I always get exited as a grown adult when I come across someone in real life that admits to watching those melodramatic emo Bring Me To Life Sims 2 movies. It's a story of every kid (girls in my case) that grew up with unrestricted internet access and who knows English very well. For many it was a gateway to rock music and alternative fashion.

What were your favorite types of movies/series (sad, anorexia, horror, romantic, silly...)?
What are your favorite movies/series overall and why?
Why did you like them?
What do you think about them now?
Did you try to make it by yourself or had already made it?
Did they affect you in any way in your formative years?

Movies? Do you mean the music videos for songs?

I was a child in the 60's and 70's, I was excited when we got Space Invaders.

Oh man, I was watching those before we even GOT Sims 2. I loved the long series, the voice-acted ultra-dramatic ones. Tried to make a few myself but I could never get enough people together. Though Strangetown Monty with its Simlish speech and English subtitles certainly had its charm. That and Strangerhood were definitely the most well-known ones that I watched I think. Most of them seemed to be made by teenagers, but remarkably artistically talented teenagers.
Come to think of it...I started at least a dozen of them using the music-soundtrack-and-subtitle method...most of them never made it past one or two episodes though...shame I don't have access to the Youtube channel I posted them on anymore, I'd love to look back and laugh at them.

I mostly remember the ones by Jaydee. I always loved how creative they got with ingame animations (mostly extracted, I suspect, but I think there were some custom ones too).

There was also one about an airport or someone travelling by plane or some such, but I can't remember what it was called. I think it was a series.

I've watched various others, but none I can remember well enough now. I've always appreciated good storytelling and a bit of nifty camera work, plus short enough videos to keep my interest up (unless they're really good, then I have the patience for longer videos).

Not the biggest fan of voiceovers (movies with dialogue, especially older ones - the voices tend to sound strange), but a few have managed to keep my interest up. Also not a fan of dialogue-driven stories (where sims mostly stand/sit around and talk a lot). Or movies where half of it was filmed in slow-motion, especially when unnecessary and/or to drag out animations.

I was a teenager by the time TS1 and TS2 rolled out. The only thing the videos did was make me appreciate the hard work behind them. Never tried making videos myself. I prefer my sims standing still for photos, and photo editing is a bit easier

Movies? Never heard of...

Watched? I used to MAKE them lol

I didn't speak English as a child, but the Spanish-speaking sims 2 community is quite large, so I used to watch movies and series made with the game, and I made a few that I ended up deleting. I even participated in some that had voice-overs. It was a HUGE thing back then; you could type in "Sims 2 voice auditions" and you would find a good number of people casting real people to be the voice actors for their sims 2 videos. This was definitely a key moment in my life haha.

I swear some of you guys make me feel like a middle schooler while TikTok makes me feel like a grandma..
I'll answer to my own questions cause I didn't have time:

What were your favorite types of movies/series (sad, anorexia, horror, romantic, silly...)?
- all of that except silly, mostly sad usually where a loved one dies and revisits the sim as an angel and horror

What are your favorite movies/series overall and why?
- it was Superstar and Cancer, as for movies it was this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTfaU72h4JI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjgHtoXmRek&t=71s cause the jumpscare was so well done, this one was gold and still is very well made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYdIiW1HdrA

Why did you like them?
- Entertaining, short, I love the Sims 2 of course. The themes are what tweens find interesting and the stories are simple. Maybe it's also because the themes were not directly possible in the game.

What do you think about them now?
- A minority is soo well made, so much effort put in that it deserves more praise. A lot of them are made very simple in terms of filming angles and editing, but I wouldn't have made it any better at the age I was watching them. Aesthetics wise, the staging looked very simple some was even a it lazy cause they obviously used bin lots and the furnishing looked rushed (I don't think that about the videos I provided), but the sims had that CC drip so the players put a lot of effort into their appearance. I respect the horror ones cause it needs good staging, makeup, poses and hacks done right to make it work.

Did you try to make it by yourself or had already made it?
- I did try and I couldn't figure out that I need to make a thousand short clips and combine them in Windows Movie Maker. I thought that it was cut by using the pause button. I wanted to make some horror movie something to do with graveyards and a pretty girl living nearby being haunted by ghosts/ghouls/demons.

Did they affect you in any way in your formative years?
- I did start listening to Evanescence and other rock/emo music. I also made a lot of emo CC I never shared.

I believe when a poll was held, about half of the sims 2 community is over 40. Quite a few of us are over 50 and some are over 60.
But young people are certainly welcome, even if posts like yours make us feel very old. No hard feelings.

I found Sims 2 stories before I got Sims 2 to play for myself. A couple classics include all the child abuse stories (especially Poppy), one that featured the OMGWFTBBQ whose title was "EAT THE BABY," alongside some disaster movies like tornadoes, earthquakes, even a clever one where they flooded the whole lot by somehow building inside of a pond? I remember very vividly they had a child female character blowing bubbles underwater, but the CC alpha hair they had on her didn't render properly under the pond water, so the back side of her head was just missing as she peacefully blowed bubbles underwater. There's one I also vividly remember that was a Halloween Horror theme with a murder mystery whose thumbnail featured a scantily clad lady who'd been decapitated, definitely wouldn't fly on Youtube these days.

