 basegame... but would it actually make the game more fun to play? What factors make credit cards necessary IRL, and do or should they exist in TS2?

I find this to be part of TS4's trend of throwing everything into the game to see what sticks, which for me made for pretty overwhelming initial gameplay, though I'm completely willing to admit I "played it wrong" by starting with a bunch of packs. (I didn't want them, but the copy I was... borrowing... came with them all.) I know social media in TS4 has been updated since-- I'm just not a fan of the game for other reasons, and personally, I don't think I need social media in my games no matter how well-integrated they become. I wrote this post for funsies (*‘ω‘ *) The Sims 2 reigns supreme!