Shiny Things Inc. - NO CC

Here’s an idea for you – a business your Sims will own and operate with a full staff of employees, but never open to customers! This is purely a factory, there’s no location for sales, so my idea is that your industrial tycoon Sims can visit this lot and oversee the production line for a while, filling their inventory with lots and lots of products, and then later visit another location to actually sell things (or, of course, you can just sell them directly from your inventory once they’re made!). My industrial district was tragically lacking in massive smokestacks and assembly lines, so I figured Shiny Things Inc. needed someplace to actually make all the things they sell to the people of SimNation!

The industrial architecture and décor elements also seem to be underutilized in most buildings, so I kind of wanted to play around with a building that would really let them have a starring role! While they’re obviously still just decoration and not functional, I did try to ensure that all the vents and piping and furnace smokestacks and whatnot are connected in such a way that you can imagine they’d be functional. I also heavily based the exterior of the lot on a kitbashed model railroad building I liked images of, so credit for the exterior should be given to whomever designed that, though I sadly couldn’t find a name!

As far as the actual functionality of this lot, the two main assembly halls are where I imagine your Sim employees working, and the toy and robotics crafting stations seemed most appropriate for this kind of factory, so there’s plenty of workstations for your employees. There’s also a few office spaces, garages, storerooms, and in the basement, locker rooms and a cafeteria for Sims to make use of while on the clock.

I’ve playtested a clone of this lot to ensure that there aren’t any unwanted issues, and aside from the few strange routing decisions that seem inevitable with a large lot like this, everything should function pretty much as you’d expect it to! It’s still a large building though, filling most of a 3x5 lot and with a total of $548,392 worth of furnishings included, so you may still find the game runs a bit slower than you see on smaller lots.

That’s all the technical talk I think is needed for this lot, so if that’s all you wanted, I hope you enjoy this latest creation! If you’d like to continue reading though, below I’ve included my typical storytelling vignette set on this lot, just to add a bit of flavor!



“I’m telling you, we’ve got to get organized if we want to have any chance of actually getting what we’re owed from Landgraab! He’ll never listen to us if we just come at him one-on one! My buddy over at the Yomoshoto assembly building says ever since they unionized, things have gotten so much better, the bosses don’t want to see a strike shut them down completely, so they’ve actually started listening and they’ve gotten raises and everything- we could do that here if we all just work together!” Roy Lee slammed the lid onto his lunch pail as though to emphasize his point, and looked around the cafeteria at the other factory workers from the robotics floor who’d gathered around to hear his impromptu speech.



Most of the other factory workers had returned to their lunch as soon as Roy Lee had stopped speaking, but a few were still listening, and after a few moments, Carl Stanley, another worker from the robotics assembly line walked over and sat across from him.

“See here Roy, we all want things better, but think how much Landgraab pushed back when the feds came in and told him he had to pay for caution striping ‘round the furnaces and conveyor belts, and that even after Walter over on the toy assembly floor near got his arm caught in it and dragged off to kingdom come! He’s so skinflint, you really think he’ll listen to us just because a few of us tell him what for?”



Roy Lee opened his mouth to respond just as the factory whistle blew, sounding the end of the lunch break for their shift. The cafeteria was filled with the sounds of lunch pails clanging shut and booted feet hurrying towards the elevators or the locker rooms, drowning out any chance of continuing the union conversation right then.

Roy Lee headed back up to the robotics factory floor on the level above, and as the freight elevator doors opened he heard the familiar roar of the furnace and deafening clang of hammers and machinery hard at work on the metal components of various robotic products of Shiny Things Inc. The new safety striping around the conveyor belts and the furnace aperture was already showing wear, with plenty of scuff marks and gouges in it from the constant work of the assembly line. Roy Lee scowled at it darkly as he headed to his workstation, wondering how much good it had even done, and sad at the thought that it might be all the improvement to conditions in the factory that he’d ever see.



That afternoon though, a few other workers came by briefly and asked him more questions about the union organizing efforts in the Yomoshoto plant, or what they’d need to do if they agreed to sign on, and after seeing them walk away clearly taking his ideas more seriously, his spirits were a bit higher by the end of his shift. Before heading home that day, he took the operations log from the afternoon shift up to the loft annex, and seeing no one there at the moment, he dropped off the log sheets and then quickly left a note on the employee notice board where the evening and hoot-owl shifts would be sure to see it:


Maybe they’d be able to get enough people together to start really making a difference… At the very least, Roy Lee found himself hopeful again for the first time since he’d heard about the movements in other plants around SimCity. ‘We might just be workers to Landgraab,’ he thought, ‘but we’re the ones who keep this place running, and we’ll shut it down if we have to!’