I think the biggest impact a series had on me was Doons99p's Pleasantview. I wrote an entire derivative fanfiction that stole several plot points and changed random characters/things around, I believe it's still up but I don't have it in me to read it or delete it-- it will just exist as a nice time capsule to my awkward teenage writing days. \

I remember being so disappointed when the series just kind of stopped. Then, after over ten years, the long-awaited return just felt very rushed and haphazard. A lot of the plot points left off where the series went on hiatus were immediately brought back and resolved this episode when the series had a penchant for slow burn and gradually building up twists and plots. It felt almost like the author wanted to finish the series off as quickly as possible because by the end of the final episode I had no more questions or interest in seeing what happened next. It felt a little like whiplash to me, but all just my opinion on the series and the newest episode. It's a shame it couldn't be finished in a timely fashion.

Strangetown Monty is a classic and I think super well integrated with the conceptual horror of a sims game. It feels reminiscent of Black Mirror or Twilight Zone, where the characters are slowly gaining awareness to the idea that they're in some kind of simulation. It feels like less of a standard sitcom drama and more like a genuine horror/thriller. Definitely one of the most original takes for a Sims 2 Machinima in my opinion.

I also remember loving a series about Veronaville that included some OC's with lovely shiny alpha hairs and skins, it was so jarring to see them interact with the maxis characters because the two styles are so different. That ran for 2 very long seasons, I think? The 3rd season was promised, and we got some promo materials, but the series didn't ever seem to pick back up again, and I can't tell if that's for the best or not.

Lastly, a moment that lives rent free in my head: I can't remember if this was from the above mentioned Veronaville series or somewhere else, but I remember a character trait given to Titania was that she was a clumsy pyromaniac, like she'd constantly set things on fire by accident even if it had no grounding in reality, like I think she burned cereal one time? It all culminated in an episode where she visited Regan Capp, and there was a nice moment where Regan said something along the lines of "don't go near the stove" and as the last scene of the episode it smash cuts to an empty foundation and the fireplace where Regan's house used to be, Titania and her standing in the rain completely unharmed but her whole house is just gone.

Oh oh what about the one, I think it was called Creature? This creepy lady crawled out of a grave and killed 3/4 members of a family and the teen daughter ended up in an asylum...man Sims movie makers are DARK. I remember Poppy too...
But for real, that one freaked me out. So naturally I watched it many, many times. To this day when a sim lies still in the bathtub or a male sim cheers at the TV in a specific way I get chills.

Funny that you post this bc I'm still trying to unearth my old favorites (that are likely lost the the depths of the internet because I can't remember the website). Luckily, I did manage to find some of them.

One of the ones I'm looking for is this non-voice-acted, non-dubbed trilogy about a guy's love life. I distinctly remember one of the episodes (the one where he gets rejected and loses his house after moping around) being an imagination sequence.

Yes I find that pretty unusual since I know only one simmer in her 50s, but Sims 2 is a pretty ageless game so it's understandable. I wouldn't say that about Sims 4 cause I get annoyed by their sims's mannerisms the same way I get annoyed from corny children's cartoons. The majority of Sims 2 players I know are millennials and older gen Z.

Yeah, I provided that one as one of my favorites. I couldn't find the old version, only the remake with better production and dub is available. It's a very well made movie.



Ohh the good ol' days when youtube was a wild west. I had nightmares from my morbid curiosity. I remember two of the videos you mentioned. I always wonder what happens with the grilled baby. Does it die and has a tombstone somewhere. Is it deleted?

It's really not so surprising when you consider that the game is marketed for teens and up. The 20 year old who got the game in 2004 and kept playing ever since is still a Millennial, but also 40. Twenty years from now, some people who bought sims 4 at age twenty will probably still be clinging to that game too.

I was a child in the 1950s and early '60s. I certainly didn't watch videos of computer games then. I watched black and white children's television. I was eight when Will Wright was born! I was of course quite unaware of his birth!

I did watch some Sims videos before I got the game, but I was already approaching sixty. They were mostly rather naughty ones where gay boys in their undies made out and had woohoo together. When I saw a cheap copy of Double Deluxe in a local supermarket, I bought it, mainly just hoping I could get Sims to do similar naughty things. But as soon as I started to play, the game just blew me away. It far, far surpassed all my expectations. These weren't just computer video figures. They were real characters with hopes, fears, loves, hates . . . lives! I fell in love with Andrew and his mum Gloria within minutes of starting to play. And eleven and a half years later, I'm still in love with them. Mind you , within a month of me starting to play, Andrew and Julian were stripped to their skimpy undies, and making out with each other! So the videos I'd seen did have some effect on me!

I still occasionally watch Sims 2 videos on YouTube. But mostly I just start up the game and get together with some of my Sims so we can have fun together. My game is best when my Sims are enjoying it as much as I am.

I knoww, that makes more sense. We as kids convinced our gen x parents, who only played Super Mario and Zuma, that all games (except the '+18' ones) are for kids. Shh, my parents saw that the kids my age (8) were gushing about it in late 2000s and thought that it was an appropriate game. We got a cracked version at our local music shop for 2$. Yes, seeing sims making out on the couch was a bit much, Grim Reaper gave me nightmares but personal development am I right.

I would also be an active Sims 3 player if my PC could run it more smoothly cause I'm sick of constantly worrying about that and lagging. Plus I haven't got enough memory for both games cause CC. My ex bf and a game developer told me about some additional hard drive thingy attatched to my laptop but I would rather pursue other hobbies.

===
...and some of us will be 80 years NOT old in August. And still love silly, and spontaneous, and Sims, and laughing eyes and pecan pie.