One of the things thDoop Dee Doo...at plagues me during game play is the "Stir Crazy" moodlet for my unemployed Sims.  (Don't get me started on their use of the word "crazy," let's just keep moving, shall we?)  

Sims seem to go stir crazy after only a few days without leaving their home lot.  Maybe it's a week.  At any rate, it seems like every time you turn around, I've got a stir crazy Sim.  (Note: the Hates the Outdoors trait results in a Sim who never gets Stir Crazy.) 

But what to do to scratch their itch to leave the house?


Read more >

As long as we're airing The Sims 3's dirty laundry, can we talk about its depiction of mental illness?  I think the polite word to use in this situation is "problematic."

There are two traits that cover mental illness.  The first is "Insane," which is about as problematic as you can get. 

A Sim with the Insane trait:


Read more >

One of the things about The Sims 2 that is in many ways different from The Sims 3 is that individual sims can have their aging turned off. Or so this is what it seems. In the Sims 3, EA seems to have decided that it would be a nice idea if Ghosts (and soon Vampires) gave birth or fathered a Sim that is a Ghost (Or Vampire). In this case and scenario there is a problem. If the mechanics of The Sims 2 were to keep up, a ghost baby would never age so we come to EA allowed aging for Ghosts so at the very least Ghosts can have children.

Read more >

the thing i missed about sims 2 game is that you can not only create a business building and go inside the buildings in town, this sims 3 is different, the building looks cool but you cant watch them or interreact with them when they go to town and go inside a building? why is this? any answeres for me out there.

One of the huge changes between Sims 3 and Sims 2 was the introduction of Story Progression.  You probably noticed this first when one of your child Sims' childhood friends grew up, too.  Or when one of your adult Sims' friends grew old and died!  Or if you switch playable families then come back to your first family only to find there have been pregnancies, marriages, deaths - the usual trials of life.

In Sims 2, time stopped for everyone outside the family you were playing.  If you always played the same household (as I did), this created a weird scenario where generations of your Sims would be born, grow up, grow old, and die - all while the neighbors and family friends remained unchanged.   

One side effect of this was memorizing and learning to love your NPCs.  It was always nice to see a new generation of Sims get purse-whipped by Mrs. Crumplebottom!  Another side effect is that you could literally kill off every other Sim in town, leaving your own Sims to repopulate the entire neighborhood.  (Several challenges revolved around this scenario, including Last Sim Standing and various Apocalypse challenges.)


Read more >

Image courtesy of player QuadmonikerI've been chewing over this issue ever since I was alerted to this post on the Racialicious blog.  Another Sims 3 player found a ridiculously racist pre-made family (the Bakers) in Twinbrook. 

The family of black NPCs consists of two teenage boys and their overweight single mother who works as a cook.  Which is to say, to quote the original post, "every stereotype possible."

I wanted to politely overlook this problem.  For one thing, it's easy to overlook - I barely even notice the pre-made families that ship with the game.  I certainly never play them.  The first time I noticed this family was when Racialicious pointed it out.  And I firmly believe that the game is what you make of it - not what it ships with.


Read more >

hi im rose and there is this idiot in my holel named jackson and he falls down the stairs every day.And he hits on every girl that walks in and so one day he had puding and I put bugs in it and so i watched him eat it then he said mmmm it tast crunchy and now u know why jackson is the idiot in my hotel

Okay, so recently I installed The Sims 3 World Adventures onto my computer. I had noticed things at first like the tattoos at the day spa and "jobs and professions" option instead of just "find a job" these were ignored because I was still able to find jobs and use the tattoos even though I thought those were only available on Ambitions. In the buy catalogue it had a laundry picture but it was only a decor clothesline which again was pretty much dismissed. Then tonight my sim changed clothes to squish some fruit when I noticed a small pile of clothes. I found this to be very odd being that I have never even bought Ambitions. When I selected clean up she picked up all the clothes piles and made one big pile on the floor. When I clicked again I was given two grayed out options. One talked about a clothesline and the other said something about being moved to the dryer. Does anyone know why this could have possibly be?

Create A Pattern (click here to download it from the official site) is the latest in a series of incredibly powerful tools which EA has released to the Sims player markets. 

I think a lot of people are brushing these off or taking them for granted, but Create A Pattern (and Create A World before it) are an amazing step towards reaching out to the audience, encouraging more deep-level interaction with the game, and introducing powerful development tools to an audience that might not otherwise seek them out.

The tooltips in CAP are really helpful, although they flickered on my system (Windows Vista) so I had to read them a few words at a time.  I found it a lot more helpful to click the ? at the upper right and read through the eight-page instruction PDF that pops up.


Read more >

After my Sim reached level 10 in the Ghost Hunter profession* I noticed that his Job Experience bar reset, and began filling up again as he continued to perform his professional duties.  I couldn't help wondering: now what?  


Read more >