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Sims Social: The Two Types of Requests

How you handle them will depend on your playing style - and your friends list!

As you play the Sims Social Facebook game, you encounter situations where, for one reason or another, you need to ask people to give you stuff. Maybe it's part of a quest chain, or maybe you need some Relaxation so that you can finish building that couch. Maybe you need four Pens so that you can level up in the Writing skill. You can't play the game for very long before you encounter one of these situations.

Type 1: The Targeted Request

This is the most common way the game makes you ask for things. When you click on "Ask friends" it takes you to a list of all of your Facebook friends. You can then click to select which of your friends you are going to pester with your request. (PROTIP: stick to just pestering your Sims Social friends!)

Sims Social Strategy: Never Craft Anything

Save those ingredients for when you really need them!

As you play the Sims Social Facebook game, you accrue a bunch of random crafting ingredients. Half the time when I repair something broken, my Sim earns a Wrench. Whenever she paints, she gets a bunch of Rags and Soap, and so forth.

My initial strategy was to craft away. Why not, right? What, was I waiting for the perfect moment, saving up my "instantly refill Clean motive" potion? Nah. Just use 'em. So I thought.

Is The Sims Social "Exploitationware"?

And if it is... so what?

Game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost is probably most famous for having created Cow Clicker, a Facebook game which was a critique of Facebook games. In Cow Clicker, you click a cow. Six hours later, you can click it again. And… that's all.

Cow Clicker was a commentary on the ultimate nature of Facebook games, which is to use Skinnerian training techniques to essentially enslave Facebook users. You get hooked on clicking on things, and you fork over money in order to click on more (or better) things, and Bogost's contention is that the only ones who win are Facebook and Zynga (or in the case of The Sims Social, Playfish).

Increasing Your Sim Social Home's Value

In order to unlock the ability to buy garden plots, your home has to get to level 50, with a home value of $1,020,000.

There are two good reason to focus on the value of your home in the Sims Social Facebook game:

1. It's what your friends see

Let's be honest, Sims Social is a competitive game, too. The one-upsmanship is definitely a part of the appeal. That being said, the figure your friends see beside your icon at the bottom of their screen is your home value. Not your total value.

The Sims Social: Is It Really A Game?

Or is it just "clicking on a bunch of stuff"?

My recent bout of playing The Sims Social is also my first experience playing a Facebook game. I had always resisted them in the past as being "not so much a game, as clicking on a bunch of stuff." And having played Sims Social somewhat intensively for the last few weeks… I think I still kinda believe that.

What makes a game a game? I would say that "strategy" is one element. I also think that "the potential for failure" is another element. Competitive play is another possible component, although not strictly necessary. (There are plenty of games, both real-world and video games, which are single-player. Tetris, Zork, and Solitaire all come to mind.)

Sims Social: What Is XP Good For?

You keep leveling up... but why?

As I played (I'm still playing… even though I don't quite know why…) I started wondering what was the point of XP. It's listed at the top of the screen, along with the other currencies, but you don't seem to be able to spend it. What's the deal?

Almost every useful action (i.e. actions requiring an Energy point) will earn you XP. Most actions (including watering a plant, rummaging through the trash, or painting something) earn 10 XP. The symbol for XP is a blue star, and XP is tracked in the top right-hand corner of your main screen.

The Sims Social Cowplant

And its philosophical implications for the game as a whole

Over the weekend, I have to admit it, I lost my head a little. I gave actual cash to The Sims Social Facebook game. I know, right? I have no defense for this. I hang my head in shame.

What tempted me? In a word: Cowplant!

The Cowplant is probably one of the most famous fixture of the Sims games. Originally introduced as a career reward in The Sims 2, the Cowplant has also returned to The Sims 3 - and now, to Sims Social, as well.

Sims Social: Energy Point Strategy

If you have the free time, you can max out your free Energy points by checking in on the game every 75 minutes.

Playing the Sims Social Facebook game can be a very frustrating experience, because there are five or six different limitations that you have to work around. One of the most basic currencies is Energy points, which you have to expend any time you want to do anything interesting.

In this context, "interesting" means "will earn you something more than a green smiley." This includes social interactions (where you can earn Social points and crafting ingredients like Fury or Goodwill) and physical actions like clearing weeds, painting, gardening, and so forth.

Sims Social Gardening

Don't forget to set yourself a calendar reminder!

The obvious way to make money in Sims Social is to start gardening. Each property comes with four garden plots. (You can buy more when you have enough money and are at a high enough level. They cost $1,000 apiece, and are unlocked when "Maximum Reached." I don't actually know what that means. Maximum gardening skill, I guess?)

Click on the plot and you have the option of planting any of a number of harvestables, from strawberries to grapes. Each one takes a different amount of time until it is ready to be harvested. The longer it takes until it's ready for harvest, the more money you earn for harvesting it.

The Sims Social: Energy Points

Remember how yesterday I mentioned that planting, watering, and harvesting takes a separate action for each plot? Yep: now you can see the sense of it

I know what you're wondering. You're wondering, "How great is it that you can play this Sims game for free?" Pretty great! For a little while. Then you run out of energy points, and EA's diabolical plan is revealed to you.

Not all actions require an energy point. Just the interesting ones, and the ones that have benefit. When you click on something to bring up the actions menu, the actions requiring an energy point will have a little cartoon lightning bolt icon in the corner. Luckily, this makes it easy to budget your energy points if you need to. However, it also makes it obvious how crippled your gameplay will be, once you run out of energy points.

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